WOMEN, GENDER AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE PACIFIC: KEY ISSUES Women and Gender Mainstreaming Introduction: Women and gender mainstreaming .............................................................3 Pamela Thomas Mainstreaming: The Pacific experience ...........................................................................8 Lorraine Corner What lies at the heart of the failure of gender mainstreaming: The strategy or the implementation?..............................................................................................................14 Suzette Mitchell Women transforming the mainstream — a think piece ...................................................19 Lorraine Corner Transformational development and the wellbeing of women ..........................................27 Elizabeth Reid Whose World? The Bank on gender...............................................................................35 Deb Foskey Men, gender and development .......................................................................................43 Michael Flood Gender mainstreaming: Moving from principles to implementation — The difficulties An ACFOA discussion paper................................................................................................50 Australian Council for Overseas Aid Development Studies Network 1 Defending diversity, sustaining consensus: NGOs at the Beijing World Conference on Women and beyond........................................................................................................55 Kristen Timothy Developing gender mainstreaming and ‘gender respect’................................................60 Tanya Lyons, Jayne Curnow and Glenda Mather Gender mainstreaming: Getting it right in the workplace first .........................................67 Jeannie Rea Rethinking gender mainstreaming (or, Did we ditch women when we ditched WID?) — A personal view ..................................................................................................................72 Patti O'Neill ‘Women hold up half the sky’: Gender mainstreaming and women’s inequality in Australia ..........................................................................................................................77 Hurriyet Babacan Successful strategies for addressing gender equality issues in programs and projects: What works? ...................................................................................................................83 Juliet Hunt Practical challenges for gender mainstreaming in governance projects: Observations of a consulting practitioner ..................................................................................................91 Rima das Pradhan Gender mainstreaming in the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary .........................98 Donna Loveridge with Fiona Kotvojs AIDS and the burden of care: Mainstreaming gender or ‘main-themeing’ women?......103 Vicki Luker Some reflections on gender mainstreaming and intersectionality.................................110 Jenny Riley The political uses of obscurantism: Gender mainstreaming and intersectionality.........119 Susan Hawthorne Gender, faith and development: Rethinking the boundaries of intersectionality ...........127 Robyn Kennedy and Kirsty Nowlan Elements of a gender mainstreaming strategy: A 14-point framework .........................131 Sarah Murison Introduction to gender analysis concepts and steps .....................................................139 Juliet Hunt IWDA Gender and Development Dialogue, 3–4 July 2003: Summary report ...............149 Jenny Riley Women and Gender Mainstreaming 2 Introduction: Women and gender mainstreaming Pamela Thomas, Development Studies Network, Australian National University Overview As the papers in this volume indicate, attempts to improve the situation of women and to provide greater equality between women’s and men’s access to the benefits of development have gone through many phases and embraced a number of theories, strategies and policies. Over the last 10 years, gender mainstreaming has been the accepted strategy for improving the situation of women. It was based on the premise that the roles, responsibilities and situations of both women and men had to be taken into consideration and that consideration for women as well as men has to be integral to development policy and to political, economic and social structures, rather than the previous focus on improving the situation of women in isolation. The papers here cover an in-depth review of the effectiveness of mainstreaming to date. They challenge the received wisdom, as well as the roles and commitment of the United Nations, government and non-government agencies. The more recent concept of ‘intersectionality’ and its possible value as a tool in gender mainstreaming forms part of the discussion. The last group of papers, based on extensive experience, provides some practical guidelines to developing gender mainstreaming strategies, policies and analysis. Three consistent threads run through most of the paper: the need for clarity and better understanding of the concept of gender mainstreaming; the need for a human rights approach to achieving gender equality; and the need to make the language of gender mainstreaming and gender equality more accessible to lay people, as well as to those of different cultures and those with different roles in the development process. Major points In the eleven years since the Fourth United Nation’s World Conference on Women in 1995 and its adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action, an unusually high level of consensus has emerged amongst many gender and development practitioners that gender mainstreaming as a strategy for achieving equality among men and women, and improving the lives of both, has largely failed. There is broad consensus among the contributors to this issue that the key reasons for this failure are: • the enthusiastic adoption of gender mainstreaming by governments, UN agencies, non-government organisations and the private sector occurred without a clear understanding of the concept and strategies for its implementation; • lack of commitment to gender equality and gender mainstreaming • among United Nations, international, government and development agency leadership and a resulting lack of adequate funding; • lack of understanding of how gender mainstreaming should affect the policies and daily practice of development practitioners; • gender mainstreaming has rendered women invisible, effectively situating women at once ‘every and nowhere’; and • the inability of gender mainstreaming to transform power structures. The most consistent critique of gender mainstreaming is that the mainstream remains masculine. As Lorraine Corner states, transforming the masculine mainstream will not be accomplished by the simple addition of women into decision-making bodies. There is a Development Studies Network 3 need to transform the mainstream as a prerequisite for the achievement of women’s human rights and gender equality. However, not all our contributors see gender mainstreaming as intrinsically flawed. For some, it is now rather a matter of garnering adequate and considered responses to the challenges it poses. The goal of bringing gender into all aspects of organisational and project-level policy and practice, enunciated in the Beijing Platform for Action, is seen to be achievable, but will not occur without concerted and considered strategies. Case studies from Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and Fiji provide first-hand experience of gender mainstreaming in practice and the role of civil society, NGOs, consultants and consulting companies. The experience has been varied, but some of the examples here show some success in improving the situation of women and the move toward greater equality between women and men. While these examples are of relatively small-scale projects and could not be claimed to be transforming the mainstream on a large scale, they are a positive beginning. The major points that emerge from these positive examples are: • activities or projects were relatively small scale; • establishing well-developed partnerships was essential; • gender equality objectives were jointly developed, widely discussed and understood; • stakeholders from all levels of civil society and government were involved from the beginning; • implementation was flexible and widely differing cultural values were respected; and • projects or activities were long term. A further point that emerged was the importance of commitment to gender mainstreaming throughout the whole structure of implementing and donor organisations. This proved to be unusual. Taking stock of the gender mainstreaming experience Suzette Mitchell, in her discussion of the reasons for the disappointing impact of gender mainstreaming, puts this down to the lack of clarity around the term, the embedded political agenda in a transformative approach to gender mainstreaming, lack of measurable outcomes and the consistent lack of commitment and funding. ‘Until we agree what gender mainstreaming is, what its strengths and weaknesses are, and how to implement it effectively and measure its outcomes across countries and agencies, we will continue a process of half-hearted and ad hoc measures which do not create real change for gender equality.’ Three papers consider the role of the United Nations organisations in gender mainstreaming. Lorraine Corner proposes a new paradigm for transforming the mainstream as part of UNIFEM’s new business