I'm Abdelfattah Elsharkawy: an engineer, gender-mainstreaming strategist and business owner. For fifteen years, I've helped public institutions and companies put gender equality into policy, programs and organizational decisions. I've also made the budget and growth decisions inside businesses of my own. That is the perspective behind GAINS.
I’m an engineer who entered gender equality work fifteen years ago and never treated it as separate from business. Since then, I have worked where justice, organizational decisions and implementation meet—across boardrooms, ministries and factory floors in North Africa and West Asia. I have trained more than 10,000 people and contributed to Egypt’s first national ministry-level Anti-Sexual-Harassment Policy.
The work that later became GAINS began in 2017; at Smart Civic Solutions, we codified it as a seven-question method that moves from an organizational challenge to a gender-informed diagnosis and a practical intervention.
I hold the GenderPro credential, I am a Certified Business Analysis Professional and a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. Together, these disciplines shape how I examine a problem, hold the space for my stakeholders and design work that people can continue after I leave. I now bring them together in The G.A.I.N.S Capacity-Building Program, where applied gender expertise, value-led decision making and responsible AI strengthen professional judgment rather than replace it.
The network
From ministries to multinationals, the entities behind the work.
Governments, UN and international organizations, and companies — global names and Egyptian manufacturers alike — across fifteen years of engagements.
The track record
The work, and where it landed.
Fifteen years of delivered engagements across ministries, the justice system, and private companies, in English and in Arabic. A selection below.
GIZ · JP-SME
What started as a scoping study for two male-dominated sectors expanded across multi-sector interventions: HR manuals, a women-leaders network, and the GAINS business case put to work.
12 companies signed gender policies
Private sector · workplace equality
The intersection
I work in the gap between two rooms that don't share a language.
The gapI live where two rooms meet and mostly talk past each other. Development institutions measure worth in rights, outcomes, and frameworks; businesses measure it in cost, risk, retention, and growth. Both are right — and almost nobody translates. I came into gender work as an engineer, expecting the tools to be adequate, and found the toolkits spoke donor while the boardrooms spoke money.
Both are right — and almost nobody translates.
2017 · the methodThe work that later became GAINS began in 2017 during a UN agency assignment involving six Egyptian agribusiness firms. Through later company engagements, we refined that logic at Smart Civic Solutions and gave it a structure: a seven-question chain that turns a gender ask into a business case a decision-maker can act on.
Five tablesThe other side of the table is my own. Across five businesses spanning consulting, software, wellness, engineering and education, I have had to turn ideas into decisions about people, budgets, delivery, risk and growth. Together, their programs, products and partnerships have reached tens of thousands of students, professionals and teams across schools, businesses and public institutions.
That experience taught me that good policy has to work in practice—and that, when the craft is ready, it should become infrastructure. I built my platform to carry that work into software, and private, local AI infrastructure so sensitive client work can benefit from AI without the data leaving systems under my control.
Now · the programThe same pattern is now a program: The G.A.I.N.S Capacity-Building Program teaches the method, the business judgment, and the machines — so the next generation of practitioners starts where I arrived.
"The gender roles were never the problem. The price people pay for stepping outside them is. Gender equality means no one pays for being who they are."
The philosophy behind every engagement — justice, not compliance
The method
G.A.I.N.S
GGender-informed
AAnalysis
INInclusive
SSustainable
Gender-informed Analysis for INclusive and Sustainable Business — codified in 2017, and still the spine of every engagement I take.
The Professional Training Program in Applied Gender Expertise, Value-led Decision Making & Responsible Leveraging of AI
G.A.I.N.SGender-informed Analysis for INclusive and Sustainable Business
The program develops the practical capabilities required to integrate gender equality into real organizational decisions across the public and private sectors.
Three interconnected pillars
01
Applied gender expertise
Put to work
Gender mainstreaming and gender equality, put to work on real institutional challenges.
02
The G.A.I.N.S methodology
Value-led
Translating equality into strategic, institutional and business value that supports the decision.
03
Responsible use of AI
Judgment stays human
Strengthening professional analysis, creativity and judgment — without replacing human responsibility.
Every organization publishes a paragraph like this one. The program trains you to read it.
Our training raises awareness of gender equality and empowers participants to become champions of inclusion, sharing best practices across the organization.
Our training awareness ≠ capabilityraises awareness of gender equality and no decision changedempowers participants to become a role with no budgetchampions of inclusion, sharing which metric moved?best practices across the organization.
Move the lens over the paragraph — on a phone, drag
Participants turn gender evidence into persuasive value arguments — and design interventions that are relevant, responsible and ready for implementation.
Gender expertise. Value-led Decision Making. Responsible Leveraging of AI.
