Gender at Work grew from over ten years of practical experimentation, knowledge building and organizing around gender equality and institutional change. Dissatisfied with existing approaches to promoting gender equality, a number of leading activists and scholars began experimenting with approaches that combined feminist thinking with insights from institutions, administration and organizational development practice.

The impetus for change grew stronger as we exchanged ideas at a series of conferences through the 1990s. There, we discovered our common interests and strategies and determined to work together… a collaborative process that resulted in the publication of Gender At Work: Organizational Change for Equality in 1999.

In June 2001, UNIFEM, AWID, WLP, and CIVICUS hosted a global meeting of scholars, policy makers and practitioners where Gender at Work was created. This dynamic new network had three primary goals:

1. To build knowledge on gender biased institutional features
   and how to change them
   
2. To support institutional transformation initiatives and
   capacity development of change agents
   
3. To work with key decision makers in related social
   justice/development/rights communities to integrate this new
   knowledge in their analyses, strategies and practice

Gender at Work was incorporated as a not-for-profit organization in 2003.