Capacity Building for
Gender Mainstreaming in Development

to Beijing+5 page

Contents

I. Emergence of Mainstreaming as a Development Concept

1. Mainstreaming evolves in the UN Global Conferences on Women
2. Post-Beijing: mainstreaming in national development agencies
3. Post-Beijing: mainstreaming in UN agencies

II. Review: what is mainstreaming?

1. Mainstreaming gender
2. Mainstreaming women
3. Mainstreaming women and gender: complementary & equally important
4. Transforming the mainstream

III. Transforming the Mainstream in Practice: Implementation

1. Conceptual clarity and understanding: progress but critical gaps remain
2. Organizational arrangements and processes: mainstreaming in practice
3. Gender tools and training for mainstreaming
4. Capacity-building to facilitate women's participation and empowerment

IV. Overview of mainstreaming in practice

V. Conclusion

Some Useful Resources

Endnotes

List of Boxes

Box 1. Mainstreaming emerges through the UN Global Conferences on Women
Box 2. A Mainstreaming Primer
Box 3. Mainstreaming Strategies in Asia-Pacific

Annex

Annex 1. WID, GAD and Mainstreaming Approaches to the Advancement of Women: a comparison

to table of contents

The Expert Group Meeting (EGM) held in April 1999 in preparation for this meeting recommended that the review process in the Asia-Pacific region should focus on those factors constraining the effective implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action (PFA), and identify appropriate methodologies, techniques and strategies for overcoming these obstacles. It recommended that this meeting include "strategies for the empowerment of women" as one of its major themes. The Expert Group identified gender mainstreaming as a fundamental and cross-cutting challenge facing both developing and developed countries within the region. In view of UNIFEM's extensive experience in supporting mainstreaming both globally and in the Asia-Pacific region, the East & South East Asian Regional Office of UNIFEM was requested to prepare this background paper on Capacity Building for Gender Mainstreaming.

I. Emergence of Mainstreaming as a Concept

Mainstreaming in relation to gender and women entered the development literature over the decade and a half since the Third World Conference on Women held in Nairobi in 1985. Mary Anderson identifies the entry of the term into discussions on women in development to the early-1980s, ⁽¹⁾ and the term was in general use in UNIFEM during the five years immediately following the Third World Conference on Women in Nairobi in 1985. ⁽²⁾ Mainstreaming has gained its meaning through usage and consensus rather than through formal definition. Efforts to provide a formal definition came only after the term had long been in general use.

1. Mainstreaming evolves in the UN Global Conferences on Women

The UN System both through the global Women's Conferences and the work of its agencies, has been an important avenue through which mainstreaming gained general currency and acquired specific meanings. Mainstreaming as a verb did not appear in the Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies (NFLS), the principle and path-breaking output of the Third World Conference of 1985. Mainstream as a noun is used only six times, and the term gender was also not widely used in the NFLS [Box 1 panel 1]. The now familiar terms gender analysis, gender-sensitive, gender-responsive and gender perspective do not appear at all.

Almost a decade later in June 1994, the Jakarta Plan of Action (JPA) for the Advancement of Women in Asia and the Pacific was adopted by the Second Asian and Pacific Ministerial Conference on Women in Development held in Jakarta. Although the term mainstream has only limited currency in the JPA, in contrast to the NFLS, it is used to refer to an active process of mainstreaming. Six references are made to a mainstreaming process, although only one specifically refers to mainstreaming gender (concerns). [Box 1 panel 1.]

Although mainstreaming was used sparingly in the JPA, the term gender had entered common usage in the Asia-Pacific region by 1994, appearing no less than 93 times. However, the combination of gender with mainstreaming occurrs only once, in the phrase "mainstreaming gender concerns in public policies and programmes". [Box 1 panel 2.]

Just over one year later, at the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing, the term "gender mainstreaming" had finally entered the development lexicon. Gender appears in the Beijing Platform for Action (PFA) no less than 233 times, the most common usage calling for a gender perspective, closely followed by calls for gender-sensitive programmes and "mainstreaming a gender perspective" Mainstreaming in relation to women's concerns appears in the PFA only three times and there are no references to mainstreaming women as such. [Box 1 panel 3.]

Paragraph 202 (described as the "mainstreaming paragraph" in the Platform by the OECD Development Assistance Committee - DAC) of the Platform explained that:

'Governments and other actors should promote and active and visible policy of mainstreaming a gender perspective in all policy and programmes so that, before decisions are taken, an analysis is made of the effects on women and men respectively.'

2. Post-Beijing: mainstreaming in national development agencies

Despite its common usage in the PFA, it was by no means clear just what mainstreaming meant. ⁽³⁾ After the Beijing meeting, Governments and agencies strove to put the commitments they had made at the Fourth World Conference on Women into practice. Mainstreaming, became part of the standard development vocabulary, appearing routinely in projects and other documents, most often described as "gender mainstreaming" but sometimes as "mainstreaming women or women's concerns". However, initially there were few guidelines to indicate exactly it meant and what should be done to put mainstreaming into practical effect . Even in 1998, the OECD DAC Source Book on Concepts and Approaches Linked to Gender Equality noted [p. 24] that:

'Despite an increasing use of the term mainstreaming, there is still confusion about what it means and organisations use the word in different ways. Some organisations are resisting the use of the term, as they find it confusing and difficult to translate into other languages.'

As a result, mainstreaming has often remained at the level of rhetoric rather than reality.

