Dr. Susan P. Murphy
Trinity College Dublin
Ireland
Content
 Evolution of gender mainstreaming in development
practice
 From margins to mainstream – gender and the MDGs
 Problems in research and practice
 Drivers of discrimination
 Origins of inequality
 Dynamics of gender relations
 Implications for gender-based research
 Beyond checklists and head-counting
 Post 2015 SDG agenda
 Gender and education
Women in development
 Since UN Commission on the Status of Women in
1946:
 matters related specifically to women have been a core
dimension of discussions on development and global
poverty eradication,
 justified on the evidence-based arguments that greater
empowerment is instrumentally valuable to
development;
 and to a lesser extent, on reason-based arguments that
development generates intrinsic benefits to women, as
human beings of equal moral value
2013 Report – UN High
Level Panel of Eminent Persons

‘The next development agenda must ensure that in
the future neither income nor gender, nor ethnicity, nor
disability, nor geography, will determine whether people
live or die, whether a mother can give birth safely, or
whether her child has a fair chance in life’ (2013: 7).
 How is this different from the MDG commitments?
 What does this say about 20 years of gender
mainstreaming (post Beijing 1995)?
What is ‘gender mainstreaming’?
 Emerged from the women in development (WID)
policy approaches widely adopted by development
organizations in the 1980s
 Integrate women into economic development
 Central to Beijing Platform for Action (1995)
 Equality and women’s empowerment central to
human development
 States need to make radical changes to achieve
equality and promote empowerment
5
UN definition
 “Mainstreaming a gender perspective is the process of
assessing the implications for women and men of any
planned action, including legislation, policies, or
programmes, in all areas and at all levels. It is a strategy
for making women’s as well as men’s concerns and
experiences an integral dimension of the design,
implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and
programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres
so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is
not perpetuated. The Ultimate goal is to achieve gender
equality”. (UN Report for the economic and social council.
1997: 1)
6
Two further aspects
 Evident in some definitions
 Institutionalization of gender concerns …. to ensure a
‘transformation of the organizations attitudes and
culture
 Gender empowerment through women’s participation in
decision-making processes, enabling women to have
their voices heard, giving them power to put issues on
the agenda (Moser 2012: 439-440)
 Designed to tackle both implicit and explicit forms of
discrimination and exclusion
7
Gender mainstreaming
Policy
 A dual strategy of mainstreaming gender-equality issues into




all policies, programmes, and projects (the Integrationist
approach), combined with context-specific supporting
targeted actions for gender equality (the stand-alone
approach)
Gender analysis (sex disaggregated data and gender
analytical information)
Women, as well as men, playing an active role in decision
making processes to influence the development agenda
Organisational capacity-building and gender training
Gender sensitive monitoring and evaluation systems and
tools (Moser 2012: 440)
8
Gender mainstreaming in
Theory
9
From margins to mainstream
 MDG Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
 Target – eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary
education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no
later than 2015
 Measurements also include – political participation; paid
employment
 Also






MDG 1 - Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
MDG 2 – achieve universal primary education
MDG 4 – reduce child mortality
MDG 5 – improve maternal health (since 2005 – universal access
to reproductive health)
MDG 6 – combat HIV/Aids
MDG 7 – environmental sustainability
 Target 10 access to clean water and sanitation
 Target 11 – improvement in the lives of at least 100 million
slum dwellers
10
In practice
 MDG period saw some successes:
 improved health outcomes,
 increased numbers of women in the formal economy, and
 increased enrolment rates in education at primary level
 However….
 Lives and status of women has not seen a dramatic transformation
 Women continue to be more vulnerable to extreme poverty,
malnutrition, ill health, lower educational outcomes and higher
incidents of violence.
 Women continue to carry greatest responsibility for reproduction,
care, subsistence food provision, and household tasks
 Women continue to be under-represented in leadership roles both
in the public institutions and private organisations.
Problems with mainstreaming
approach
 ‘Away streaming’ – (Mukhopadhyay 2004). That is
 Used as an argument to stop ‘stand-alone’ projects and
interventions.

Reduces financial and institutional resources specifically
allocated to women’s needs
 According to Hivos, this has resulted in a ‘reduction in
gender expertise, capacity and advocacy’ (2007: 11)
12
Problems with
Gender based research
Controlling for GM
 It is a challenge for all organizations to assess the impact
of gender mainstreaming on the lives of women and
girls, men and boys…. whose lives are altered profoundly
by all sorts of change taking place beyond the planned
interventions of governments and development
organizations.
Opening Pandora’s box
 The gender division of labour within the household
 The ‘black box’ in contemporary mainstream economic
modelling of non-market based production (Susan Moller
Okin, 2003)
13
And more…
 Ramya Subrahmanian (2007) –
 ‘key criticism about GM has been the “narrowness” of the
strategy despite the complexity of gender relations and the
contextual variations in the process and outcomes related to
gender inequalities’ (2007: 113)
 Monitoring and evaluation
 Difficult, if not impossible to distinguish impact of GM from
other changes occurring beyond planned interventions.
 ‘Smart economics’
 Only supported by some due to its instrumental value, rather
than the intrinsic value of equality and women’s
empowerment
14
Problems in theory &
practice
 Failed to tackle
 Hidden power and prevalence of discrimination

