It's tempting to think that an inclusive approach to analytics is just an add-on to a day-to-day job, or worse, isn't profitable. But those are all just myths, say GATE's Sarah Kaplan and Lechin Lu. Gender Analytics is a process to embed insights about gender and its intersections with race, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, Indigeneity and other factors to create inclusive product, service and policy design. Despite having a potentially significant impact on society, the idea of inclusive analytics is often misunderstood, though it’s recently risen to prominence as companies prioritize equity and diversity not just in their talent management but also in how they go to market. And there’s a significant upside to the shift: Applying a gender and inclusion lens to product and service development could result in new opportunities for businesses.

Gender Analytics is a methodology that can be useful both in creating innovation insights that improve impact and in avoiding downside risks, and it should be embedded into everything an organization does. It’s not just an evaluation tool to analyze retrospectively what impact your policy, product, service or process has had. It’s not just a nice-to-have feature you might discuss from time to time. This is something that can shape how you strategize, plan, innovate and serve customers.