A number of bilateral agencies issued guidelines for the implementation of the PFA through their gender programmes, but these have also varied in their treatment of the term mainstreaming. One of the first contributions was prepared by the Swedish development agency Sida in July 1996. ⁽⁴⁾ This remains one of the most penetrating analyses of the concept, treating mainstreaming as an overall development strategy and explicitly identifying its technical and political dimensions. By contrast, documents from the Canadian development agency CIDA do not seem to use the term at all. The May 1995 Canadian publication Gender Equality: Moving Towards Sustainable, People-Centred Development contains no reference to mainstreaming, although the overall approach to gender equality is clearly consistent with the mainstreaming perspective. Even CIDA's March 1999 Gender Equity Policy does not use the term mainstreaming.

Some development agencies emphasize mainstreaming of women, some focus on gender as the object to be mainstreamed, while others use the term without qualification. The Australian AusAID publication Guide to Gender and Development (March 1997) refers to "mainstreaming women's needs and perspectives". However, the World Bank, as is evident in the title of a major 1998 publication Mainstreaming Gender and Development in the World Bank, ⁽⁵⁾ prefers to mainstream gender. The OECD DAC Guidelines for Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment (1998) frequently uses the term mainstreaming without qualification as a "strategy". Elsewhere [p.6] the document refers to "mainstreaming gender issues", and identifies in the guidelines a new emphasis on "mainstreaming gender equality issues into policy formulation, planing and evaluation, and decision-making procedures." The OECD DAC Source Book includes an entire section on "Mainstreaming as an institutional strategy". In the Asia-Pacific region, the Asian Development Bank's 1998 Policy on Gender and Development seeks to mainstream gender concerns in all projects and declares "mainstreaming" to be a key strategy in promoting gender equity. ⁽⁶⁾

3. Post-Beijing: mainstreaming in UN agencies

UN agencies and the UN System have similarly struggled to clarify both the meaning of the term and the practical effect of mainstreaming in their work. In July 1997, the Economic and Social Council in Coordination of Policies and Activities of the Specialized Agencies and Other Bodies of the United Nations System Related to the Following Theme: Mainstreaming the Gender Perspective into all Policy and Programmes in the United Nations System (E/1997/L.30 14 July 1997) offers both a Definition of the concept of gender mainstreaming (I.A. para 4) and identifies a set of Principles for mainstreaming a gender perspective in the United Nations system (I. B. para 5):

'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 women's as well as men's concerns and experiences an integral dimension in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all . . . spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality.'

However, agencies have still found it necessary to interpret this broad definition for their own specific purposes and programmes. The ILO makes rather limited use of the term, its documents more frequently referring to "integrating a gender perspective". However, the document Gender Analysis and Planning explains the ILO interpretation of mainstreaming:

'Mainstreaming is the process of integrating equality concerns across the board into all ILO programme objectives and activities in order to promote equality for women in employment. Mainstreaming strategy calls for the introduction of gender analysis and planning in all ILO activities, . . . The mainstreaming strategy also implies the identification of potentially different effects of programmes and projects on men and women, and the provisions necessary to ensure that ILO activities have a positive effect on gender equality.' ⁽⁷⁾

FAO's major gender tool, the Socioeconomic and Gender Analysis Programme (SEAGA) focuses on mainstreaming a gender approach, although again the term mainstreaming is not used extensively.

UNDP policy on gender mainstreaming is in three documents: Gender Balance in Management Policy (1994); Direct Line 11 (November 1996); and Guidance Note on Gender Mainstreaming (March 1997). The definition of gender mainstreaming provided by the UNDP Gender in Development Programme emphasises the need to take account of gender concerns in all activities and in organizational procedures, "bringing the outcome of socio-economic and policy analysis into the decision-making processes of the organization" and including "both the core policy decisions" and the "small every-day decisions of implementation". ⁽⁸⁾

II. Review: what is mainstreaming?

Although the term has now been in general use for more then a decade, many misconceptions about mainstreaming continue to confuse policy makers and development agencies [Box 2.] Mainstreaming embraces two different but related aspects:

• mainstreaming women and their specific concerns and issues; and
• mainstreaming gender as a means of identifying the different interests, needs and effects of policies, programmes etc on women and men.

1. Mainstreaming gender

Mainstreaming gender through gender analysis and other related methods seems to represent the more technical component of mainstreaming. In some ways, it might also be regarded as the less controversial, since in theory (and in practice in male-dominated countries and sectors) gender analysis could be carried out entirely by men. ⁽⁹⁾ From another perspective, mainstreaming gender might be regarded as more progressive because of its association with the Gender and Development, or GAD, approach as opposed to the earlier WID approach to the advancement of women.

2. Mainstreaming women

Mainstreaming women represents the more political aspect of mainstreaming, emphasizing the importance of women's equal participation not just as actors in development, or even as beneficiaries, but particularly as an active player in all decision-making processes. The early use of mainstreaming by the WID movement tended to focus more on women than gender, and thus on women and women's concerns as the subjects to be entered into the mainstream. ⁽¹⁰⁾ This may also explain why, since WID has been discredited as an overall strategy in favour of the gender approach [See Annex 1], mainstreaming now focuses more often on gender than women.
 

3. Mainstreaming women and gender: complementary and equally important

The linkages between mainstreaming women and mainstreaming gender are complex. Given the goal of gender equality, the problem with the current mainstream is that it is clearly male dominated and women are under-represented. If there were roughly equal numbers of women and men in mainstream, the engendered nature and differential impact of policies and programmes on women and men should be taken into account automatically through their equal participation in decision making.

