Gender Mainstreaming Guidelines

In Mateo-Sagasta, Javier; Al-Hamdi, M.; AbuZeid, K. (Eds.). Water reuse in the Middle East and North Africa: a sourcebook. Colombo, Sri Lanka: International Water Management Institute (IWMI). 122-141.

This is one of the sectoral guides which help to make up the Gender Management System (GMS) resource kit. GMS is an innovative system developed by the Commonwealth Secretariat for gender mainstreaming. This guide deals with how to mainstream gender issues in education.

Gender mainstreaming is the current international approach to promoting equality between women and men.It is based on the recognition that gender inequality operates at all levels and in all sectors of society, and thus needs to be addressed in the mainstream. It aims to ensure that women and men benefit equitably from all that society has to offer, and are equally empowered to affect its governance and decisions.The Gender Management System (GMS) is a holistic and system-wide approach to gender mainstreaming developed by the Commonwealth, for the use of governments in partnership with other stakeholders including civil society and the private sector. The GMS is a comprehensive network of structures, mechanisms and processes to enable governments and other organisations to contribute to gender equality through all policy-making, planning and activities.This Quick Guide has been produced to assist governments and other stakeholders using gender-sensitive indicators in the context of gender mainstreaming. It is an abridged version of the GMS publication Using Gender-Sensitive Indicators: A Reference Manual for Governments and Other Stakeholders.

Actively engaging women in climate mitigation activities can yield multiple benefits, including improved jobs, better livelihoods, and more equitable revenue flows. Efforts are moving forward to design climate funding mechanisms to help capture these benefits, but policy makers and other stakeholders need more guidance on designing gender-responsive climate policies and funding proposals. The guidelines in this publication fill this void. It is hoped that these guidelines would equip policy makers with pragmatic advice on how to mainstream gender into climate change mitigation actions and funding proposals. This publication reflects on applications for the guidelines as well as relationships between climate planning and funding proposal.

Articles discuss how gender mainstreaming has been understood in different organisations; provide examples of good work, which supports the empowerment of women; and look beyond gender mainstreaming to what new possibilities exist for transformation.