Building Cultural Awareness: Questions to Ask Before Adapting a Women’s Initiative to a New Region (Tool)

Before adapting an existing women’s initiative to a new region, it is essential to understand how that region’s people, businesses, and cultures operate and how they differ from the home region. Doing so allows the initiative to be tailored to fit the new context, improving the initiative’s odds of success. When legislative, societal, and work culture differences are understood, leaders and implementers can then make decisions regarding how to address and accommodate these differences.

Building Cultural Awareness: Questions to Ask Before Adapting a Women’s Initiative to a New Region is designed to guide organizations’ efforts before implementing a women’s initiative in a new region. Aimed at the experienced global D&I practitioner, this tool allows organizations to proactively collect information that will facilitate an easier transition when adapting existing initiatives for other geographies.

While this tool is specific to women’s initiatives, gender is just one element of difference that may be relevant in the workplace. The advice in this tool can be adapted to address other elements of diversity of particular importance within a given region, such as race, ethnicity, religion, language, nationality, age, sexual orientation, class, caste, ability, appearance, custom, tribe, immigrant status, and political ideology.