Gender Mainstreaming in Action
Gender mainstreaming is an approach used to integrate women's and men's needs and experiences into the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres. Mainstreaming aims to ensure women and men benefit equally from policies and programmes, and inequality is not perpetuated.
Organisations that most effectively mainstream gender into their activities have a gender-responsive organisational culture. This means everyone in an organisation responds positively to the requirement that they actively demonstrate their commitment to advance gender equality in their daily work and interactions.
Gender mainstreaming was advocated by the 1995 global women's conference in Beijing and has been adopted by the UN and widely within government and non-government spheres.