Gender Mainstreaming: Making It Happen Geeta Rao Gupta February 16, 2006

 Based on a paper co-authored with Rekha Mehra  Focus on development agencies  Not an exhaustive review

History  Gender mainstreaming adopted at Beijing as a key strategy for promoting gender equality  Gender analysis recommended as the way to understand the differential situation of women and men

Definition “Mainstreaming a gender perspective is the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programs, in all areas and at all levels…a strategy for making women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programs in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality.” UN ECOSOC, 1977

Gender Mainstreaming: The Immediate Challenge  Gender mainstreaming (GM) is at a critical cross- roads; early supporters are beginning to feel that it has failed  Already missed the deadline for MDG3  But too early to judge failure  A timely moment to reinvigorate efforts on gender mainstreaming and make them successful

How GM is understood Gender mainstreaming as currently understood:  Must involve all aspects of planning, implementing and monitoring any social, political or economic action  Transforming of both “internal” organizational and “external” operational procedures, with internal organizational changes to be done first

How GM works right now Organizations have launched transformation processes:  Established gender units and focal points  Restructured internal systems and procedures  Held gender training programs for all  Attempted to change attitudes and values, especially male bias

Challenges in implementation  Significant resistance  Difficult to change attitudes and values  An absence of focus on gender in operations  A struggle to implement organizational structural and attitudinal changes rather than changes in operations  Gender rendered invisible with mainstreaming

A New Approach: GM in Operations  Important to get results in operations because success is motivating and helps lower resistance  It is entrepreneurial, results-oriented and has impact  It delivers concrete benefits to women and low-income communities and demonstrates development effectiveness  It offers the opportunity to model success that can be replicated and can build momentum for wider impact

What is needed to mainstream gender in operations?  Strategy: select a strategic issue to work on and choose ways to ensure successful implementation  Relevance: work on high priority development issues that are likely to have tangible impact  Research and analysis: understand and demonstrate the gender linkage, the costs of not investing in gender and/or the value added of doing so

What is needed to mainstream gender in operations?  Skills and expertise in gender to do the research and analysis, plan a course of action, back-stop implementation, develop a M&E plan and evaluate and document results  Hands-on technical assistance on the “how to” of mainstreaming at the project level

What is needed to mainstream gender in operations? “ Financial resources are needed to fund: supplementary and complementary activities necessary for mainstreaming gender into a particular project research and analysis hiring of gender experts “Where the treasure is, the heart will follow.” Book of Mathew, New Testament

What is needed to mainstream gender in operations?  Accountability mechanisms that use gender- specific indicators to: examine outcomes and results and assess them relative to expectations (and/or baseline conditions) determine the causes for lack of success, learn from them and fix them

What is needed to mainstream gender in operations?  Leadership: preferably at the highest level and at an intermediate technical level, accompanied by political will and commitment openness to innovation willingness to allocate resources expectation of concrete development outcomes

Important tips on mainstreaming gender in operations  It is not necessary to do “everything” or to act on all levels  It is important to determine contextually who needs to know what and to provide that information  Maintain focus on specific tasks  Country cooperation – created through demand and accountability from civil society groups

Moving Forward Looking ahead, gender mainstreaming requires:  A sense of urgency  Donor coordination to generate political will and commitment financial resources evaluation data and analysis pool of sector-specific gender experts