Section 3 - Educating and Partnering for CEDAW

Gender Integration Framework
Excerpt from the ILO presentation on Overview of Participatory Gender Audit by Jyoti
Tuladhar, August 2007
UNAIDS gender audit
The Participatory Gender Audit of the UNAIDS Country Office (UCO) was
conducted from June 10-30, 2008 with the following objectives: (1) to assess the
extent of UNAIDS’ gender mainstreaming work; (2) to contribute to an ongoing
process of benchmarking to measure progress in promoting gender equality; and
(3) to come up with recommendations for more effective gender mainstreaming
by UCO. The audit team undertook a desk review of organizational and project
documents, interviewed key respondents, and held focus group discussions
with key partner agencies within the UN, with government partners, with training
resource providers and the positive plus community.
The UCO staff and their partners found the PGA most helpful. At first, there was a
slight sense of wariness at being invited to a “gender audit” but this was dispelled
when the methodology and core exercises were explained. During the PGA,
they reflected also on their own level of gender awareness and mainstreaming
capabilities and identified capacity building as a much-needed task.
The UNAIDS partners felt empowered from reviewing all the work done in recent
years in the course of the focus-group discussions. This was particularly felt among
members of the positive community. They also noted that the need for greater
gender awareness is quite widespread; even those whose primary mandate is
gender mainstreaming seem to know little about it and what they are supposed
to implement.
There is a strong and clear gender and rights-based mandate, as well as a
gender tool kit from the UNAIDS headquarters that just needs unpacking and
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