Assessing gender mainstreaming in the education sector: depoliticised technique or a step towards women's rights and gender equality?

In 1995 the Beijing Conference on Women identified gender mainstreaming as a key area for action. Policies to effect gender mainstreaming have since been widely adopted. This special issue of Compare looks at research on how gender mainstreaming has been used in government education departments, schools, higher education institutions, international agencies and NGOs .1 In this introduction we first provide a brief history of the emergence of gender mainstreaming and review changing definitions of the term. In the process we outline some policy initiatives that have attempted to mainstream gender and consider some difficulties with putting ideas into practice, particularly the tensions between a technical and transformative interpretations . Much of the literature about experiences with gender mainstreaming tends to look at organizational processes and not any specificities of a particular social sector. However, in our second section, we are concerned to explore whether institutional forms and particular actions associated with education give gender mainstreaming in education sites some distinctive features. In our last section we consider some of the debates about global and local negotiations in discussions of gender policy and education and the light this throws on gender mainstreaming. In so doing, we place the articles that follow in relation to contestations over ownership, political economy, the form and content of education practice and the social complexity of gender equality

Dedicated versus mainstreaming approaches in local climate plans in Europe

Cities are gaining prominence committing to respond to the threat of climate change, e.g., by developing local climate plans or strategies. However, little is known regarding the approaches and processes of plan development and implementation, or the success and effectiveness of proposed measures. Mainstreaming is regarded as one approach associated with (implementation) success, but the extent of integration of local climate policies and plans in ongoing sectoral and/or development planning is unclear. This paper analyses 885 cities across the 28 European countries to create a first reference baseline on the degree of climate mainstreaming in local climate plans. This will help to compare the benefits of mainstreaming versus dedicated climate plans, looking at policy effectiveness and ultimately delivery of much needed climate change efforts at the city level. All core cities of the European Urban Audit sample were analyzed, and their local climate plans classified as dedicated or mainstreamed in other local policy initiatives. It was found that the degree of mainstreaming is low for mitigation (9% of reviewed cities; 12% of the identified plans) and somewhat higher for adaptation (10% of cities; 29% of plans). In particular horizontal mainstreaming is a major effort for local authorities; an effort that does not necessarily pay off in terms of success of action implementation. This study concludes that climate change issues in local municipalities are best tackled by either, developing a dedicated local climate plan in parallel to a mainstreamed plan or by subsequently developing first the dedicated and later a mainstreaming plan (joint or subsequent “dual track approach”). Cities that currently provide dedicated local climate plans (66% of cities for mitigation; 26% of cities for adaptation) may follow-up with a mainstreaming approach. This promises effective implementation of tangible climate actions as well as subsequent diffusion of climate issues into other local sector policies. The development of only broad sustainability or resilience strategies is seen as critical.We thank the many council representatives that supported the datacollection. Special thanks to Birgit Georgi who helped in setting up this large net work of researchers across the EU-28. We also thank the EU COST Action TU 0902 (ledbyRichardDawson) that established the core research network and the positive engagement and interaction of th emembers of this group. OH is Fellow of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and was funded by the UK EPSRC LC Transforms: Low Carbon Transitions of Fleet Operations in Metropolitan Sites Project (grant number EP/N010612/1). EKL was supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, Czechia, within the National Sustainability Program I (NPU I) (grant number LO1415). DG ac-knowledges support by the Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR), Italy ("Departments of Excellence" grant L. 232/2016). HO was supported by the Ministry of Education and Research, Estonia (grantnumberIUT34-17). MO acknowledges funding from the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO), Spain (grant number IJCI-2016-28835). SS acknowledges that CENSE's research is partially funded by the Science Foundation, Portugal (grant number UID/AMB/04085/2019). The paper reflects only the views of the authors. The European Union, the European Environment Agency or other supporting bodies are not liable for any use that may be made of the information that is provided in this manuscript

Gender mainstreaming in disaster reduction: Why and how?