However, it is also important to recognize that mainstreaming women does not necessarily involve gender mainstreaming, since women decision makers can be just as blind to gender differences and their impact as men. In particular, since gender roles, stereotypes and norms differ among women themselves (by education, income and social class, for example), mainstreaming a gender perspective as a technical approach that takes these differences into account might continue to be desirable even after women and men are to be found in roughly equal proportion in all key decision making bodies and positions.

Mainstreaming women and mainstreaming gender are complementary and equally necessary to the attainment of gender equality in its widest sense, although the emphasis in countries is likely to vary.

In the industrial democracies where women are more active in politics and legislation is generally implemented effectively, women may choose to use political means to change the mainstream. In these countries, the concept of gender mainstreaming in the formal sense of the PFA has less relevance. The differential impact of policies and programmes on women is largely analysed by women themselves through the political process. Policy makers and administrators are obliged to factor this analysis into their decisions through the political process, rather than by the development of a specific set of policy analysis tools. Public debate on gender equality is also likely to focus much more on women and women's issues, concerns and rights. As a result, the terms gender and mainstreaming have been more relevant to development assistance agencies in some of the industrial democracies than to national policy analysis and debate.

However, in many developing countries, women have been largely excluded from political processes at all levels, from the household up. In these circumstances, mainstreaming gender and gender analysis may be an essential first step toward modifying the mainstream sufficiently to enable and empower women to begin moving into decision-making positions. The weight of restrictive social norms, lack of access to education and training, and the burden of unpaid domestic work, together with the enormous difficulties women face in balancing their domestic roles with participation in economic production (whether paid or unpaid), may make it virtually impossible for the majority of women to enter the mainstream.

To bring these women into the mainstream on any scale, systematic and significant changes will be needed in mainstream social and economic arrangements, as well as among the women themselves. Achieving these changes will need all the tools in the development gender kit. Training and media campaigns will be needed to raise public awareness about gender inequality. Gender statistics will be essential tools to make discrimination and women's relative deprivation visible, and to assist policy makers and programme managers to monitor gender differentials. Widespread application of gender analysis, gender budgeting and gender audits to policies, programmes and projects will be needed to increase women's active participation in programmes and their access to benefits, as well as their participation in decision making.

4. Transforming the mainstream

Quite early in the development of the mainstreaming concept, many in the women's movement and in UNIFEM recognized that it involved far more than merely adding women to existing institutions and pattern of development. In 1989, the Director of UNIFEM noted that:

'Women must introduce (qualitative) change to the mainstream as they enter it if women in general are to benefit' and that 'women will benefit from the mainstream only if it is responsive to the needs of women' ⁽¹¹⁾

In other words, the process of changing the gender composition of the mainstream must also lead to fundamental changes in the nature and institutions of the mainstream itself.

This element of mainstreaming and its implications for policies and programming are still not well understood. Rounaq Jahan distinguished two approaches to mainstreaming: integrationist and agenda-setting. ⁽¹²⁾ The integrationist approach seeks to build a gender perspective into existing institutions and development paradigms, implying that women can enter the mainstream without major changes in society, its social, cultural and organizational arrangements, or the overall approach to development. By contrast, the agenda setting approach sees the transformation of institutions and development paradigms as an integral component of and a pre-requisite for implementing a gender perspective. As women enter the mainstream, society as a whole and its entire approach to the process of development must change in order to accommodate their specific needs and priorities. While most conceptual analyses of mainstreaming now emphasize the transformative nature of the process, ⁽¹³⁾ this has proved far more difficult to achieve in implementation.

III. Transforming the Mainstream in Practice: Implementation

Although the emphasis varies, a number of common themes run through the various gender/mainstreaming manuals, handbooks and guidelines. The requirements, tools and techniques for mainstreaming may be classified into four major areas:

• Conceptual clarity and understanding of the goals and principles of mainstreaming among key decision makers;
• Appropriate organizational arrangements and processes for the implementation of mainstreaming;
• Gender tools and staff skilled in their application;
• Capacity building to facilitate women's participation and empowerment.

  
   

1. Conceptual clarity and understanding: progress but critical gaps remain

The need for clarity on the goals, objectives, approaches and rationale for mainstreaming is obvious. The Beijing Platform and most development agencies inside and outside the UN System identify gender equality as the overall development goal of mainstreaming. There is also general recognition in development agency guidelines that mainstreaming requires governments and agencies to abandon the narrow focus on women, adopt a gender perspective that takes into account the impact of men's roles and gender relations on women's inequality, and broaden the focus of interventions for the advancement of women to cover the entire mainstream.

The rationale for mainstreaming varies in emphasis. Most general development agencies and governments tend to adopt efficiency arguments, emphasizing that the advancement of women benefits not only women but society as a whole, including men. The women's movement and some agencies are also moving toward a rights-based framework, which regards gender equality and women's rights as basic human rights that do not need to be justified in terms of outcomes.

However, this broad agreement among gender specialists on the nature and benefits of mainstreaming has yet to reach the majority of development practitioners in the field.

Mainstreaming cannot be implemented effectively as long as most members of cabinet, ministries of finance and the other key economic and political ministries that determine national policy remain outside discussions on mainstreaming. Many policy makers, particularly those outside the social sectors and those in the most senior decision making positions, remain basically unaware of the relevance of the entire gender equality debate to their professional spheres of operation. Although mainstreaming and GAD rhetoric are now widely used, actual policies and programmes reveal that gender is still largely equated with women, and gender-related projects are still routinely assigned to gender units, gender focal points or the national women's machineries.
 

