Gender Justice and Development Policy - Is Gender Mainstreaming Up to the Challenge

7/30/2019 Gender Justice and Development Policy - Is Gender Mainstreaming Up to the Challenge

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UCL Development Planning Unit

Gender Justice and Development Policy:

Is gender mainstreaming up to thechallenge?

Caren Levy

UCL DEVELOPMENT PLANNING UNIT, 34 TAVISTOCK SQUARE,

LONDON WC1H 9EZ


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The DPUs Gender Policy & Planning Programme

DPUs GPPP (1987 to date): how to address gender

justice in international development?

This session: Review of my own experience - working with bi-lateral agencies

(SIDA, NORAD, SDC); international agencies (ILO, UNEP) and at

country level (Namibia)

involved needs and interest assessment, capacity building, policy,

programme and project advise and backstopping on gendermainstreaming, and monitoring of progress


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Gender mainstreaming

Gender and Development roots

Critique of Women In Development (WID) 1975-1985

First UN Decade for the Advancement of Women

1995 Beijing Platform of Action gender

mainstreaming formalised internationally as main

strategy adopted by UN in 1997

Gender mainstreaming a twin track strategy

Integrating women and mens concerns into all development

policies and programmes

Specific activities aimed at empowering women


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Gender mainstreaming definitions

In order to achieve

gender equality

Mainstreaming a gender perspective isthe process of assessing the implications

for women and men of any plannedaction, including legislation, policies or

programmes, in any area and at alllevels. ..(ECOSOC Agreed Conclusions, July 1997, para.4)

womens empowerment

.. five components: women's sense of self-worth; theirright to have and to determine choices; their right to haveaccess to opportunities and resources; their right to have

the power to control their own lives, both within andoutside the home; and their ability to influence the

direction of social change to create a more just social and

economic order, nationally and internationally.(UNFPA, Secretariat of the United Nations Inter-Agency Task Force on

the Implementation of the ICPD Programme of Action.)


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Various definitions:

common focus on getting policy and planning

processes and procedures to deliver on gender equality

different definitions implied different theoretical

positions and strategies eg top down or bottom up or

both; rights


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Gender Justice

2 dimensions (Young, 1990)

Distributive dimension: equal access to material

distribution of resources, goods and services

Institutional dimension: equal access to participate in

decision making institutions which define and deliver

this distribution


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Gender Justice and Gender Mainstreaming

Has the gender mainstreaming strategy contributed to

gender justice?

GENDER JUSTICE

Distributive

dimension

Institutional dimension

Gender equality Equal access to and control by

women and men over economic,

socio-cultural and built environmentresources, assets, goods and services

Equal access to and control by

women and men over decision

making at all levels of society

Womens empowerment Womens autonomy increased by

better access to and control over

material distribution of resources,

assets, goods and services

Womens autonomy increased

through women's enhanced self-

worth; their right to have and to

determine choices; their right to have

the power to control their own lives,

both within and outside the home;

and their ability to influence the

direction of social change to create a

more just social and economic order,

nationally and internationally


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Transformation and agenda settingIn practice diverted to integration (Jahan,1995)

rather than contest and struggle, there is

incorporation (Daly, 2005: 445)

Two questions to address as to why gendermainstreaming shifted from transformation to

integration:Whose agenda?

What is the mainstream?


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Whose agenda?

Geopolitical dimension

Geopolitics of UN Decades for the Advancement of Women

Geopolitics within national boundaries

Time dimension

Are the constellation of interests which developed gender

mainstreaming over 25 years still politically relevant for contexts in

which being practiced today?

Organisational dimension

Power of international and regional agencies

Homogenising power of aid infrastructure


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Conflict with dominant neo-liberalpolicy discourses in themainstream

Role of the state? market?

Growing gender and class inequalities

Conflicting policies

Engagement with the discourserhetorical entrapment (Verloo, 2001in Squires, 2005)


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Good governance agendas despite gender

mainstreaming efforts to increase womens voice in

political structures, largely gender blind


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Conflict with dominant expert-bureaucratic model

of policy making

Technocratisation of gender mainstreaming -

separation or writing out of power relations fromgender mainstreaming language, strategies and tools

Weak policy dialogue and consultation - despite gender

mainstreaming efforts to increasing womens voice in

decision making institutionsPolicy evaporation little impact on material or

institutional gender inequalities


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Conflict with dominant vertical silos in the

organisational landscape of the state

Vertical budget allocations and lines of authority in

ministries, departments etc

Office of President or

Prime Ministers

Economic Agriculture Health Education

Women

national machinery


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Despite gender mainstreaming efforts to create new

gender organisational structures (eg gender focal

points, gender desks ) and influence budgets (genderbudgeting) - weakly embedded

marginalised and little progress to gender justice

Gender identities poorly articulated with women and

mens other simultaneous identities

disability, age, ethnicity also siloed and separately from

gender mainstreaming


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Gender mainstreaming and gender justice?

Distributive dimension: Equal access to material

distribution of resources, goods and services

Growing inequalities with the implementation of neo-

liberal development policy

Gender-related Development Index (GDI)

ie income, education, life expectancyGender Gap Index (World Economic Forum)

MDG Goal 3, Target 3a, Indicators 3.1 and 3.2


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Gender mainstreaming and gender justice?

Institutional dimension: Equal access toparticipate in decision making institutions whichdefine and deliver this distributionRhetoric of good governance

Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) as anapproximation

ie measures political participation and decision making,

economic participation and decision making, and powerover economic resources

Gender Gap Index (World Economic Forum)

MDGs Goal 3A, Target 3A, Indicator 3.3


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Future directions

Focus: deconstructing technocratic agenda for

gender mainstreaming & reconstructing a

transformative agenda for gender mainstreaming

Re-visit theoretical foundationsGrounding in social change in the context of power

relations

Links between policy change and societal change?

(recognising that public policy alone cannot bring aboutsocial transformation)

Reviewing the role of research and its relationship to

social change research on women, gender specific

research and gendered research?


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Future directions

Reconstruct politicised methodologies

Creating policy, planning and research methodologiesthat will consciously and collectively work to achievegender justice from the current context of patriarchaland global capitalist systems to an alternative future

Build in inclusion and accountability eg gender sensitive

community mapping


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Future directions

Re-engage with policy and organisational

discourses and practicesThe limits and opportunities of evidence based policy

Strategic entry points

Re-examination of language in Human Rights

discourses and in policies and planning and theprocedures emanating from them


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Future directions

Reclaim political struggle through wider avenuesof deliberative democracy

Recognising & engaging women and men in all theirdiversity ie. ethnicity, race, religion, age etc

So that people come to the planning process asthemselves, rather than as a generic person, or only asa representative of a particular, (and sometimes)human-rights-defined social group (Wallace and MooreMilroy, 1999:70)

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Gender Justice and Development Policy - Is Gender Mainstreaming Up to the Challenge