Consulting and Process Monitoring for Gender Mainstreaming

Gender mainstreaming means “to take into consideration, from the very beginning and continuously, the different life-situations and interests of men and women in all societal projects,” with the goal of constantly improving equality of treatment with respect to gender. In terms of content and function this requires that the questions of equal opportunity and affirmative action, as well as a general gender perspective must be integrated in all issues, work areas and strategies. Thus as a comprehensive strategy gender mainstreaming has as its goal an across the board rethinking in all organizational areas, at all levels and at every phase of a program geared towards achieving equal opportunity. Mainstreaming, therefore, also has a procedural side. Mainstreaming, as a long-term and integrated approach, requires that implementation processes be actively and systematically organized and closely linked to organizational development processes.  

In this sense, introducing and anchoring gender mainstreaming involves, in terms of content and function, a complex integration task; while in terms of procedural issues it demands a often difficult organizational task. But how can an organization or institution deal with these issues?

• How can one determine that the goal of ‘equal opportunity for women and men’ will be looked upon as an integrated guiding principle for all decisions and tasks? What is needed from the beginning for an organizational and institutional anchoring, how can this be best set in motion, and how can gender mainstreaming as a process be stabilized, optimized and safeguarded?
• Which themes and fields of activity are important in terms of equal opportunity policies? Where are the gender aspects and perspectives? How can these be systematically integrated in given areas of work? Which steps are essential, which components are fundamental and which measures and instruments support implementation processes?
• Which criteria can be used to guarantee quality and long-term success when implementing gender mainstreaming?
• What is ‘best practices gender mainstreaming’ in specific organizational contexts?    

The Institute for Social-Ecological Research offers organizations comprehensive consulting during the introduction of gender mainstreaming. Working together with the organization, a custom-made implementation concept is developed that fits the organizational-institutional context and takes into account both the internal situation and external factors. During implementation the process is facilitated and monitored by institute members, both in terms of content and function, and procedurally. In this way the structures, work processes, procedures and specialist knowledge specific to an organization can be taken into account, and the responsible parties within the organization supported.  

This includes consulting and monitoring with respect to:

• strategy and conceptual development (including determination of comprehensive goals, establishing areas of responsibility, building implementation structures);
• development of change plans (for example, with respect to mission statement, corporate strategy, certification);
• conception and implementation of gender-oriented organization analyses to be used as the basis for working out a gender action plan;
• research of gender knowledge (expert knowledge, expert interviews, empirical social sciences studies, gender-specific secondary analysis of data and studies, etc.) relevant to an organization, as well as the preparation of this knowledge for its use;
• selection, conception and implementation of pilot projects;
• development, testing and implementation of implementation instruments (for example, gender impact assessments, guidelines, checklists, handouts, work tools);
• design and implementation of communication measures (organization-internal information meetings, workshops, and intranet tools, as well as organization-external communication);
• building and expanding gender knowledge and gender mainstreaming competencies (for example, with workshops, on-the-job training, flying experts, coaching), as well as building networking structures;
• development and implementation of assessment plans, building of monitoring procedures.  

ISOE offers organizations from various fields of expertise and with different institutional arrangements (administration, corporation, association, foundation, etc.) consulting and support during the entire implementation process and for each individual implementation step as well.

Contact Person:

Dr. Doris Hayn, hayn@isoe.de
Dr. Irmgard Schultz, schultz@isoe.de

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