Gender Mainstreaming in Alternative Development

UN Gender Policy

Mainstreaming a gender perspective is the process of assessing the implications of any planned action for both women and men. The strategy seeks to ensure that women and men benefit equally by integrating their experiences and concerns into the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres. The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality.

Background

In the early 1990s UNODC's Alternative Development projects began to include a women and development component. Gradually it became clear that by treating women as special beneficiaries in alternative development projects, women's issues often became mere appendages to development interventions. While the policy environment advocated involving women, it did not necessarily promote gender mainstreaming in policy programmes, project planning and implementation. In line with the mandate given in the Action Plan, UNODC strives to improve the gender focus of alternative development projects. The Guidelines on Gender Mainstreaming in Alternative Development prepared in 2000 were the first step towards this goal.

Experiences in the field

The guidelines are based on the findings and lessons learned regarding women's issues and gender mainstreaming in selected UNODC alternative development projects. Gender experts have studied project documents and visited project sites in Bolivia, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Pakistan and Peru. During the course of field visits, practices, barriers and constraints with respect to gender were assessed.

Goals

Based on the findings of the expert mission and the outcomes of a gender workshop at UNODC Headquarters in Vienna, a number of goals have been adopted that apply to UNODC Alternative Development programmes:

  1. To provide equitable access to alternative development resources and opportunities to both individuals and groups of women and men.
  2. To take measures to ensure women and men's equitable access to and full participation in power structures and decision-making in alternative development programmes.
  3. To contribute to the UN goal of reaching gender equality in staffing, particularly in higher management positions.
  4. To include gender assessment as part of the situation analysis for each alternative development project document.
  5. To generate and disseminate gender-disaggregated data through monitoring and evaluation of alternative development projects.
  6. To define the implementation and monitoring requirements concerning gender in the contractual agreements with executing, implementing and cooperating agencies.

Implementation

UNODC provides the following recommendations for implementation of gender mainstreaming in four key areas:

  1. UNODC policy and operations at the country level: Surveys on the drug situation, country profiles documents and other basic documents should contain information on the gender situation. Gender disaggregated data should be part of standard reporting requirements.
  2. Alternative development strategies and business plans: Identification of priorities and alternative development strategies should be based on gender disaggregated data collected in the preparation of Country Profiles or when conducting drug surveys.
  3. Formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of UNODC alternative development programmes and programme modules: For each step of the project cycle a list of key questions has to be addressed to ensure gender mainstreaming.
  4. UNODC staffing policy and management of alternative development projects: Gender awareness should be improved through training of target groups of villagers, government counterparts at district and provincial levels, project staff and visiting consultants. Gender focal points could also be established in selected field offices.