The Orthodoxy of Gender Mainstreaming

Abstract

Gender mainstreaming has itself become something of a mainstream practice in much development work. As the theory and practice of mainstreaming has developed so too have a range of debates over what exactly gender mainstreaming can contribute to development. This article reflects on a gender mainstreaming intervention in the East African region to explore the role that gender mainstreaming can play in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. In this article we discuss how gender mainstreaming has, at times, functioned as a retreat from women's equality and is used to render feminist perspectives more palatable to those who resist them. Far from being a simple critique of gender mainstreaming this reflects the broader tensions and debates that are shaping what gender has come to mean in different contexts. This brings difficult tensions over who develops a gender mainstreaming agenda and who claims to have expertise on gender. We explore how much is at stake in claims to represent the ‘beneficiary’ groups and the ways that donor relationships with NGOs function in this regard. Gender mainstreaming has clearly offered a mechanism for legitimating attention to gender inequality that is sufficiently flexible to account for local contexts. However, this flexibility also means that gender mainstreaming can be co-opted for conservative means and the struggles over ownership of gender mainstreaming can just as easily hamper the achievement of gender equality as envisaged in the MDGs.