Taking action: achieving gender equality and empowering women

Making it happen
139
Gender
mainstreaming
is both a
technical and
political process
requiring shifts
in organizational
culture
in chapter 1. These change agents include leaders at all levels of government
who control critical levers for change—financial and technical resources—and
set the priorities for actions affecting the lives of many. To be true to the vision,
government leaders must work with civil society institutions, especially organizations
that represent women’s interests. Where progress has been made, as in
South Africa, it has been with the strong and consistent support of government
leaders who used the levers available to them to bring about necessary changes,
along with the efforts of a vibrant and independent women’s movement.
At the international level there must also be a critical mass of change agents
in the institutions that provide support to national governments and civil society
organizations for implementing the changes necessary for a gender-equitable
society.
Technical capacity to implement change
Achieving gender equality and empowering women requires technical expertise
and knowledge of how to mainstream gender concerns into development
policies and programs. At the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women the
international community endorsed gender mainstreaming as a key institutional
response for promoting gender equality and empowering women. Gender mainstreaming
was defined by the UN Economic and Social Council in 1997 as:
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. 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 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 (ECOSOC 1997).
This definition makes clear that gender mainstreaming is not an end in
itself but a means to the goal of gender equality. It is both a technical and political
process requiring shifts in organizational culture and ways of thinking and
in the structures and resource allocations of organizations (Oxaal and Baden
1997). As a technical tool mainstreaming can be effective only if supported
by a strong political and legal mandate. At the country level legal instruments
such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
against Women (CEDAW) and others provide such a mandate. All UN agencies
have a mandate from the General Assembly, the Security Council, the
Economic and Social Council, and the Commission on the Status of Women
to promote gender equality in their own policies and programs and to support
governments in doing the same.
Gender mainstreaming is often compromised by a lack of conceptual clarity
about the meaning of gender. As noted in chapter 2, gender is a social construct