2. Organizational arrangements and processes: mainstreaming in practice

a. Institutional mechanisms for mainstreaming: changing roles

One of the earliest strategies for the advancement of women was the establishment of institutional mechanisms, particularly national women's machineries (NWM), to promote and represent women's interests ⁽¹⁴⁾. Initially, these were often given a general responsibility for all women's policies, projects and initiatives, regardless of the sector in which the activity was located. They were thus engaged in implementation in areas such as agriculture, water, health, sanitation and micro enterprise in which they had little specific expertise or experience. Most were also organizationally located in the social sectors, in quite marginal positions in the overall structure of government.

The trend toward gender mainstreaming has gradually led to a re-thinking of the locations and strategies of the various machineries for women. The development of the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women (NCRFW) in the Philippines illustrates the kinds of changes that have been taking place at the national level. From the mid-1980s, senior management strove to ensure "that the NCRFW would stop being the repository for women's concerns", demanding instead that "the entire government structure . . think women". As part of a process awareness-raising in the mainstream, the Commission undertook eleven major consultations during 1987 with mainstream sectors and agencies, ranging from the traditional women's areas of health and education to newer concerns such as agriculture, labour and media. The Commission also set about strengthening its relationships with women in the NGO movement and in Government by adding representatives from activist women's NGOs to its Board of Commissioners and introducing a new Women in Government Service (WINGS) initiative.

The growing partnership with key women already in the bureaucracy proved particularly strategic in their next undertaking. Realizing that the recently issued Medium Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP) mentioned women only in the social sectors, the Commission embarked on its most ambitious programme, a companion Philippine Development Plan for Women. The development of the women's plan led to the development of new policy skills and instruments. Since the national development plan made no provision for a women's plan, presidential and cabinet approval was necessary. With support and advice from senior women in the civil service, this was obtained through Executive Order no. 308. Among other things, the order created gender focal points in all the mainstream government departments that would be responsible for both the national and the women's plans. In order to strengthen its role in implementing the women's plan, the NCRFW Board was then expanded to include commissioners from government, particularly the National Economic Development Authority NEDA, the main oversight agency, and line key agencies such as the Department of Labor and Employment and the Department of Agriculture. Thus, the development of the women's plan effectively moved the Philippines national machinery for women into the mainstream. ⁽¹⁵⁾

New thinking was also emerging within the UN System. Following the First World Conference on Women, a Voluntary Fund for the United Nations Decade for Women had been established within UNDP to promote technical cooperation activities with women, particularly those benefiting rural and poor women and those in the least developed countries. In 1984, just prior to the Third World Conference on Women, the General Assembly reconstituted, and in 1985 renamed, the Voluntary Fund. It became the United Nations Development Fund for Women, to be known as UNIFEM, with the status of an autonomous body in association with UNDP.

UNIFEM was given an explicit mainstreaming mandate to serve as a catalyst with the goal of ensuring women's involvement with mainstream activities, and to support innovative activities to benefit women that were also in line with national and regional development priorities. UNIFEM adopted three major new strategies to put mainstreaming into practical effect: collaboration with mainstream agencies, leveraging financial support for women's activities and issues, and establishing programme linkages between its micro level field operations and mainstream national and regional development priorities. ⁽¹⁶⁾

Other agencies had also developed mechanisms for the advancement of women and were beginning to focus on mainstreaming strategies. In 1986, the Division of Women in Development was established in UNDP with a mandate to ensure the mainstreaming of women's concerns into all UNDP headquarters and county activities. In 1994, FAO created a new Division on Women's and People's Participation in Development, which included an Integration of Women in Development Service, in the new Sustainable Development Department. UNESCO's second medium-term plan 1984-1989 presented, for the first time, an overall analysis of the Status of Women and adopted a strategy of integrating the female dimension into the entire range of programmes and activities in the Plan. ⁽¹⁷⁾

As at the country level, the move toward mainstreaming has resulted in a redefinition of the roles and functions of the key women's agencies and units within the UN System. From an initial general responsibility for matters related to women, they have been moving toward a more strategic role. This involves transferring the primary responsibility for the advancement of women to the mainstream, while retaining responsibility for leadership, technical support, monitoring and reporting. Gender and women's units now seek to provide leadership and technical expertise to support the mainstream on gender and women's issues, monitor and report on progress toward gender equality, and facilitate and broker women's access to the mainstream, particularly to decision making.

b. Change agents in mainstreaming: gender specialists and focal points

As part of the new mechanisms for mainstreaming, most countries and development agencies have identified or placed specific gender staff in the general structure of the organization, identified as gender specialists or experts, or as gender focal points. These staff are often important advocates for mainstreaming and women's issues, and can play an invaluable role in providing leadership and technical support within their organizations. Gender specialists usually have specific technical expertise and experience in gender, while gender focal points tend to be regular members of staff within the organization who have been assigned a specific responsibility for "gender" or "women's issues".

The technical expertise and terms of reference of gender staff are critical to their capacity to contribute effectively to mainstreaming. Gender specialists are usually explicitly identified as change agents and most have a multi disciplinary technical or management function. Particularly in non-specialist agencies, "gender experts" are often expected to be generalists able to advise on gender issues in all fields, from economics to health, literacy, human rights and political participation. Many tertiary gender programmes also provide general training on gender rather than specific skills in the integration of gender into a particular field of expertise.

