Gender mainstreaming since Beijing: a review of success and limitations in international institutions

Caroline Moser and Annalise Moser

The Beijing Platform for Action prioritised gender mainstreaming as the mechanism to achieve gender equality. A decade later, policy makers and practitioners are debating whether this has succeeded or failed. This article aims to contribute to this debate by reviewing progress made to date, through a review of gender mainstreaming policies in international development institutions. Categorising progress into three stages — adoption of terminology, putting a policy into place, and implementation — the article argues that while most institutions have put gender mainstreaming policies in place, implementation remains inconsistent. Most important of all, the outcomes and impact of the implementation of gender mainstreaming in terms of gender equality remain largely unknown, with implications for the next decade's strategies.

In 1995, governments across the world signed the Beijing Platform for Action. Along with their endorsement of the Plan of Action went a commitment to achieve 'gender equality and the empowerment of women'. Gender mainstreaming (defined in the next section) was identified as the most important mechanism to reach this ambitious goal. Throughout the process, international institutions have provided a variety of support to governments and civil society alike, be it analytical, institutional, or financial in nature.

A decade after the UN Conference on Women, held in Beijing, practitioners around the world are asking if gender mainstreaming has succeeded, while some sceptics are already talking of its 'failure'. This calls for a stocktaking of progress to date. What have been the experiences of gender mainstreaming? Has the enormous range and diversity of activities ultimately had an impact on gender equality on the ground? Are gender training methodologies appropriate today, and are measurement indicators sufficient? It is now an appropriate moment to address these and other critical issues relating to gender mainstreaming.

This is no easy task. The purpose of this article is to begin to tackle this issue through a review of the gender mainstreaming policies of international institutions. It provides an assessment of progress to date in 14 international development institutions or organisations, including bilateral donors, international financial institutions (IFIs), United Nations (UN) agencies, and non-government organisations (NGOs). The review categorises progress in gender mainstreaming in terms of the following three stages:

• adopting the terminology of gender equality and gender mainstreaming;

• putting a gender mainstreaming policy into place;

• implementing gender mainstreaming.

This provides the basis for a synthesis of progress, and the identification of limitations and gaps. It is hoped that these, in turn, will contribute to the development of new strategies for gender mainstreaming in the next decade.

Adopting the terminology of gender equality and gender mainstreaming

At the international level, most development institutions have adopted the terminology of gender equality and gender mainstreaming, and are relatively consistent in its use. Among those that define gender equality, there is a general consensus that it refers to the recognition that women and men have different needs and priorities, and that women and men should 'experience equal conditions for realising their full human rights, and have the opportunity to contribute to and benefit from national, political, economic, social and cultural development' (CIDA 1999).

Most definitions of gender mainstreaming across institutions adhere closely to those set out by the UN Economic and Social Council (UN 1997, 28) as follows:

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 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.

In addition, two further aspects of gender mainstreaming appear in some definitions, namely:

• the institutionalisation of gender concerns within the organisation itself: relating to taking account of gender equality in administrative, financial, staffing, and other organisational procedures, thus contributing to a long-term transformative process for the organisation in terms of attitudes, 'culture', goals, and procedures;

• gender empowerment: promoting women's participation in decision-making processes, as well as having their voices heard and the power to put issues on the agenda.

Putting in place a gender mainstreaming policy

In the past decade, the majority of major development institutions have developed and endorsed a gender policy. Indeed, all those included in this review have endorsed such a policy.

Components of gender mainstreaming policy

The majority of such gender mainstreaming policies share the following six key components, as summarised in Table 1:

• a dual strategy of mainstreaming gender combined with targeted actions for gender equality;

• gender analysis;

• a combined approach to responsibilities, where all staff share responsibility, but are supported by gender specialists;

• gender training;

• support to women's decision making and empowerment;

• monitoring and evaluation.

Three additional components — working with other organisations, budgets, and knowledge resources — are shared by a smaller number of institutions.

