By M de Waal (2010).
Introduction
Gender mainstreaming, adopted at the Fourth World Conference in Beijing and captured in the resulting Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (United Nations 1995), is a strategy that involves the mainstreaming of the gender perspective in all aspects of development. This means going beyond a focus on increasing the numbers of women in development projects to bringing gender perspectives to the fore in all aspects of development work. This requires ‘assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action’ in order to make their respective concerns and experiences ‘an integral dimension’ of the entire project cycle ‘so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality by transforming the mainstream’ (United Nations 1997). Gender mainstreaming is not an end in itself, but a means to the goal of gender equality. As a strategy, gender mainstreaming requires attention to gender perspectives, making them visible and showing the links between gender concerns and achievement of the goals of development. Moser et al. (1995) illustrated that indicators used to assess the gender impact of programmes and projects tend to measure progress in implementation rather than the actual outcomes. The outcome of gender mainstreaming can be reflected quantitatively (for example by the number of women participating in or benefiting from the project relative to men) or qualitatively (for example women benefiting equitably or being empowered to challenge gender imbalances and promote the transformation of gender relations). This paper focuses on the evaluation of gender mainstreaming in the project cycle, arguing that evaluation criteria should be considered in relation to the objectives of gender mainstreaming. A framework for evaluating gender mainstreaming in development projects is offered, together with suggestions for how to collect relevant quantitative and qualitative data to verify the evaluation.
DEW Consult 