Since development experts are usually categorized as specialists in a particular technical field, the contrast between development specialists and gender generalists sometimes tends to devalue the importance of gender inputs. Pay scales for experts in gender tend to be lower than those for experts in other "more technical" fields. Perhaps as a result, few gender experts have been appointed to senior management positions or become project team leaders. In addition, the practical need on gender issues is often for specialist rather than generalist skills and knowledge. Thus, the lack of technical experts in development specializations who also have expertise in integrating gender into their specific areas of competence continues to be a major handicap to mainstreaming, particularly in male-dominated fields such as engineering, project and general management, irrigation, water supply, sanitation and economics.

While gender specialists are considered to be change agents and technical staff, the roles and status of gender focal points are often much less clear. Since many have no specific expertise or experience in women's issues or gender, ⁽¹⁸⁾ other than being women themselves and personally committed, they may become little more than 'post boxes' for gender materials and general project managers for all activities related to gender or women. In many organizations, other staff routinely pass on to the gender focal points all matters related to gender or women, thus negating the basic principles of mainstreaming. Their gender responsibilities are often an addition to their normal workload, and some are not even given sufficient time to carry out their mainstreaming work, a reflection of the low status that gender issues continue to be given in practice in many organizations. Most have little access to specialized training or support.

Many gender focal points are disadvantaged in terms of at least four personal characteristics: they are young, female, nationally recruited and junior in status. The majority of gender specialists and gender focal points are women. While this might be seen as creating opportunities for women to enter the mainstream, an important consideration in some circumstances and settings, it also tends to perpetuate the identification of gender with women and the marginalization of gender issues in a male-dominated mainstream. In addition, most gender staff and particularly gender focal points are young and junior with little access to decision-making at the senior management level. In many international organizations, including the UN, gender focal points also tend to be nationally recruited. National staff tend to occupy lower paid and lower status positions in the organizational hierarchy compared to internationally recruited staff, who comprise most of the decision makers.

A recent review of the UNDP mainstreaming experience specifically noted "a hierarchical organization culture that does not encourage initiative from junior staff" as well as "the particular difficulties faced by women in achieving recognition as professional colleagues" as issues related to UNDP capacity for mainstreaming. ⁽¹⁹⁾

3. Gender tools and training for mainstreaming

An impressive array of techniques and tools have now been developed to assist policy and programme analysts to mainstream a gender perspective into policy formulation, programme design and development, and programme management and implementation. These include:

• gender awareness and gender sensitivity training programmes, which assists policy makers and implementation staff to identify and address gender issues;
• gender analysis, which explicitly identifies differences between women and men in access to and control over resources, participation in decision making and benefits and the direct and indirect impact of policies, programmes and projects;
• gender statistics, which (1) collect and present all individual-level data disaggregated by sex; and (2) provide specific data on emerging gender issues such as the counting and valuation of unpaid labour; the incidence, nature and impact of violence against women and the role of women in business;
• gender indicators and indexes, such as the UNDP Gender and Develoment Index (GDI) and Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), which enable progress toward gender equality to be monitored and the impact of particular approaches and strategies to be measured;
• gender budgeting and gender audits, which analyse resource allocations in terms of the shares directed toward meeting the needs of women and men, and report the extent to which governments and agencies match their commitments to gender mainstreaming with concrete financial allocations to address gender and women's issues.

The value of these tools depends on:

• the availability of staff who are skilled in their application; and
• the extent to which their application is required on a routine basis through regulations and operating procedures, reinforced by other institutional mechanisms, such as performance assessment criteria, to ensure compliance;
• the extent to which their application is recognized and rewarded by appropriate incentives.

Some countries in the region have initiated major training programmes throughout the civil service to ensure that staff are trained in the use of these tools. They have also developed regulatory and other institutional frameworks to mandate and support the application of the tools.

In the Philippines, an institutional strengthening project (1991-95) funded by Canadian CIDA and known as CIDA I, initiated a massive consciousness-raising programme targeting one administrative regional body, eight attached agencies and 11 departments to address women's issues across the entire development cycle. The early gender seminars targeted senior bureaucrats, many of whom later became strategic champions of gender mainstreaming. Over the five years, a total of 5000 staff were trained at all levels, 400 in specialized gender analysis workshops. Parallel with this initiative, a German (GTZ) funded project piloted mainstreaming institutional mechanisms in three regional offices of the National Economic Development Authority and in the Department of Agriculture. A UNIFEM funded project reviewed the role of focal points in six regions to produce a sourcebook Gender and Development: Making the Bureaucracy Gender Responsive. The sourcebook guides planners and government programme staff in their application of the gender mainstreaming tools.

In Indonesia, UNIFEM funded the Village Development Department and UNDP funded the Planning Bureau, both in the Ministry of Home Affairs, to prepare training materials and train trainers for planning staff at the village and central levels respectively. Both projects also implemented the regulations necessary to institutionalize the use of these materials on a routine basis.

Elsewhere in the region, gender training is either new or has been carried out only on a small scale, often limited to staff involved in particular development projects.

Overall, gender training at the country level has been donor-funded and ad hoc, and has not been embedded in national human resource development programmes. Gender awareness and gender analysis training are rarely funded from routine government budgets or provided on a regular basis to train new staff or upgrade and extend existing gender mainstreaming capacity. In most countries, gender training capacity has yet to be integrated into the curricula of higher education institutions, which provide most entry-level technical training for new government and agency staff, or of the civil service and professional institutes that provide specialized in-service training.

