Posted Date: May 20, 2001
How Mainstreamed Is Gender Mainstreaming?
How Mainstreamed Is Gender Mainstreaming?
Following the 1995 UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, many international development institutions pledged to mainstream gender equality in their policies and programs. Five years later, how have institutions actually mainstreamed gender equality in their work and just how mainstreamed is gender-mainstreaming overall? The record shows that USAID, the World Bank, and the World Food Program have begun to make progress in mainstreaming gender equality. Gender mainstreaming is a comprehensive organizational process. The United Nations (UN) defines it 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 and implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programs in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women can benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality." Here is a capsule summary of how each agency has fared.
United States Agency for International Development
In 1996, USAID Administrator Brian Atwood and the Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid (ACVFA) drafted USAID’s Gender Plan of Action (GPA). In the fall of 1999, ACVFA requested an assessment of how USAID had progressed in implementing the Gender Plan of Action. This nine-month assessment included interviews with 500 representatives from USAID, the State Department, NGOs, and leaders in recipient countries; reviews of USAID’s literature on gender equality; a field survey of all USAID missions; and in-depth field studies in Guatemala, Morocco, and Uganda. The assessment was presented to ACVFA members at their quarterly public meeting on May 10, 2000.
The most striking finding in the assessment was the overwhelming lack of awareness of the GPA among USAID employees. Some 95% of USAID employees had never heard of the Gender Plan of Action. Ninety percent of USAID employees and NGO representatives also said "the GPA has not had any measurable impact on Agency operations." However, most Agency employees noted that "they were already predisposed to promote gender equality before the GPA was announced and that they had continued to do so without knowing of the GPA’s existence."
Ambassador Sandy Vogelgesang, President of Everest Associates, conducted the assessment. In her remarks at ACVFA, she noted that "there has been some impressive follow-up" to the Gender Action Plan, "particularly in procurement, which is enormously important. But for most recommendations of the GPA, action is still incomplete." One reason for this incomplete action is that the funding cuts of the 1990s made it "hard to focus on gender issues," said Vogelgesang. Another reason is that only 5% of USAID employees were familiar with the Gender Plan of Action. "This statistic could be seen as shocking," said Vogelgesang. "But I was impressed that most people said, we were doing work on gender long before 1996."
The summary report on the GPA assessment, entitled New Agenda for Gender Equality, concludes that gender equality is being institutionalized at USAID, but that more remains to be done. Next steps for mainstreaming gender equality at USAID include the incorporation of gender equality in the Country Strategic Plans and USAID’s Strategic Plan. Both of these steps were strongly recommended by USAID employees worldwide. Ninety percent "gave the highest priority to incorporating concern about gender equality in the Country Strategic Plan of each USAID mission." This way, gender equality "can be built in from the beginning." A majority of employees also suggested integrating gender equality into all areas of USAID’s strategic plan.
When USAID employees, PVO representatives, and other interviewees were asked, "What one action would you take to advance gender equality if you were named USAID Administrator for one day," suggestions included creating a "gender network" to link senior gender advisors in USAID Bureaus and Missions or instituting a "senior management team" to link "key players in every Agency Bureau and Mission." Interviewees also suggested changing the name of the Office of Women in Development to the Office of Gender Equality, and having that office provide technical support to headquarters and field staff instead of funding its own projects. Vogelgesang also mentioned that there was a desire to "move beyond microenterprise to think about macro issues, such as creating a gender budget, and to think beyond primary education to focus on technical and vocational education that is appropriate to the 21st century."
The World Bank
At the Beijing conference, the World Bank came under heavy criticism for the negative impacts its structural adjustment programs placed on the lives of women. Women’s Eyes on the World Bank, which was founded at the Beijing conference, subsequently urged the World Bank to take the following actions to remedy the situation: increase lending for basic education, health and credit programs that benefit women; integrate a gender perspective into projects; promote the participation of NGOs in Country Assistance Strategies; and increase the number of women in management positions at the Bank.
Earlier this year the World Bank published a booklet, Advancing Gender Equality, examining World Bank progress in gender mainstreaming. The report boasts some impressive results. It states that in 1999, 40% of projects included consideration of gender issues, up from 26% in 1995. In 1998-99, 75% of consultations regarding Country Assistance Strategies and national policy reforms included civil society groups, up from 35% in 1995-96. Nineteen percent of managers were women as of June 1999, up from 12% in June1995.
While these are clear indicators of progress, there are still gaps in the Bank’s commitment to gender main-streaming, according to Laura Frade, Latin American coordinator for Women’s Eyes on the World Bank. Frade applauds the Bank’s agreement to make Country Assistance Strategies public. The remaining problem is that recipient governments must agree with that decision before it can be enacted. Frade also notes that the Bank is making a "huge effort" to include civil society participation, "but the Bank does not have much expertise in participation." As a result, Bank strategies may not be presented to representatives from civil society in a way that they can understand. Even more importantly, the priorities identified by civil society are rarely funded. Frade emphasizes that while advances have been made in institutionalizing a gender perspective in the Bank’s Washington, DC offices, these advances "have not arrived at the local project level."
World Food Program
The Beijing Conference also prompted the World Food Program, the UN food-distribution agency, to conduct a reassessment of how food distribution affects women. "When we started looking at how best to meet our goal [of distributing food], we realized that it is the women who ensure that the family eats," said Catherine Bertini, Executive Director of the World Food Program, which is by far the largest food distribution agency in the world. "If we’re going to end hunger, we realized we must get food to the women."
Consequently, the World Food Program launched its Commitments to Women for 1996-2001 at Beijing. These commitments include:
· 80% of relief food aid should be distributed directly to women;
· 60% of all WFP resources should go to women and girls in countries where women are at a 25% disadvantage compared to men;
· women should take a lead role in decision-making in food management committees;
· staff and partners should be held accountable for achieving these commitments.
The WFP also has a set of strategic objectives that concern women. These objectives call for the protection, assistance and training of refugee and displaced women; action to facilitate women’s equal access to resources, employment, markets and trade; special measures to ensure women’s equal access to and full participation in power structures and decision making; and the generation and dissemination of gender-disaggregated data and information for planning and evaluation.
According to the WFP 1998 annual report, while most countries have prepared Gender Action Plans and "there has been a steady improvement in their quality, greater emphasis was still required on analyzing the causes of inequality. Further, attention to the empowerment of women through WFP interventions and development of a more strategic approach to addressing gender" is required.
(For more information about the USAID gender assessment, contact Noreen O’Meara at 202-712-5979. For more information about the World Food Program, see . or contact Heather Hill at heather.hill@wfp.org.)
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