Has Gender Mainstreaming Failed? A Comment on International Development Agency Experiences in the South

This article addresses the public policy concept of gender mainstreaming and the extent of its efficacy since the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action (PfA) and the UN's adoption thereof in 1997. In addition, it seeks to contribute the the debate by reviewing the gender mainstreaming experiences of a specific group of institutions, rather than one government or organisation. Progress in gender mainstreaming can usefully be discussed in terms of four related stages; first, embracing the terminology of gender equality and gender mainstreaming; second, getting a gender mainstreaming policy into place; third, implementing gender mainstreaming in practice; and fourth, evaluating or auditing the practice of gender mainstreaming. This article briefly discusses each of these stages, and also flags some compartive issues that may be of relevance to those grappling with similar (and different) issues of gender mainstreaming in the north.