Gender mainstreaming since Beijing: a review of success and limitations in international institutions

This article assesses progress made by international development institutions in gender mainstreaming since the Beijing Platform for Action in 1995. It categorises progress into three stages:

• Adopting the terminology of gender equality and mainstreaming
• Putting a gender mainstreaming policy into place
• Implementing gender mainstreaming in practice.

It is at the level of implementation that significant challenges remain. Policy commitments to gender mainstreaming frequently evaporate in planning and implementation processes – due to lack of staff capacity, organisational culture and attitudes, and staff “simplification” of the gender issue. The impacts of gender mainstreaming in terms of gender equality also remain largely unknown due to a lack of effective monitoring and evaluation of gender mainstreaming outcomes.

The article concludes that there is a pressing need to link strategies with concrete outcomes through the development of more robust and systematic monitoring and evaluation of the effects of gender mainstreaming on people’s lives.

Summary written in collaboration with BRIDGE and Siyanda