A mandate to mainstream: promoting gender equality in Afghanistan

Gender mainstreaming is an example of policy transferred across different national contexts and has been added to the mix of international prescriptions for rebuilding the Afghan state. This study explores the ways that mainstreaming is being implemented in Afghanistan. It examines whether it could be useful or effective as one of various means to further gender equality.

Gender mainstreaming is identified in the Afghanistan National Development Strategy (ANDS) as the principal strategy for achieving gender equality in Afghanistan. Accordingly, mechanisms in national policy have been established, for example, the inclusion of gender equity as an ANDS cross-cutting theme. This paper contends though that gender mainstreaming, as the government’s principal strategy for promoting gender equality in Afghanistan, is not being substantively implemented in the Administration.

The paper begins with an introduction to gender mainstreaming as a global movement. It continues with a discussion of the introduction of gender mainstreaming to Afghanistan through a process of policy transfer and of local perceptions of gender itself within Afghan ministries. It is then divided into two further sections: technical concerns and institutional contexts.

It also provides recommendations for the Government of Afghanistan (GoA), ministries and international actors as well as looking at how technical concerns and institutional contexts can be strengthened.

Recommendations to GoA, ministries and international actors include:

• future reviews of the ANDS must clarify its stance on promoting both gender equality and the role of women in the public sector
• provisions for gender budgeting should be more comprehensively included in ANDS budgeting processes, particularly in sector strategies
• the current documents for gender mainstreaming are too expansive. They need to be more focused and require suggestions regarding how gender-sensitive policies might be monitored.
  

Recommendations on technical issues include:

• Gender units and women’s shuras: Both units and shuras have the potential to be useful in furthering gender equality in ministries in different ways. However, their mandates need to be clarified and separated from one another in practice, not just on paper
• working groups: Interdepartmental working groups have the potential to significantly strengthen the mainstreaming agenda operationally within ministries.In order for this to work they must have strong connections to senior policy makers and their relationships to existing mechanisms, such as gender units, are clarified
• technical advisors: Improved coordination of the work of technical advisors will be fundamental as a means to promote and generate support for gender mainstreaming at the donor level.
  

Recommendations on institutional factors include:

• positive discrimination: Measures of positive discrimination currently employed in Afghanistan are not adequate to combat gender inequalities. Rather than basic positive discrimination purely to increase numbers of women, a holistic approach embodied in a substantive mainstreaming agenda is necessary
• workshops: The practice of raising awareness through workshops perpetuates the notions that gender can be “done” in a series of short sessions. If workshops must still be used as a method, gender issues should be integrated into other training courses for ministry staff (such as in management, leadership, team-building) with practical suggestions on how to approach these subjects in a gender-sensitive manner.