The paper provides a conceptual framing for understanding the integration of a gender lens into peace responsiveness, and provides actionable tools for organisations to achieve optimal peace impacts and promote gender equality.

Substantively, the paper posits that neither “gender” nor “peace” outcomes can be fully advanced without consideration of each other: they each represent sets of issues and processes that are inextricably linked. However, to integrate what are each often thought of by international organisations as cross-cutting “lenses” may bring complexity.

To respond to these challenges, the paper offers a “Gender and Peace Responsiveness Spectrum of Ambition”, a tool intended to assist organisations in assessing the depth of their programming interventions’ gender integration, while also working to enhance this. The paper also includes practical, illustrative examples of different degrees of gender integration in conflict- and peace-related programming. It also reflects on commonly occurring issues and dilemmas that practitioners and organisations may face in applying the spectrum.