Mainstreaming

An evidenced recommendation to the organisation of whether they should adopt a 'mainstreaming' strategy or not

An evidenced recommendation to the organisation of whether they should adopt a 'mainstreaming' strategy or not

During the last decade UNDP has put in place a number of policies and strategies to mainstreaming gender. However, UNDP has not systematically and effectively implemented a gender mainstreaming approach. Progress has been hindered by a lack of comprehensive measures, capacity, and proactive leadership from management. For successful mainstreaming, UNDP requires strong long-term commitments from senior management, consistent efforts and dedicated resources.

Gender mainstreaming is an approach to integrating women's and men's concerns and experiences into the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres. The ultimate goal is to ensure that both genders benefit equally, and inequality is not perpetuated.

Recognizing that gender equality is fundamental to its work, UNDP renewed its commitment to gender mainstreaming in 1996. The reasons were clear: Gender equality is not only fair--a worthy goal in itself--but also integral to the broader objective of human development.

Thus, UNDP committed to addressing gender considerations in everything the organization does. To achieve gender equality, UNDP's approach was aligned with that of the international community, namely, to use gender mainstreaming as a driving force in all aspects of the work of the organization. But how, in practical terms, was this to be realized? And what progress has been made since UNDP adopted gender mainstreaming as the approach to work towards gender equality?

Internal reporting showed mixed results and provided insufficient insight into what has been done to integrate gender concerns in UNDP country programmes. The Executive Board requested an independent evaluation of gender mainstreaming in UNDP to better understand the results and to develop lessons that would guide the explicit integration of gender concerns into future UNDP development activities, thus contributing towards gender-equitable development.

During the past decade, a series of policies on gender mainstreaming have been formulated. However, they were not accompanied by concrete targets, timeframes, and strategies and were not sufficiently accompanied by operational measures and resources to facilitate and track implementation. Only recently in 2005, UNDP developed a Corporate Gender Strategy and Action Plan. Positive steps in support of measuring gender mainstreaming activity have been taken, such as the continuation of a Gender Unit at headquarters, the appointment of regional gender advisers, the establishment of a system of ...