The presentation explains concepts of gender mainstreaming and gender equality.

1. Gender Mainstreaming and Equality
Concepts, Theories and Practices
Ms. Jagriti Shankar
Gender and KM Officer
Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand
Jagriti@ait.asia
Date: December 7, 2010
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Training Program ‘Gender Mainstreaming and Equality with
focus on MDGs’

2. Gender Concepts
Gender vs. Sex
Gender Discrimination
Gender Roles and Needs
Equality vs. Equity
Women Empowerment
WID vs. GAD
Gender Mainstreaming
Gender Planning
Gender Analysis
Gender Responsive Budgeting
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3. Gender Vs. Sex
Sex identifies biological differences between men
and women. E.g. Women can give birth and men
provide sperm. Sex is universal (every nation,
throughout history)
Gender identifies social relations between men and
women. Gender is socially constructed. But
gender roles are dynamic and change over time.
Then ,What is the problem?
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4. • Of the 1.3 billion people living in poverty around the world, 70% are
women. (Source: World Revolution)
• Women do about 66% of the world's work in return for less than 5%
of its income. (Source: Women's International Network)
• In the least developed countries nearly twice as many women over
age 15 are illiterate compared to men. (Source: UNFPA)
• Two-thirds of children denied primary education are girls, and 75%
of the world’s 876 million illiterate adults are women.
(Source: AskWoman)
• Women work two-thirds of the world's working hours, produce half
of the world's food, and yet earn only 10% of the world's income
and own less than 1% of the world's property. (Source :World
Development Indicators, 1997, Womankind Worldwide)
Source: http://www.endpoverty2015.org/en/goals/gender-equity
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What is the Problem?