Key distinction between explicit and implicit discrimination –
 Implicit discrimination has escaped challenge
 Stiglitz 2012 – Cognitive Capture
 Duflo 2012 – Implicit bias
 Hermeneutical gaps
 Sweetman 2012 - The leadership of key development
organizations which shape our world is still overwhelmingly
rich and male. Women’s priorities and perspectives are still
missing from key decision-making bodies
 Miranda Fricker – hermeneutical injustices
15
From gender back to women?
 On the one hand some argue that the focus on gender has
 Cornwall, Harrison, and Whitehead, have argued that the
term ‘gender’ has neutralised the political content of feminist
struggles, acting as a ‘technical fix’ (2007: 9) in development
projects and programmes.
 Such a technocratic approach depoliticised and de-radicalised
the feminist struggle for the empowerment of women.
 They argue that the term gender has ‘fallen from favour and
has a jaded, dated feel to it. Diluted, denatured, depoliticised,
included everywhere as an afterthought... (2007: 6-7).
 Thus, they call for a move away from the concept of gender, to
refocus on the specific needs of women (Mannell 2012;
Cornwall, Harrison, and Whitehead 2007 & 2008).
On the other hand
 Some argue that this would represent a step backwards
 Caroline Moser - there is a need for a shift away from
‘women’s issues’ and incorporate issues that relate to women
and men, girls and boys. ‘Such gender disparities can then
cross-cut with other types of diversity such as those based on
age, ethnicity, race, or sexual orientation’ (2012, 442).
 Focusing on gender allows for an examination of other
factors such as ethnicity, age, class and so on, how they can
interact and can generate new forms of inequality (Dhamoon,
2011, Sandler and Rao 2012; Ndesamburo , Flynn, and French
2012; van Eerdewijk and Dubel 2012; Derbyshire 2012; Chant
and Sweetman 2012, Unterhalter, 2012).
Pathway to progress
Broadening the research agenda:
 Moser 2012: Appropriate quantitative and qualitative
indicators to assess progress in GM to include 2 components


Implementation: measured in terms both of the integration of
women’s and men’s concerns throughout the development process
and in terms of specific activities aimed at empowering women.
Outputs and impacts: measured in terms of equality and
empowerment of women; impact and change for men
 Unterhalter 2012: move beyond headcounting towards deeper
examinations of norms, beliefs, and socially constructed
challenges and opportunities for social change through
integration of the ‘intersectionality’ approach to GBR
18
 Broadening the focus of practice
 Greater consideration of gender dynamics within the
household and the personal / local drivers of inequality (of
access, of opportunity, of resources and so on)


Targeted action to reduce / remove the role of violence as a method
of social control
Increased consideration of the gendered division of labour in nonmarket based productive activities.
 Access to land; energy, finance, and the Factors of Development
 Broadening the focus of policy
 Shift towards the language of linkages rather than narrow goals and
targets to reflect and target the relational dynamic of gender, rather
than gender as a static category
Education: Beyond Access
 Recognizing the role of education
 Perpetuation of discrimination or platform for social transformation;
Reinforcing or challenging social norms?
 Critically examine if it aims towards ‘transformative’ agency or
‘effective’ agency? (Kabeer 2005)
 Transformation would require
 Focusing on girls and boys, and different social identifiers that may
influence a child’s life chances
 Examining curriculum, assessments, and management to enhance and
support a child’s agency ;
 Gender study centres leading in 1) the delivery of teaching across the
disciplines and 2) continued research into the constructions and
relational dynamic of gender in local and global contexts
‘Education [both teaching and research] is both a systemic source of
gender oppression and a means of ending it’. (Enslin and Mary 2006)
21
Thank you.
All thoughts, comments, and
questions are most
welcome.
Susan.p.murphy@tcd.ie
22
22
Appendix
GOAL 1 End poverty in all its forms everywhere
GOAL 2 End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and
promote sustainable agriculture
GOAL 3 Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
GOAL 4 Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning
opportunities for all
GOAL 5 Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
GOAL 6 Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
GOAL 7 Ensure access to a!ordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
GOAL 8 Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive
employment and decent work for all
GOAL 9 Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and
foster innovation
GOAL 10 Reduce inequality within and among countries
GOAL 11 Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
GOAL 12 Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
GOAL 13 Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts*
GOAL 14 Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable
development
GOAL 15 Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably
manage forests, combat deserti"cation, and halt and reverse land degradation and
halt biodiversity loss
GOAL 16 Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide
access to justice for all and build e!ective, accountable and inclusive institutions at
all levels
GOAL 17 Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for
sustainable development