Gender inequality is a social and economic issue that cuts across systems, geographies and industries. Women make up just over 50% of the global labour force participation, yet they continue to remain under-represented in leadership positions, participate less in the labour force and spend more time on unpaid care and domestic work. According to WEF’s 2023 Global Gender Gap Report, gender parity is being increasingly recognized as critical for financial stability and economic performance. Institutional investors invest in businesses globally and across industries and therefore can play a pivotal role in articulating the need for advancing gender equality. Founded in 2018, the World Benchmarking Alliance is a non-profit organisation holding 2,000 of the world’s most influential companies accountable for their part in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. It does this by publishing free and publicly available benchmarks on their performance and showing what good corporate practice looks like. The benchmarks provide companies with a clear roadmap of what commitments and changes they must make to put our planet, society and economy on a more sustainable and resilient path. They also equip everyone – from governments and financial institutions to civil society organisations and individuals – with the insights that they need to collectively incentivise leading companies to keep going and pressure the laggards to catch up. WBA works with asset managers, asset owners and key actors across the investment industry to accelerate corporate accountability and sustainable systems transformations. By using our open source data, insights, and expertise to conduct investment analysis and individual stewardship activities, investors can confidently challenge companies on the speed of progress and the decisions taken in relation to global sustainability goals. We developed this Guidance to further build on our Gender Benchmark and Assessment key findings and translate them into a series of assessment questions for investors to use in their stewardship activities. This guidance elaborates on the five key findings from the 2023 Gender Insights Report. Under each key finding are a series of assessment questions which investors can use in their stewardship activities. These questions can be used during company engagement, and evidence from the benchmark can inform the engagement rationale. These questions are meant to provide a starting point and may require additional research and context in some cases. The examples of leading practices could be used in conjunction with this guidance document to inform users about what good disclosure looks like on specific areas of our assessment.