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Mainstreaming Gender in Global Public Policy
Article in International Feminist Journal of Politics · November 2003

DOI: 10.1080/1461674032000122740
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Mainstreaming Gender in Global Public
Policy
JACQUI TRUE
University of Auckland, New Zealand
Abstract –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Efforts to mainstream a gender perspective in global public policy have been prompted
by the proliferation of transnational networking among women’s movements. Collab-
oration among feminist researchers, advocates and policymakers is making gender
analysis part of the routine practices and institutions of global governance. For
feminist scholars of international relations, gender mainstreaming in global public
policy opens up an important new area for critical scrutiny. How do feminist ideas
about gender get translated into global policy? To what extent is gender mainstreaming
transforming policy outcomes and the process of policymaking? Here, I explore the
factors that have given rise to gender mainstreaming across nation-states and
international organizations. I also consider those factors that currently serve to
constrain and weaken the effectiveness of mainstreaming initiatives from a feminist
perspective. I conclude that gender mainstreaming is an open-ended and potentially
transformative project that depends on what feminist scholars, activists and policy-
makers collectively make of it. The major question raised by this article is not how
feminist scholars and activists can avoid cooptation by powerful institutions, but
whether we can afford not to engage with such institutions, when the application of
gender analysis in their policymaking is clearly having political effects beyond
academic and feminist communities.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Keywords
gender mainstreaming, global public policy, institutional transformation, gender
analysis, policy entrepreneurship, transnational networks
International Feminist Journal of Politics, 5:3 November 2003, 368–396

ISSN 1461–6742 print/ISSN 1468–4470 online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/1461674032000122740
INTRODUCTION
‘Gender mainstreaming’ surfaced as a concept in the early 1990s (Andersen

1993; Razavi and Miller 1995; Council of Europe 1998). It describes efforts
to scrutinize and reinvent processes of policy formulation and implementation
across all issue areas and at all levels from a gender-differentiated perspective,
to address and rectify persistent and emerging disparities between men and
women. In contrast to anti-discrimination law and policy that seek to remove
institutional barriers to women’s equality with men, gender mainstreaming
starts from the recognition that gender differences shape policy processes and
outcomes. As it has travelled from the realm of feminist theory to local and
global policy application, gender mainstreaming has been highly contested.
Critics see mainstreaming as encouraging a possible shift away from a focus
on ‘women’s issues’ and the elimination of specific programmes targeted at
women. From this perspective mainstreaming is seen as a part of a broader
instrumental-capitalist restructuring agenda that has created an élite cadre of
gender experts without opening the political space or changing the material
conditions for women at the grassroots (Alvarez 1999; Eschle 2000: 215–6).
However, mainstreaming can also be understood as an umbrella term that
includes gender-differentiated policy analysis as well as the whole range
of contemporary innovations designed to achieve more gender-equitable
outcomes, such as gender representation quotas and equal opportunity
employment practices. Gender mainstreaming strategies ‘may accept certain
norms and institutions provisionally but challenge them at an appropriate
time’, thus not precluding fundamental social change (Ackerly 2001: 317).
Taken together, mainstreaming initiatives balance the goal of gender equality
with the need to recognize gender difference to bring about a transformation
of masculine-as-norm institutional practices in state and global governance.
Furthermore, the process of mainstreaming a gender perspective involves
actors working in multiple locations, inside governance institutions, within
epistemic and activist communities in local and global civil society.
Mainstreaming was established as a global strategy for achieving gender
equality, and in turn for achieving sustainable economic development in the
1995 Beijing Platform for Action ratified by all United Nations member states.
It is now incumbent upon nation-states and international organizations
to carry out gender mainstreaming. As such, mainstreaming has achieved
widespread endorsement by individual governments, regional supra-state
bodies such as the European Union, the Nordic Council of Ministers and the
Organization of American States, and global governance institutions, notably
the United Nations and its various agencies, the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the Council of Europe. The General
Assembly of the United Nations passed a resolution in 1996 adopting gender
mainstreaming as the official policy of the international organization.
A number of feminist scholars have seen gender mainstreaming strategies
as a logical extension of ‘women in development’ (WID) efforts to promote
––––––––––––––––– Jacqui True/Mainstreaming gender in global public policy 369

gender equality in the economic development work of state institutions and
international agencies (Tinker 1990; Goetz 1998). The WID paradigm sought
to move women from the margin to the mainstream of policy by creating
projects with a special focus on women. In the late 1980s the women in
development approach (WID) evolved into the gender and development
paradigm (GAD).1 Feminist critics argued that WID strategies of ‘integration’
tended to incorporate women into the existing framework of institutions and
policies without changing them, whereas the GAD paradigm incorporated a
gender perspective that aimed to transform the broader social and institutional
context that produces gender injustice and unequal outcomes ( Jahan 1997).
GAD studies sought to reform gender-blind multilateral agencies, such as the
World Bank, and government aid policies, that assumed men were the
normative agents and distributors of development, while failing to respond
effectively to the basic needs and economic goals of developing countries.
Many GAD specialists contended that development projects for women
contain lessons that need to be extended to a country’s whole model of social
and economic development. The shift from the GAD paradigm to gender
mainstreaming in the 1990s reflected a strategic change in language and the
globalization of that agenda to address gendered outcomes and promote
institutional change in the ‘developed’ world as well as the ‘developing’
world.
There is considerable debate about the shift to gender mainstreaming, and
generally, the way in which the category of gender is being used as a strategic
tool at the global level to transform policy and the unequal relationship
between women and men.2 Some women from developing countries saw this
new language potentially further marginalizing women’s concerns just at the
time when the importance of women’s activities in economic development
was being recognized by governments and international aid agencies (Baden
and Goetz 1997).3 Its supporters defend gender mainstreaming as an agenda-
setting strategy in the context of current efforts to devolve government to
make it both more efficient and more democratic. An OECD ministerial level
conference on gender mainstreaming showed governments how main-
streaming can promote strong economies, competitiveness and growth (see
OECD 2000). The conference noted many examples of gender mainstreaming’s
payoffs, for example, the promotion of women-owned businesses as an
untapped source of economic growth and job creation. It also stressed how
gender analysis can reveal biases in government policies that are indirectly
barriers to the achievement of strong economies, for example, taxation
systems that discriminate against women who are secondary wage earners or
part-time workers. Such policies unintentionally discourage women’s eco-
nomic activity, and in turn, negatively affect both labour market supply and
economic growth (as in the worst case scenario of Arab countries, see the
report, UNDP 2002).
In contrast to some of the more optimistic predictions, recent studies of
multilateral development institutions suggest that gender mainstreaming’s
370 International Feminist Journal of Politics –––––––––––––––––––––––––––

