Gender mainstreaming: a road well-travelled, but miles to go for equality

Since the Fourth World Conference on Women (1995), gender mainstreaming has been almost universally endorsed as the strategy of choice for the achievement of gender equality and women’s human rights. Governments, donor agencies, civil society organisations, women’s movements and other international and national actors in development have worked to actualise the commitment to gender mainstreaming mandated by the Beijing Platform for Action, However, despite the sustained investments in mainstreaming by all actors in development and considerable progress in terms of enabling policy frameworks, there is general agreement that translating gender mainstreaming policy objectives into real­life outcomes is fraught with challenges and contradictions… Read Full Article