Most importantly, all organisations identify a dual strategy of mainstreaming gender equality issues into all policies, programmes and projects, combined with supporting targeted actions for gender equality (100 per cent). The majority mention the need for gender training (93 per cent), and for systems and tools for monitoring and evaluation (93 per cent). Some form of gender analysis is identified by 86 per cent, as is support for women's active role in decision-making processes and empowerment — mentioned by all except the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Finally, the issue of the responsibility for gender mainstreaming shows a combined approach, where all staff share responsibility, but are supported by gender specialists. Exceptions to this approach include the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and ADB, and the UN agencies dedicated to gender. Institutionally, gender specialists are often located within a centralised team, as well as 'embedded' in decentralised departmental and regional offices. In an assessment of the NGO Hivos, Dubel (2002) notes that this structure allows for top-down (policy development and programmatic support) and bottom-up (policy operationalisation) processes.

Other gender mainstreaming components less frequently cited include the need to identify the roles and responsibilities of staff (57 per cent), and strengthening gender equality in co-operation with other organisations (71 per cent). Half mentioned the generation and distribution of best-practice publications, as well as attention to the allocation of adequate resources. Just under half also cited capacity building of civil society, and learning through manuals and tool kits, as being important to gender mainstreaming strategies.

Among types of institutions, minimal differences are apparent. Bilateral organisations report more activities concerned with strengthening civil society and working with national women's machineries. UN agencies make use of networks and online data bases to disseminate knowledge, and have an extensive system of gender focal points within each agency. The UN is also unique in that it has several agencies or divisions dedicated to gender equality — including UNIFEM, the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), and the Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality (IANWGE) — which provide support and co-ordination for the UN system. These last two entities were not included in Table 1, as they are not standalone operational agencies. They provide support for gender activities in other UN agencies, particularly through supporting gender equality in co-operation with other organisations, and providing a range of knowledge resources.

Policy constraints: the problem of instrumentalism

Although all institutions in this review have succeeded in developing an explicit gender policy, evaluations highlight as a constraint the issue of instrumentalism. Since gender policy is generally formulated within a particular organisational context, with specific pressures, mandate and ideology, the gender policy and the organisational mandate need to 'fit' (Razavi 1997). Here the debate concerns the extent to which gender equality policy should be developed as an end in itself or, as advocates of instrumentalism argue, promoted as a means to development. In this case poverty reduction is most frequently utilised as a useful platform. Advocates argue that this promotes a win-win scenario, as in the 1995 Human Development Report phrase 'development, if not engendered, is endangered' (UNDP 1995).

Three main arguments are used to defend instrumentalism. First, it may be inevitable, given the constraints of the contexts within which feminist advocates operate. Second, in the 'real' world of politics, compromises and strategic alliances are parts of reality. Finally, instrumentalism can be a way of subverting neo-liberal discourse. Nevertheless, critics of an instrumental gender engagement strategy argue that it risks depoliticising the transformative nature of the feminist agenda (Miller and Razavi 1998), and presents problems when there are conflicts between gender policy and other issues.

Implementing gender mainstreaming

It is clear that most international development institutions have put in place gender mainstreaming policies. Therefore, it is at the level of implementation that significant challenges remain. As Heyzer (quoted in Valk 2000) notes,

Through regional and international conferences, we have achieved far-reaching agreements on gender equality. The challenge now is holding stakeholders — governments, UN agencies, the private sector, and civil society — accountable for implementation.

Turning to the implementation of gender mainstreaming, most efforts are considered inconsistent, and generally involve only a few activities, rather than a coherent and integrated process. Sida, for instance, found that interventions showed only 'embryonic evidence' of working with gender mainstreaming processes (Mikkelsen et al. 2002). Similar 'patchy' efforts towards gender mainstreaming were identified by Danida (2000), UNDP (Schalkwyk 1998), and two reviews of NGOs (Wallace 1998; Mayoux 1998).

