On track with gender

Tags: Knowledge Platform
Additional tags: Policy, Practice, Research, Gender

A 3-year process on gender mainstreaming that aims to improve policy and practice towards gender equality. Includes one thematic workshop based on five electronically discussed position papers; field exchange with leading gender research institutes and NGO partners in the South; and gender mainstreaming institutional assessment, making use of gender programming and policy laboratory tools.

Almost fifteen years ago, governments committed themselves to achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing (1995). This was to be realized through gender mainstreaming, which was then defined as a two-track strategy, encompassing on the one hand the integration of gender equality as a cross-cutting issue into all development policies and programs and budgetary decisions, and on the other hand the support to stand-alone women's empowerment and gender equality programs and policies. Over the years, most governments and actors in development cooperation have emphasized the track of gender mainstreaming at the expense of support for specific policy, program and resources for women's empowerment. Meanwhile, gender mainstreaming has had little impact due to the way it had been implemented, as an a-political and technical approach, to fix particular organizational and institutional shortcomings. New aid modalities, such as the reductionist and technocratic Millennium Development Goals have further undermined the transformatíve nature of the two track strategy. Gender policies, and in particular gender mainstreaming, have been vulnerable to ‘evaporation' when they are to be translated into actual implementation. However, an overall comprehensive and systematic analysis - with multiple stakeholders - on the possible causes and solutions for this limited success is lacking.

This Gender Mainstreaming Trajectory wants to take gender mainstreaming to a next level. It seeks to bring policymakers, practitioners, researchers, consultants and women's activists together in dialogue in order to create new synergies between these different actors that work on women's empowerment, gender and development issues. It also seeks to create space for the voices of Southern experts and organizations who have considerable experience/expertise in effective integrated strategic and practical women's empowerment and gender equality programs.
The objective of the Trajectory is to critically reflect on experiences with and insights into gender mainstreaming. Rather than contributing to the ‘death of gender mainstreaming' by constantly repeating what does not work, we aim to build on the experiences and on the knowledge that is available, in order to rethink and transform the current understanding of gender mainstreaming. While acknowledging what has been achieved, we seek to critically push the level of gender analysis as well as the formulation and implementation of gender (mainstreaming) policies. Dialogue and exchange between practitioners, policymakers, academics and activists is indispensible in this.