What is gender?
Distinguishing between sex and gender is important as sex is what determine us biologically whether gender is sociologically determined (Phillips, 2005).
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“Gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women. Aspects of sex will not vary substantially between different human societies, while aspects of gender may vary greatly.” Source: WHO 2012 |
In an operational vision, the concept of gender also includes the interests, involvement and adaption to females’ reality tending to support equality between males and females.
What is gender mainstreaming?
According to the UN, gender mainstreaming involves “ensuring that gender perspectives and attention to the goal of gender equality are central to all activities - policy development, research, advocacy/dialogue, legislation, resource allocation, and planning, implementation and monitoring of programmes and projects in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated” (UN, 2001). It generally involves undertaking gender analysis to produce gender indicators and producing statistics to guide the development of policies and programmes.
What is a gender analysis?
Gender analysis is a process (a tool) that helps to assess the differential impact of development policies and programmes on groups of males and females. Gender analysis of data disaggregated by sex can guide interventions on building capacity and commitments to gender-sensitive planning and programming activities by donor and partner organisations. It can also help identify equality issues at every level of decision making, and in the planning, implementation and monitoring of projects and policies (Hunt,2004).
References and further reading
European Commission (EC), 2011, Water Project Toolkit: Water resources management for sustainable development. Available online: http://www.aquaknow.net/water-project-toolkit
Hunt J., 2004, Introduction to gender analysis concepts and steps’, Development Bulletin, no. 64.
Phillips S.P, 2005, Defining and measuring gender: A social determinant of health whose time has come, International Journal for Equity in Health, 4:11.
UN, 2001, Gender mainstreaming: strategy for promoting gender equality. Available online: http://www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/pdf/factsheet1.pdf
WHO, 2012, Gender. Available online: http://www.who.int/topics/gender/en/
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