Social equity & governance
Gender Mainstreaming
Definition
Gender mainstreaming is "the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in all areas and at all levels", as defined by ECOSOC Agreed Conclusions 1997/2. It is a strategy for making women's as well as men's concerns and experiences an integral dimension of design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation so that inequality is not perpetuated; the ultimate goal is gender equality.
References
authoritative definition
primary source
Overview
What it means
Rather than confining gender to a specialist unit or women-only projects, mainstreaming makes gender analysis a routine part of every decision — budgets, infrastructure, climate policy, procurement. Endorsed at the 1995 Beijing conference and defined by ECOSOC in 1997, it explicitly does not replace targeted, women-specific measures but complements them.
How it is used
Governments, UN agencies, development banks, and companies adopt gender-mainstreaming policies, appoint focal points, run gender impact assessments, and report against system-wide action plans such as UN-SWAP.
Why it matters
Policies built on an assumed gender-neutral world reproduce inequality by default; mainstreaming is the standard institutional remedy, and underpins gender-responsive climate action under the UNFCCC. **Note:** 1179 and 1182 merge into this entry as phrasing variants of the same strategy.