GENDER MAINSTREAMING A OVERVIEW

GENDER MAINSTREAMING

AN OVERVIEW

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United Nations

Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women

GENDER MAINSTREAMING

AN OVERVIEW

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United Nations New York, 2002

NOTE The designations employed and the presentation of the material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The term "country" as used in the text of this publication also refers, as appropriate, to territories or areas. Symbols of United Nations documents are composed of capital letters combined with figures.

Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues Department of Economic and Social Affairs Two United Nations Plaza, 12th Floor New York, NY 10017, USA Fax: (212) 963-3463 E-mail: daw@

Contents

Foreword

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1. Introduction ............................................................ 1

? Gender equality as the goal - gender mainstreaming as 1 the strategy .......................................................

? The analytic tasks ................................................ 3 ? General issues and trends ....................................... 5

2. What has been learned about gender mainstreaming? ........... 9

? The need for a broad strategy that targets major institutions and focuses on gender relations ......................... 9

? Measures to support gender equality can contribute to other socio-economic goals .................................... 10

? Focus on people is a prerequisite .............................. 10

3. Applying gender mainstreaming in specific contexts ........... 13

? Policy analysis and development ............................. 13 ? Research .......................................................... 16 ? Technical assistance ............................................ 17 ? Servicing intergovernmental bodies .......................... 20 ? Data collection, analysis and dissemination ................. 21

4. Institutional development/capacity-building for gender main-

streaming .........................................................

25

5. Conclusions ............................................................ 27

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Foreword

Gender mainstreaming was established as a major global strategy for the promotion of gender equality in the Beijing Platform for Action from the Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. The ECOSOC agreed conclusions (1997/2) established some important overall principles for gender mainstreaming. A letter from the Secretary-General to heads of all United Nations entities (13 October 1997) provided further concrete directives. The General Assembly twenty-third special session to follow up implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action (June 2000) enhanced the mainstreaming mandate within the United Nations. More recently, the Economic and Social Council adopted a resolution (ECOSOC resolution 2001/41) on gender mainstreaming (July 2001) which calls on the Economic and Social Council to ensure that gender perspectives are taken into account in all its work, including in the work of its functional commissions, and recommends a five-year review of the implementation of the ECOSOC agreed conclusions 1997/2.

Clear intergovernmental mandates for gender mainstreaming have been developed for all the major areas of the work of the United Nations, including disarmament, poverty reduction, macro-economics, health, education and trade. The Security Council resolution 1325, adopted in October 2000, outlines the importance of giving greater attention to gender perspectives in peace support operations. Specific mandates also exist for ensuring that gender perspectives are taken into account in the major planning processes and documents within the United Nations, the medium-term plans, programme budgets and programme assessments (for example, General Assembly resolution of December 1997 (A/Res/52/100).

The ECOSOC agreed conclusions 1997/2 defines gender mainstreaming as: "...the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in all areas and at all levels. It is 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 programmes 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." Gender mainstreaming entails bringing the perceptions, experience, knowledge and interests of women as well as men to bear on policy-making, planning and decision-making. Mainstreaming should situate gender equality issues at the centre of analyses and policy decisions, medium-term plans, pro-

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