Thus, an important objective of the CIDA II project in the Philippines is to transfer gender training capacity and responsibility to academic institutions. UNIFEM Pacific is also currently exploring the potential for institutionalizing gender training programmes in those universities in the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand that provide much of the basic professional training for civil servants in the Pacific. However, UNIFEM partner agencies in other countries report that gender training is again needed because of staff changes or restructuring. In the absence of institutionalized training on a regular and routine basis, the sustainability of existing gender mainstreaming capacity is inevitably at risk.

4. Capacity-building to facilitate women's participation and empowerment

The early literature and work on women's participation in development emphasized women's lack of skills and experience and thus the need to build women's capacity through education and training so that they could join men in the mainstream. While capacity building remains an important need for gender mainstreaming, our understanding of the scope of capacity building has changed as we better appreciate gender differences and women's desire to be equal with but different from men. The focus is moving from training of women in specific skills and knowledge, to empowerment through which women gain self-esteem and self-confidence, and become aware of both their innate and their acquired capacities and capabilities.

Although existing social and gender roles deprive many women of some of the skills and experiences of men, they give women different capacities, strengths and skills of equal social and economic value. For example, the private sector is now recognizing the value in management of the negotiation, networking and human relations skills that women's social and family roles tend to foster. Further, gender mainstreaming recognizes that women have knowledge and understanding that men lack, specifically on social needs and priorities and the needs of women, children, the disabled and the elderly. This knowledge is essential for effective policy making and planning. Women's specific knowledge is increasingly valued by the private sector. For example, women can design, develop, promote and sell products to other women (who comprise the major share of the consumer market in industrial countries) more effectively than men.

Gender capacity building is now understood to be essential for men as well as for women. Women need training and knowledge in some traditionally masculine skills and fields so that they can perform effectively alongside men in the mainstream. For example, UNIFEM Pacific supported training in political campaigning and produced a training manual for women seeking to enter politics through national elections. ⁽²⁰⁾ They also provided training in parliamentary procedures for the women who were successful. In India, UNIFEM South Asia Regional Office (SARO) supported Women's Political Watch in Maharashtra to train women councillors and candidates in municipal corporations and councils on the fundamentals of municipal governance, problems, strategies and solutions, budgeting issues and general protocol.

Men need capacity building and training in areas such as gender analysis and domestic work, in order to support and facilitate mainstreaming and work effectively with women. Men and women both need social capacity building so that they can participate equally in economic and political affairs while continuing to meet their obligations as members of the family and community. In the Pacific, gender-oriented training was offered to all new parliamentarians in order to encourage strategic alliances and build a more cooperative relationship between women and men members. In Nepal, UNIFEM SARO supported the Alliance for Women's Political Empowerment to provide training in gender and communications skills to men and women to create more effective advocates on gender issues.

In summary, capacity building for mainstreaming is part of a process of transforming the mainstream through changes in women and men, as well as in the social, economic and political environment in which they live. Leadership training and development for women is increasingly focusing on the potentially transformative role of women's leadership. In the short term, women leaders need to gain the skills, knowledge and experience levels of men in order to be able to function effectively in a male-dominated mainstream. In the long term, they also need to be empowered through participation, self-confidence and the support of their constituencies to join with men in leadership which has a different style, new objectives and new priorities.
 

IV. Overview of mainstreaming in practice

Box 3 summarizes the approach to mainstreaming that has developed in UNIFEM Asia-Pacific and several countries in the region over more than a decade. It addresses two aspects of mainstreaming that are closely related but distinct: mainstreaming women and mainstreaming gender. Mainstreaming gender is a technical process requiring the use of various gender tools, including gender analysis, gender statistics and gender budgeting or gender audits, to identify the differential impact on women and men of all policies, and programmes so that appropriate measures can be developed to achieve gender equality. Mainstreaming women is a more political process that will enable women to participate equally with men in all areas and at all levels of decision making so that their different needs can be equally addressed.

Mainstreaming Gender

To mainstream gender, the first priority has been to develop a gender perspective in planning and programming, since these are the development operations with the largest impact on poor women. Advocacy is essential to ensure that appropriate staff attend workshops and training programmes. In early projects, women librarians and secretarial staff would be assigned to attend, even when the gender workshops clearly covered technical areas such as planning and programming, because gender was so closely associated with women. Where available, senior men who are supportive on gender issues have been the most effective advocates in ensuring high level support and the participation of appropriate staff. An early lesson was the importance of providing resources, particularly time and travel costs, for advocacy in gender projects and of selecting advocates who had credibility and status with the specific target audience.

Together with - and usually as part of - awareness raising, planners and programme staff were trained to use tools such as gender analysis, gender statistics and indicators, gender budgeting and, more recently, gender audits, in order to implement a gender perspective in their routine work. Provision of technical tools was both a practical and a political measure. Professional staff were familiar with a technical approach to their work and seemed to find it easier to accept the concept of gender-responsive planning and programming when it was presented in a technical terms. Initially, it was rather naively believed that one general gender training or gender analysis workshop would be sufficient to enable staff to apply a gender perspective in their work. Experience soon showed that follow-up support and regular training to re-reinforce and extend gender skills was needed, although few countries or agencies have actually been able to provide this on a sustainable basis. Also, in many cases, it became clear that specialist knowledge was necessary in order to be able to identify gender issues in specific development sectors. Gender experts and trainers who were generalists rather than sector specialists, were often unable to provide the depth of training needed. Where experts with both gender and the specialist expertise were lacking, combining a sympathetic sector specialist with a gender specialist was sometimes an effective compromise.