5. Gender Discrimination-1
Social construct
• Partriarchy positions men at superior postion and
status
• Men’s superiority at household reflects in public
sphere and influence position and distribution of
resources
Gender division of labour
• Men and women have different roles in society. Men’s
roles are considered productive and more important,
while traditionally women’s roles are considered
passive and less important
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6. Gender Discrimination - Access
and control over resources
Access to resources: opportunity to make use of resource
Control over resources: ability to define resource’s use for
others.
Women remain disadvantaged with less access to
resources, benefits, information and decision making
Economic resources : land or equipment
Political resources: representation, leadership, legal
structures
Social: child care, family planning, education
Time: a scarce resource for women
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7. Gender Roles
Productive roles : Activities carried out by men and women in order to produce goods
and services, for sale, exchange, or to meet the subsistence needs of the family.
Reproductive roles: Activities needed to ensure the reproduction of society's labor
force. This includes child bearing, rearing, and care for family members such as
children, elderly and workers. These tasks are done mostly by women.
Community Managing role: Activities undertaken primarily by women at the
community level, to ensure the provision and maintenance of scarce resources of
collective consumption such as water, health care and education. This is voluntary
unpaid work undertaken in ‘free’ time.
Community politics role Activities undertaken primarily by men at the community
level, organizing at the formal political level, often within the framework of
national politics. This work is usually undertaken by men and may be paid directly
or result in increased power and status.
Triple role: The term refers to the fact that women tend to work longer and more
than men as they are usually involved in three different gender roles —
reproductive, productive and community work.
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8. Gender Needs -1
Practical Gender Needs (PGN)
• PGNs are the immediate needs identified by
women to assist their survival in their socially
accepted roles within existing power structures in
society.
• PGNs do not challenge existing power structures
or gender divisions of labor
• PGNs are related to inadequacies in women’s
living conditions, health care, safe water,
sanitation, income earning opportunities etc.
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9. Gender Needs -2
Strategic Gender Needs (SGN)
• SGNs are the needs women identify to change their
status and position in society in relation to men.
• SGNs challenge male dominance and privilege.
• Related to inequalities in gender division of labour,
ownership and control of resources, structural
discriminations, etc. It may include issues such as
legal rights, domestic violence, equal wages etc.
• Collective organizing around PGNs are a more favored
entry point for women organizations and NGOs due to
SGN’s political nature.
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10. Gender Equality vs. Gender Equity
Gender Equality
• Gender equality is based on the idea of equality of
opportunities.
Gender Equity
• Gender equity denotes equivalence of life
outcomes of women and men
• Gender equity recognizes women and men have
different needs, preferences and interests and
may require different treatment of men and
women.
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11. The Story of the Fox and the Crane
(Equal treatment does not mean the same
treatment)
(From UNDP learning & Information Pack, 2001)
The Fox invited the Crane to dinner. He served the
food on a large flat dish. The Crane with her long,
narrow beak could not eat.
The Crane invited the Fox to dinner. She served the
food in a deep vase, and so the Fox with his short,
wide face could not eat.
Both friends had an equal opportunity for
nourishment, but each time one of them could not
take advantage of this opportunity.
The development challenge in every case is to
identify barriers to the opportunities that exist,
and custom design the adjusted interventions that
will lead to equality of outcome.
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12. Women Empowerment
• Empowerment of women concerns women gaining
power and control over their lives.
• It involves awareness raising, building self confidence,
increased access and control over resources and
transforming structures and institutions which
reinforce gender discrimination and inequality
• Empowerment cannot be achieved in vacuum; men
must be brought along in the process of change.
• It doesn’t refer to power over, rather it is power to,
power with and power within.
• It is a bottom up approach instead of a top down
strategy
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13. Shift in development approach: WID vs. GAD
Criteria Women in Development
(WID)
Gender and Development
(GAD
The Approach An approach which views
women’s lack of
participation as the
problem
An approach to people
centered development
Focus Women Relations between women
and men
The Problem The exclusion of women
(half of the productive
resource) from the
development process
Unequal relations
(between women and men,
rich and poor) that
prevents equitable
development and women’s
full participation
The Goal More efficient, effective
development
Equitable, sustainable
development with men and
women sharing decision-
making and power.
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14. Shift in development approach: WID vs. GAD-2
Criteria Women in Development
(WID)
Gender and Development
(GAD
The Solution Integrate women into
existing structures
Empower the
disadvantaged and women
Transform unequal
relations and structures
The Strategies Women only projects
• Women’s component
integrated projects
• Increase women’s
productivity
• Increase women’s income
• Increase women’s ability
to manage the household
Identify/address practical
needs determined by
women and men to
improve their condition
• At the same time address
strategic gender needs of
women and men
• Address strategic needs
of the poor through people
centered development
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15. Shift from WID to GAD is
theoretical
• Not a complete shift so far
• It is political
• Changing gendered attitude takes time
• It costs
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16. Gender Mainstreaming
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
social spheres so that women and men benefit
equally and inequality is not perpetuated. The
ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality. UN-
ECOSOC Definition (1997)
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17. Gender mainstreaming -1
• Gender mainstreaming discourse started in the
80´s as opposed to Women´s only discourse of
70’s.
• Beijing platform for action (1995) also stressed
gender mainstreaming as key to women’s
empowerment
• Instead of women only activities, inclusion of
gender perspective is central to all policy making,
research, advocacy, development,
implementation and monitoring exercises.
• Women targetted activities will still be required
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18. Gender Mainstreaming -2
• A process, not an end in itself
• The objective of gender mainstreaming is to
promote gender equality or the
empowerment of women (MDG 3)
• How to proceed depends on the level of
analysis and action (e.g., National law or
policy reform? Sector policy? Organizational
change? Program or project design?)
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19. Steps to Gender Mainstreaming
Step 1: Assessment of linkages between gender
equality and issue or sector worked on
Step 2: Identify entry points/opportunities for
introducing gender perspectives
Step 3: Identify approach or methodology for
incorporating gender perspective in these
works
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20. GM: Key Ingredients
(for organizations)
• Political commitment for change
• Technical capacity to implement change
• Supportive institutional structures and
procedures
• Adequate financial resources
• Accountability and monitoring systems
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21. GM in Programs and Projects: General
Principles
• Based on understanding that men’s and women’s needs,
interests and constraints often differ; these factors need to
be taken into account for development interventions to be
effective and sustainable
• Differences among groups of men and women also need to
be recognized(e.g., based on income level, caste/ethnicity,
religion, age, urban/rural location, etc)
• Gender concerns need to be addressed at each stage of the
program/project cycle
• Monitoring of gender-related impacts of the
program/project (through collection of sex-disaggregated
data and tracking of gender-relevant indicators –should be
reflected in the design & monitoring framework)
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22. Gender Mainstreaming Myths
Myth: “Good intentions [e.g., to involve women in
project activities] are enough”
Reality: Specific design and monitoring features are needed
to translate good intentions into reality, and to monitor
results
Myth: “Education, health and microfinance projects
always benefit women/girls, so they automatically
mainstream gender”
Reality: Specific measures are usually needed to ensure that
women/girls actually use these services and that the
project contributes to narrowing gender gaps, and
empowering women/girls
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23. GM Myths, continued
Myth: “Women are 50% of road users, so any road
project automatically mainstreams gender”
Reality: did the road link women to market? Ensure that a
development activity actually narrows gender gaps or
empowers women/girls (it’s not enough to simply “add
women and stir”)
Myth: “Gender mainstreaming is only possible in
community-based projects”
Reality: International organizations are now trying to
mainstreaming gender concerns in macro economic
policies, trade, value chain, policies etc.
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24. Gender aware planning
• Gender aware planning should be stressed during all
phases of project cycles, right from identification of
project.
• Relevant data on gender should be collected, baseline
research on gender issues should be conducted
• Balanced distribution of project staff should be
maintained
• Training of both male and female project staff is
necessary to ensure participation of both sexes.
• Women and women’s organization should be
represented in all committees related to development
planning
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25. Gender Analysis
• Gender analysis is descriptive and diagnostic tool for
development planners and crucial to gender
mainstreaming efforts.
• GA is the first step towards gender sensitive planning.
• GA focuses on describing women’s and men’s roles and
their relative access to and control over resources.
Analysis aims to anticipate the impacts of projects on
both productive and reproductive roles.
• GA analysis entails, first and foremost collecting sex-
disaggregated data and gender sensitive information
about population concerned.
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26. Gender-responsive budget
• GRB refers to the statement of actual government
expenditure and revenue on women and girls as
compared to men and boys.
• A gender budget is not a separate budget for women
• It provides a way to hold governments accountable for
their commitments to gender equality and women’s
human rights.
• If budgets fail to be sensitive to the needs and
demands of the poor and of women, resources will not
be adequately directed to gender-sensitive
programmes and to the achievement of equality goals.
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27. Thank you!
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