What is ‘Gender Mainstreaming’?

October 17, 2023

How can ‘Gender-Just’ be a company or a public policy? In order to better analyse the diversity and inclusion in the workforce, we need to analyse a company’s gender equality report. Recently, the UN secretary-general said that it would take around 300 years to achieve gender equality.

Mere slogans, fancy advertisements, and rainbow colouring of products doesn’t quite reflect the company’s intention of gender equality.

So, how to achieve this faster? The answer resides in gender mainstreaming.

Gender mainstreaming is a concept developed to improve the quality of public policies and projects by promoting gender equality and combating gender discrimination. The dimension of gender representation and gender-responsive content in all phases of the policy-making process. The underrepresentation of sexual minorities in the halls of power is bound to cost their well-being.

Let’s develop a gender action plan, my fellow feminist warriors.

YES, WE ARE 5 STEPS AWAY FROM A GENDER-JUST WORLD

Speak, Connect and Sensitize:

Do you know that respecting a person’s pronouns/gender identity can create a gender-sensitive workspace? To achieve this, we need to invest in gender-sensitisation programmes through awareness and training. This is how we can socialise gender issues. We can even detect the gender insensitivity virus through anonymous interviews with the employees.

Analyse, Institutionalise and Innovate

How to institutionalise gender issues i.e, to bring ideas into action? Development without gender inclusivity is no development at all. How can we move forward as a nation(or even a company) by leaving half of our workforce behind? So, the sex-seggregated data collection for policy making should be more inclusive in nature so as to represent all social dimensions of gender such as age, ethnicity, income and level of education. For example, when we examine the reason behind the school dropout rates among girls in India, we find that menstruation is one of the major causes. So, a national menstrual policy entailing free distribution of sanitary napkins, exclusive washroom for girl students is the way forward here.

Access the place, annex the policy

During the pandemic or any natural calamity, we have seen headlines about economic losses, but who bears the brunt of it most disproportionately? It’s the women and other sexual minorities who compromise, sacrifice and suffer endlessly. So, the relief services or any services in general must be assessed as their different effects on women and mens as the needs of men and women are different. It is important to answer these questions: who uses the services, who benefits more from a particular policy, have all groups equal access to information and are the offices providing the service structurally gendered and barrier free like an accessible workplace. A general example comprises lack of menstrual leaves and maintanace of hygiene in workplaces or at school may detrimentally impact the well-being of women and other minorities.

Involve,Include and Implement

Supposedly a company is making huge profits, the backstage story is it is exploiting the cheap labour of women in under-developed countries. They’re not formal employees, so there is a rampant violation of their rights. We can know this through a gender impact assessment. It refers to a gender balanced ratio at all levels of decision making through various strategies. It aims at achieving equal involvement of all stakeholders, especially the number of sexual minorities at the decision making levels. It can also help reduce the gender pay gaps as involvement of the less paid group can make an impact if equally involved in decision making. Research shows that even though in some industries, women make up more than half of its workforce, their absence at core levels makes policies in favour of them difficult. Here, the recruitment agency can play an impactful role.

Steering the wheel towards the gender equality path

It’s an open secret that girls from a young age are discouraged from taking up sports. This reflects upon the economy as a whole! Certain sectors like transport and information and communication technology comprise a low level of women workforce, so policies to encourage women and gender minorities to take up careers in the STEM oriented sectors becomes especially important. It also includes initiatives for encouraging women-led startups and MSMEs.

THE WAY FORWARD

To adopt gender mainstreaming as an institutionalized framework, there’s a need for a strong political will and development of a legal framework. After all this, how do we check the results ? As we do in the case of accounting and money, we use gender audit. It is a tool to assess the institutionalisation of gender issues through structure and processes and delivery of policies and services. It can be done by independent actors/agencies so as to maintain independence of the reports. If a policy’s gender indicators are marked green on all the above parameters, here we go!