However, capacity-building alone was insufficient to ensure that the skills and tools would be used in practice. Staff facing other priorities often found that there were few incentives or rewards to encourage them to apply their new knowledge. Furthermore, despite the rhetoric about gender mainstreaming, there were virtually no sanctions for failure to put this into practice. Thus, it became essential to institutionalize gender mainstreaming through the regulations, procedures and guidelines that informed and directed the routine work of planners and programmers. Equally important was the appointment of gender focal points and gender specialists to line departments and agencies, to provide technical support as well as play an advocacy and oversight role for mainstreaming. Focal points initially regarded their primary function to be ensuring compliance with the regulations and other mechanisms that had been put in place, but most soon found that the real need was advocacy and technical support. Staff could not be faulted for failure to implement gender analysis or a gender perspective when it was evident that most still did not (and still do not!) understand exactly what they are required to implement. Gender was turning out to be a more complex dimension of development than many had initially assumed.

The most strategic unreached targets for gender mainstreaming are now recognized to be the macroeconomics, industry, commerce, finance and trade policy agencies, as well as the key political agencies, including those responsible for the structure of the civil service and the establishment of posts and departments for internal and foreign affairs. Even in countries and agencies where a gender perspective has been implemented reasonably effectively at the planning and programming levels, the highest policy levels remain virtually unaffected and the stated commitments of planners and programmers to a gender perspective and meeting women's needs are often not matched by commensurate allocations of human, physical or financial resources.

Due to globalization, gender mainstreaming is now moving beyond the local and national levelsm and is becoming increasingly important at the regional and international levels. Regional groups such as ASEAN, APEC, SARC and the South Pacific Forum in the Asia-Pacific region, and international bodies such as the World Trade Organization are an increasingly important focus for gender mainstreaming activities. For example, several member countries have been lobbying to mainstream gender within APEC, supported by UNIFEM among others. Their efforts were rewarded at the 1999 New Zealand Leaders Meeting when the new gender framework and guidelines developed as a result of a 1998 Ministerial Meeting on Women in Development Cooperation in APEC was adopted for implementation throughout APEC.

Mainstreaming Women

In most countries, development planners and programmers, particularly at the decision making levels, are men. This makes the second aspect of mainstreaming women in decision making all the more important. Thus, work on mainstreaming women in Asia Pacific has particularly emphasized increasing women's active involvement in politics, leadership and governance.

The first requirement for mainstreaming women is usually training to increase women's capacities in non-traditional areas, and to increase their awareness of and confidence in their existing capacities. For women to utilize these increased capacities, specific policy changes are necessary to legitimize and institutionalize women's participation. In South Asia, where social and cultural barriers to women's entry to public life are particularly strong, women's participation has been effectively institutionalized in local government through the use of quotas for women representatives. In developed countries, other forms of affirmative action policies have been adopted. Public education and advocacy on gender issues has also raised the awareness of voters, particularly women, and politicians and their willingness to support women candidates and colleagues.

As women move into mainstream decision making, they often encounter very practical obstacles due to the difficulty of balancing their traditional gender roles of wife and mother with their new responsibilities. This has led to increased recognition of the extent to which day-to-day work and other arrangements in public life are adapted to masculine roles and stereotypes and thus discriminate against women. In developed countries, measures such as work-based child care, flexible working hours and the granting of parental rather than just maternity leave help women to balance their roles, and facilitate men's increased sharing of unpaid domestic work and child care. Legislation and effective monitoring and reporting procedures also help to eliminate discrimination in recruitment, promotions, performance assessment and termination of staff, and to create women-friendly work places where women can operate on an equal footing with men.

Finally, and most recently, newly available data are revealing the need for capacity building and role change for men. The slow pace of change in men's gender roles, attitudes and behaviour, even in developed countries, indicate the need to direct gender policy and programme support toward effecting changes for men as well as women.

Data from a growing number of time use surveys, some in developing countries, show glaring inequities between women and men in the performance of unpaid work. The double burden of paid and unpaid work being borne by women in the mainstream is a major obstacle to the achievement of equality between women and men. The burden is especially acute for poor women who are less able to relieve it through labour-saving goods and domestic and child care services purchased in the market.

New surveys on gender-based violence from a small number of countries - most of them developed rather than developing - and reports in the press and from NGOs working with women and girl survivors show that violence against women is another major obstacle to women's participation in the mainstream. Its elimination will require fundamental changes in gender stereotypes and the attitudes and behaviours of men. Such changes can only be achieved through gender policies and programmes, such as curriculum change in the education system and media campaigns, that target men rather than women.
 

V. Conclusion

Early references to mainstreaming tended to focus on mainstreaming women. Later, the Beijing Platform for Action changed the emphasis by calling for an "active and visible policy of mainstreaming a gender perspective in all policy and programmes". After Beijing, a number of development agencies used mainstreaming to refer to an overall strategy without specifying the nature of the object to be mainstreamed.