Policy commitments to gender mainstreaming frequently evaporate in planning and implementation processes. An NGO evaluation of DFID explicitly identified this as a constraint (MacDonald 2003; see also Longwe 1995; Derbyshire 2002). When this occurs, high-level commitments are not reflected in country or sectoral policies, and the overall gender policy commitment becomes less visible in the process of specifying project objectives, results, and evaluations (DAC 1998). The problem of policy evaporation can be due a number of factors. These include lack of staff capacity (exacerbated by the frequent use of — junior — consultants); organisational culture and attitudes, including resistance to the notion of gender equality; the treatment of gender equality as a separate process, which marginalises rather than mainstreams the issue; staff 'simplification' of the gender issue; and a lack of feeling of ownership of the policy (DAC 1998; Derbyshire 2002; Valk 2000).

However, as UNIFEM emphasises (Sandier 1997), ultimately gender mainstreaming is a process rather than a goal. Therefore, it may not make sense to argue that mainstreaming has failed. Rather, it is important to identify which aspects of gender mainstreaming are in place within organisations, and which are the overall constraints to implementing a comprehensive strategy. Implementation comprises both institutional and operational inputs, with the two closely interrelated. The outputs and outcomes/impacts of implementation are measured in terms of greater gender equality (Moser 1995). Table 2 summarises these in terms of constraints identified in this review as well as identifying data limitations. This shows that, to date, assessments have focused more on institutional inputs than those relating to the process of operational and programming implementation. Finally the outcomes and impact of implementation in terms of gender equality still require far more attention. The following section elaborates on the constraints identified in relation to each of these inputs.

Institutional inputs

The majority of gender mainstreaming evaluations focus on institutional inputs, with attention from NGOs, bilateral agencies, and UN agencies, as well as more general assessments. These raise a range of constraints including the following.

Internal responsibility

Although most organisations have promoted a combined approach, where all staff share responsibility but are supported by gender specialists, success in gender mainstreaming is still highly reliant on the commitment and skills of key individuals, as identified for example in Hivos, DFID, and Sida (Hivos 2001; MacDonald 2003; Mikkelsen et al. 2002). In the UK, for instance, NGOs with gender specialists have made the most progress on gender issues (Wallace 1998). At the same time, when gender mainstreaming is the responsibility of all staff, gender issues can be diluted or disappear altogether, through non-committed decision makers and male resistance, while specialised gender focal points can be marginalised from mainstream activities (March et al. 1999). Equally a gender unit at head office can be regarded by field staff as top-down or culturally coercive (Wallace 1998).

Organisational culture

Programme success on gender equality and organisational culture are intrinsically linked; as Oxfam staff asked, 'could we realistically expect to achieve at the programme-level what we could not achieve in our own workplace?' (Oxfam 2003). An organisational culture which is male-biased, in terms of attitudes, recruitment, working conditions, and structures and procedures, 'discriminates against female staff and clients' (Valk 2000). Organisational culture was mentioned as a constraint by NGOs such as Oxfam, ActionAid Nepal, and those studied by Wallace, as well as UNDP, DFID, and Eurostep agencies (Oxfam 2003; Rai 2000; Wallace 1998; Schalkwyk 1998; MacDonald 2003; MacDonald et al. 1997).

A study of the 'deep structures' of organisations identified how gender inequality is perpetuated through the valorisation of heroic individualism; the split between work and family; exclusionary power; and the 'monoculture of instrumentality' (Rao and Kelleher 2002). Many organisations still have male-dominated senior management, directors, and trustees, and gender commitments in job descriptions are not rigorously pursued (Wallace 1998). In DFID, for example, the target of having women in 30 per cent of senior civil servant posts is far from being met (MacDonald 2003). In ActionAid Nepal, the gender imbalance was so severe that they introduced a temporary women-only recruitment policy, which raised the percentage of women staff from 12 per cent to 24 per cent (Rai 2000). Male-biased organisational culture can also exclude women through the scarcity of high-level job shares, extensive travel requirements, and long work hours, all of which are difficult for women with dependent children (Wallace 1998).