Gender Mainstreaming
Gender Mainstreaming is a strategy to achieve gender equality. It means recognizing that women and men often have different needs and priorities, face different constraints, have different aspirations, and contribute to development indifferent ways. A key hypothesis is that organisations and societies must be transformed to accommodate both women’s and men's needs and treat them as equals.
To achieve gender equality several steps have to be considered: inequalities have to be identified and challenged, basic conditions have to be improved and models to eliminate inequalities have to be developed and evaluated.
Links:
Publications:
SDC's Instructions and framework for Equal Opportunity Policies in Swiss Cooperation Offices
SDC's Gender Policy 2003
SDC 2006: Gender and skills development
SDC 2008: Gender and Humanitarian Aid
SDC 2009 Annual Progress Report
SDC 2010 Annual Progress Report
SDC 2011 Annual Progress Report
Gender in Practice
Development actors are implementing a range of strategies to influence policies and programs and to change planning methodologies and procedures so that they better integrate gender aspects for more equality. In this context, these guidelines aim to support the process of mainstreaming, summarizing concepts and arguments, asking key questions and presenting concrete examples. They facilitate (by themselves or in combination with other tools) the implementation of the Gender Equality Policy of SDC .