The significant losses in human life and livelihoods, the destruction of economic and social infrastructure and damage to the environment caused by disasters in the past decade has increased the necessity for proper disaster reduction and risk management strategies. A disaster is shown as a combination of a trigger agent and vulnerabilities. Since vulnerabilities are the dependant component of a disaster, they should be managed and minimised in order to reduce disasters. Disaster reduction policies and measures, which ensure a decrease in vulnerabilities, need to be formed and implemented to achieve a sustainable and consistent plan of disaster management. Since women are more vulnerable in a disaster, their needs and concerns should be widely integrated into risk reduction plans and procedures from both perspectives of women as beneficiaries and decision makers. Gender mainstreaming is considered an important element in disaster reduction policy making to integrate a gender equality perspective in all policies at all levels. Gender mainstreaming in disaster reduction refers to promoting awareness about gender equity and equality, to help reduce the impact of disasters and to incorporate gender analysis in disaster management, risk reduction and sustainable development to decrease vulnerability. This paper reviews literature on disaster reduction and gender mainstreaming to emphasise why gender mainstreaming has become a necessity in disaster reduction attempts and to highlight the ways in which it can be achieve

Gender Mainstreaming and Sustainable Post Disaster Reconstruction,

Gender inequalities are barriers to achieve sustainable post disaster reconstruction. Mainstreaming gender equality within post disaster reconstruction process can enhance sustainability of reconstruction. Based on a detailed literature review on post disaster reconstruction, this paper identifies pre-requisite conditions for mainstreaming gender within sustainable post disaster reconstruction as ; awareness of gender needs and concerns, a strong gender policy framework, women participation and leadership as an agent of change, gendered institutional capability, flexible and decentralised structure of gendered policy planning

Bridging rhetoric and practice: new perspectives on barriers to gendered change

Contains fulltext : 167537.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)This article presents a new methodology, Gender Knowledge Contestation Analysis, and uses it to examine the processes under way when transformative gender equality policies, such as gender mainstreaming are implemented. Drawing on data gathered in the European Commission, the findings show the processes linking high-level rhetorical policy statements, strategic policies, and daily working practices. This analysis enables exploration of the mechanisms through which indifference to and nonawareness of gendered policy problems are collectively constituted and methods through which they can be challenged. Findings thus deepen our understanding of barriers to the implementation of gender mainstreaming and the steps required for its effective implementation.20 juli 201

Gender mainstreaming and EU climate change policy

This article uses feminist institutionalism to examine how gender mainstreaming has been sidelined in European Union (EU) climate change policy. It finds that, with a few exceptions largely emanating from the European Parliament's Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality, EU responses to climate change are gender-blind. This is despite the Treaty obligations to gender mainstream policy in all areas and despite the intersections between climate change and development policy, which is renowned for having taken gender equality and women's empowerment seriously and for instigating gender mainstreaming and specific actions as a means to achieve them. The persistent invisibility of gender can be attributed to various forms of institutional resistance

Gender mainstreaming active inclusion policies

The aim of this report therefore is to inform and help develop gender mainstreaming in active inclusion policies. In order to do this, the report at first reviews gender differences and inequalities in the risks of poverty and social exclusion and it provides a close look at the connections between active inclusion policies and gender equality strategies (Chapters 2 and 3). It then analyses examples of concrete gender mainstreaming in each of the three pillars of active inclusion, i.e. income support (Chapter 4), labour inclusion (Chapter 5) and access to services (Chapter 6). Under each heading, the report summarises available information on the actual policy developments and looks at the results of the policies in terms of gender equality. Finally, Chapter 7 draws some conclusions. The information in this report is mainly provided by the national experts of the EGGSI network of experts in gender equality, social inclusion, healthcare and long-term care and covers 30 European countries (the EU-27 Member States) and the three EEA–EFTA countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway)

Mainstreaming Informal Financial Institutions

Informal financial institutions (IFIs), among them the ubiquitous rotating savings and credit associations, are of ancient origin. Owned and self-managed by local people, poor and non-poor, they are self-help organizations which mobilize their own resources, cover their costs and finance their growth from their profits. With the expansion of the money economy, they have spread into new areas and grown in numbers, size and diversity; but ultimately, most have remained restricted in size, outreach and duration. Are they best left alone, or should they be helped to upgrade their operations and integrate into the wider financial market? Under conducive policy conditions, some have spontaneously taken the opportunity of evolving into semiformal or formal microfinance institutions (MFIs). This has usually yielded great benefits in terms of financial deepening, sustainability and outreach. Donors may build on these indigenous foundations and provide support for various options of institutional development, among them: incentives-driven mainstreaming through networking; encouraging the establishment of new IFIs in areas devoid of financial services; linking IFIs/MFIs to banks; strengthening NGOs as promoters of good practices; and, in a nonrepressive policy environment, promoting appropriate legal forms, prudential regulation and delegated supervision. --

Gender equality in local economic development in Scotland, case study for the international project W.IN D. – Women in Development

As one of the partners of the research consortium, EPRC was in charge of the elaboration of a case study on Scotland to identify and analyse: (i) practical experiences with strategies to support the participation of women in local development processes, and (ii) practical experiences with strategies to support the introduction of the principle of gender mainstreaming into local development processes