Gender Action was established in 2002. It is the only organization dedicated to promoting gender equality and women's rights in all International Financial Institution (IFI) investments such as those of the World Bank — the largest public source of development financing in the world.

Gender Action's goal is to ensure that women and men equally participate in and benefit from all IFI investments.

Gender Action's vision is a World Bank and other IFIs with mandatory gender policies and strategies that are implemented to increase women's economic empowerment opportunities and eliminate their human rights violations. 

Billions of dollars of IFI investments made over the last 60 years have done too little to reduce poverty especially that of poor women and girls. Despite massive IFI investments in developing countries, females constitute over 70 percent of the world's poor and poverty continues to feminize. 

Gender Action's agenda is inspired by the need to implement international conventions including the Beijing Platform for Action formulated at the 1995 Fourth International Conference on Women held in Beijing and the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).  About 170 countries have ratified CEDAW, but few have implemented this "Bill of Rights for Women" guaranteeing gender equality and an end to violence and other forms of discrimination against women.  Gender Action is working to ensure that large IFI investments in developing and transition countries do more to promote these international conventions.

Our main programs comprise:
 
•  Engendering Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs)
•  Structural Adjustment's Gendered Impacts
•  Women's Rights in Peace and Conflict
•  Tracking World Bank and Other IFI Gender Policy Implementation
•  Women, the Environment and Infrastructure