In Asia-Pacific, UNIFEM has recognized mainstreaming women and gender mainstreaming as two related but distinct strands of mainstreaming, and has integrated both in its projects and programmes. Mainstreaming women emphasizes the need to increase women's active participation in mainstream activities, particularly in politics, leadership and governance. Gender mainstreaming is a more technical approach that requires the differential impact on women and men to be identified for all policies, programmes and interventions through, for example, gender analysis and gender statistics, so that inequalities can be eliminated.

Mainstreaming women and gender mainstreaming are equally important: like men, women decision makers can be blind to gender differences, and gender mainstreaming could be carried with little or no participation from women. Gender equality requires both an active role for women in decision making and a gender perspective that takes into account the potentially different impact of policies and programmes on women and men - and on different groups of women and men.

It is very appropriate as we move into a new millennium that we strengthen both our resolve and our capacity to integrate both women and a gender perspective into the mainstream. As we do, the nature of the mainstream itself will change, and women and men can move forward together toward a new world of peace, gender equality and development for the 21^st century.

Annex 1

Some Useful Resources

AusAID, 1997. Guide to Gender and Development. March. http://www.ausaid.gov.au/publications/gender.html

Budlender, Debbie and Rhonda Sharp with Kerri Allen, 1998. How to do a gender-sensitive budget analysis: Contemporary research and practice. Canberra: AusAID and Commonwealth Secretariat.

Jahan, Rounaq. 1995. The Elusive Agenda: Mainstreaming Women in Development. London: Zed Books Ltd. 1995

Macdonald, Mandy, Ellen Sprenger and Ireen Dubal, 1997. Gender and Organizational Change. Bridging the Gap Between Policy and Practice. Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute.

March, Candida, Ines Smith and Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay, 1999. A Guide to Gender Analysis Frameworks. Oxford: Oxfam.

Norem, Rosalie Huisinga, 1998. Socioeconomic and Gender Analysis Programme (SEAGA), FAO and ITC-ILO. http://www.fao.org/

OECD 1988. DAC Guidelines for Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment. Development Assistance Committee. http://www.oecd.org/dac/Gender/htm/

OECD 1988. Source Book on Concepts and Approaches Linked to Gender Equality. Development Assistance Committee. http://www.oecd.org/dac/Gender/htm/

Schalkwyk, Johanna 1998. Building Capacity for Gender Mainstreaming: UNDP's Experience. December. http://www.undp.org/gender/mainstreaming/

Schalkwyk, Johanna, Helen Thomas and Beth Woronuik, 1996. Mainstreaming: A Strategy for Achieving Equality between Women and Men. A Think Piece. Sida/Department for Policy and Legal Services. July.

Torres, Amaryllis T., Rosario S. Del Rosario and Rosalinda Pineda-Ofreneo, 1994. Gender and Development: Making the Bureaucracy Gender-responsive. A sourcebook for advocates, planners and implementors. Quezon City: UNIFEM and National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women.

UNDP 1998. Gender in Development Programme, Gender Mainstreaming Information Pack. April. http://www.undp.org/gender/mainstreaming/mid-term%20review.html

UNICEF, 1994. Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment. A UNICEF Training Package. Gender & Development Section & Training & Staff Development Section.

Williams, Suzanne, with Janet Seed and Adelina Mwau, 1994. The Oxfam Gender Training Manual. Oxford: Oxfam.

Women, Ink. A project of the International Women's Tribune Centre also contains an excellent listing of publications on mainstreaming. http://www.womenink.org/

Endnotes

1. Mary Anderson, Focusing on Women. UNIFEM's Experience in Mainstreaming, New York: United Nations Development Fund for Women, 1993:7.

2. Mary B. Anderson, Women on the Agenda: UNIFEM's Experience in Mainstreaming with Women 1985-1990, United Nations Development Fund for Women, May 1990.

3. Following a protracted debate during the preparatory process for the Beijing Conference, there was an attempt to define what was to be understood by the term "gender". However, Annex IV to the final document (which was not included in the version of the Platform published by UN Department of Information February 1996) merely states that the term is to be understood in terms of its 'common usage'.

4. Johanna Schalkwyk, Helen Thomas and Beth Woronuik, Mainstreaming: A Strategy for Achieving Equality between Women and Men. A Think Piece. Sida/Department for Policy and Legal Services. July 1996.

5. Caroline O.N. Moser, Annika Tornqvist and Bernice van Bronkhorst, Mainstreaming Gender and Development in the World Bank. Progress and Recommendations. Environmentally and socially sustainable development series. Washington: World Bank, 1998.

6. Asian Development Bank, Policy on Gender and Development, ADB, May 1998: 39-41.

7. http://www.ilo.org/public/english/140femme/info/planning.htm

8. UNDP Gender in Development Programme, Gender Mainstreaming Information Pack. April 1998

9. Gender analysis carried out entirely by men would be deficient to the extent that men, with their different gender roles and experiences, are unable to completely identify women's needs and interests, or to accurately assess the impact of interventions on women.

10. See throughout Mary Anderson, 1993 ibid.

11. Sharon Capeling-Alakija, "Statement at the 33^rd Session of the Commission on the Status of Women," Vienna, April 1989 cited in Mary Anderson, 1990: 33, emphasis in the original.

12. Rounaq Jahan, The Elusive Agenda: Mainstreaming Women in Development. London: Zed Books Ltd. 1995: 13.

13. For example, Anderson, 1990, 1993; Schwalkwyk et al, 1996; OECD, DAC Sourcebook, 1998.

14. The process began in the late 1970s. See From Nairobi to Beijing, Second Review and Appraisal of the Imple