InterAction.org | Gender Equality

The CAW’s Approach to Gender Mainstreaming

“We decided we wanted to be best on gender and that change permeated the organization. It’s a different consciousness. We’re more intentional.”

--Kathryn Wolford, President, Lutheran World Relief

As a result of over ten years of promoting gender equality within the InterAction membership, the CAW has developed a framework for effective gender mainstreaming. The CAW sees integrating gender in an organization’s activities and structures having both an external and internal dimension. Externally, gender integration fosters the participation of and benefits to women and men in an organization’s initiatives or services. Internally, gender integration promotes women’s leadership and equality in an organization’s own policies and structures.

The CAW’s framework includes four dimensions, as depicted in the figure as parts of a growing tree:

At the root of the tree or process is political will, which becomes evident when top-level leadership publicly supports gender integration, commits staff time and resources, and institutes needed policies and procedures. The other three dimensions grow out of this demonstration of political will. Technical capacity entails changing organizational procedures as well as building individual skills. Individuals can take their skills with them when they leave an organization, but new procedures and systems become basic to how an organization operates. Accountability involves “carrots” and “sticks” for encouraging and reinforcing new behaviors and practices; it ultimately requires building responsibility for gender integration into job descriptions, work plans, and performance assessments. Finally, organizational culture deals with the informal norms and embedded attitudes of an organization. To be successful, any gender mainstreaming strategy must take all four of these dimensions into account.

© 2002 InterAction

Gender Equality & Diversity