Gender Mainstreaming is needed now more than ever

Apr 18

Gender Mainstreaming is a term that many policymakers use, but it is hard to understand what it is. From my time working as a gender expert for a UN Agency, I had to know this methodology inside and out and I believe that I became so immersed, it became difficult for me to talk about, especially in layman terms. So, this is a good exercise for me and hopefully provides clarity.

For starters, gender equality is a human rights issue that affects everyone. If it is not intersectional, it is not gender equality. If we do not take into the diverse perspectives that exist in a community or in a targeted group of people, we are going to encounter many problems. These problems plague our past and our , but gender mainstreaming is a methodology that can help anticipate those issues before they arise.

What is Gender Mainstreaming: High Level

Here is how the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) defined the concept:

“Mainstreaming a gender perspective is the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in any area and at all levels. It is a strategy for making the concerns and experiences of women as well as of men an integral part of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres, so that women and men benefit equally, and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal of mainstreaming is to achieve gender equality.”

Here is a more transparent definition.

Gender Mainstreaming is a methodology used for assessing the implications for women, from all different backgrounds, in any planned action. It means making women’s and men’s unique concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all projects and policies.

In many cases, it may mean identifying the need for changes in that agenda. It may require changes in goals, strategies, and actions so that both women and men can influence, participate in, and benefit from processes and outcomes. The goal of gender mainstreaming gender is to transform and innovate unequal social and institutional structures into structures for that provide equal opportunity for both men and women.

Here is a top-down overview of setting up a gender mainstreaming process:

Collect sex-disaggregated data — i.e. data that is collected and presented separately on women and men (quantitative)
Analyze this data according to direct feedback from targeted population (qualitative)
Create a Gender Analysis

A Gender Analysis can be as simple or complex as your organization or project wants it to be, nevertheless, it is a questionnaire to ask your team internally before setting out the size and scope of any given project. If you are trying to figure out where to start, it’s best to include at least these 5 questions.

What to ask when creating a Gender Analysis:

1. Who is the target of the proposed policy, program or project? Who is the beneficiary? Are they the same?

2. Who will benefit, who will lose?

3. Have both women and men been consulted on the “issue” to be addressed?

4. Have the beneficiaries, women and men, been involved in the development of the solution?

5. Does the intervention maintain or challenge the existing gender relations?

Gender mainstreaming is not an end in itself, but a means to an end, with the end goal being full and equal participation from every member of society, regardless of gender or sex. Gender mainstreaming does not mean creating separate women’s projects when tackling big problems, it’s about creating better mechanisms to guide those actions. It requires that attention is given to gender perspectives as an integral part of all activities. This involves making gender perspectives — what women and men do and the resources and decision-making processes they have access to — more central to all policy development. This should be done at each phase in the cycle and does not cost extra money. From research, advocacy, development, implementation and evaluation of standards, planning, and monitoring of projects, appropriate measures can be adopted, as long as team members have the tools to implement it.

Needless to say, this is not an easy task but it is necessary to start, in any way or capacity that you can. My hope is that now you have a better idea of what gender mainstreaming is, and you know how to get started and you also have a resource when you need it.

Gender Mainstreaming is a term that many policymakers use, but it is hard to understand what it is. From my time working as gender expert for a UN Agency, I had to know this methodology inside and out and I believe that I became so immersed, it became difficult for me to talk about, especially in layman terms. So, this is a good exercise for me and hopefully provides clarity.