Focus AreasWhere We WorkCentral Asia EU member states and Turkey South Caucasus South-East Europe Russia and Western CIS
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Gender MainstreamingGender mainstreaming represents a comprehensive strategy aimed at achieving greater gender equality. This is attained by integrating a gender perspective into existing mainstream institutions and all programmatic areas or sectors (e.g., trade, health, education, environment, transportation, etc.). In the United Nations system, gender mainstreaming was defined and adopted in 1997. The official UN definition of gender mainstreaming is: Over 10 years have passed since the United Nations formally recognized that gender equality is necessary to ensure equitable and sustainable human development. Since then, the integration of a gender perspective into programming and policy-making – Gender Mainstreaming – has become a key priority. UNDP has a two-pronged mandate for working towards gender equality: gender mainstreaming and women’s empowerment. Gender mainstreaming makes a gender dimension explicit in all policy sectors. Gender equality is no longer viewed as a “separate question,” but becomes a concern for all policies and programmes. Furthermore, a gender mainstreaming approach does not look at women in isolation, but looks at men and women—both as actors in the development process and as its beneficiaries. Unlike a “gender neutral” approach to development, a gender mainstreaming approach does not assume that policies and interventions will affect men and women, boys and girls, in the same way. Why gender mainstreaming in Europe and the CIS? More than fifteen years after the collapse of state socialism there is now great diversity among the countries in Europe and the CIS. While these countries may not have wide gender gaps in literacy and educational attainment, nonetheless women in post-socialist countries encounter gender-based inequalities, some of which have emerged due to the policies of the transition period while others are due to the re-emergence of certain conservative ideologies and hidden biases that disadvantage women. For this reason it is important for policy-makers and practitioners to embrace a gender mainstreaming approach in the design and implementation of policies in this region so as to better address the gender-based inequalities and forms of social exclusion. UNDP Gender Mainstreaming Toolkit for Europe and CISGender Mainsteraming in Practice: A Toolkit. 3rd edition (2007) UNDP Country Office experiences of mainstreaming gender
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Gender publications
Gender in Transition, 8th issue of Development and Transition Gender statistics
Gender in Bosnia & Herzegovina Thematic Bulleting [ more statistics ] Gender equality strategiesUNDP National Projects
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Gender Mainstreaming 