ability to change institutional practices is seriously compromised by two
main factors; the lack of resources, both financial and human capital in the
form of gender expertise inside institutions and the conflict between the
feminist goal of gender equity achieved through state-led redistribution and
the neoliberal goal of efficiency achieved through market-driven economic
growth. This article analyses some of the factors that have brought gender
analysis into the global policy mainstream and assesses some of the factors
that continue to constrain and weaken the mainstreaming agenda, building
on the critical feminist attention that has been paid to mainstreaming
policies in various state and international institutions.4 Discourses of gender
mainstreaming have now been extended to a whole range of global public
policy issues, including not only economic development policies but also
debates on international peace and security, ‘free’ trade, human rights and
democratization around the world (see Riddell-Dixon 1999; Engstrom 2000).
A key question is whether these new mechanisms for gendering policymaking
are a significant advance.
THE GLOBAL DIFFUSION OF ‘GENDER MAINSTREAMING’
Gender mainstreaming includes attempts to establish a gender-equality

perspective across all policy areas, even where the gender issues at stake may
be not be immediately apparent, as in foreign security policy, and where the
impact of the policy on gender relations is often indirect, as in macroeconomic
policy. Gender mainstreaming is neither conceived of as an achievement in
itself nor as a liberal policy to include women in decision-making roles,
although this may be one of its effects. Rather, it is conceived as a strategy
to re-invent the processes of policy design, implementation and evaluation
by taking into account the gender-specific and often diverse interests and
values of differently situated women and men. Every policy or piece of
legislation should be evaluated from the perspective of whether or not it
reduces or increases gender inequalities. It is assumed that unfair and unequal
gender outcomes can be redressed, if not eradicated, by this gender-sensitive
policy process. Gender equality and justice thus rely on the creative and
technical capacity of gender analysis and gender specialists in national and
global governance institutions. Just as policy analysts regularly carry out
cost–benefit analyses or environmental impact studies, they are now utilizing
gender-disaggregated data (including census data on women’s unpaid work),
conducting ‘gender-audits’ or ‘gender-proofing’ of policies, and developing
specific policy tools for the task, such as gender or women’s budgets which
reveal the impact of all government spending – not just specifically targeted
allotments – on women and men (see Budlender and Sharp 1998; Elson 1999).
Efforts to render policymaking gender-sensitive have been facilitated by
the rapid spread of new national institutional mechanisms for coordinating
gender mainstreaming in over 100 countries. In previous work, Michael

Mintrom and I argued that the transnational networking of women’s organiza-
tions, more than national dynamics or institutions and international or
intergovernmental pressures, provided the political momentum and societal
pressure for the establishment of gender mainstreaming institutions. Our
study of 157 country cases found that transnational networks, in particular,
the type of presence at United Nations global women’s conferences and the
number of local linkages to international women’s NGOs were both strongly
associated with the adoption of national institutional mechanisms designed
to promote greater gender equity (True and Mintrom 2001). The policy
entrepreneurship of gender advocates in the executive level of government
was also found to be instrumental in leveraging policy change at the national
level, especially in democratic states. ‘Mainstreamed’ institutions, even when
they are weak, provide a platform for change by encouraging new alliances
and networking among feminist activists, scholars and policymakers inside
and outside of government. For example, mainstreaming in the European
Commission (2000) now requires all requests for grants from the European
Social Fund to incorporate a prior gender impact assessment. As a result of
this commitment in the EC, new alliances between gender activists and
policymakers at the local government level have been forged to take advan-
tage of funding opportunities (Woodward 2001; also Pollack and Hafner-
Burton 2000). In Uganda, mainstreaming initiatives following United Nations
Development Program best practices have sought to make each and every
government ministry responsible for designating a high ranking official as a
gender focal point, and for training all analysts to initiate policy reviews on
progress made towards gender equality (United Nations Commission on
the Status of Women 1999). Yet, when the National Resistance Movement
government attempted to marginalize the gender component of the restruc-
tured Ministry of Gender and Community Development under the guise of
‘mainstreaming’, gender advocates in the government and Ugandan women’s
organizations worked together to provoke a public outcry and overturn the
Government’s decision (Kwesiga 1998).
The changes in domestic norms and institutions that arise from gender
mainstreaming initiatives have the potential for reshaping international
relations and policy at the global level, producing some integration of gender
concerns in state foreign policies and opening global governance institutions
to further pressure from women’s non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
In the world of foreign policymaking and international security, gender
injustice is increasingly acknowledged as a key concern due to gender
mainstreaming efforts on national and global levels. For example, after
several years of discussion and negotiation, justice ministries of the fifteen
European Union member states have harmonized their operational definition
of human trafficking and their minimum jail sentence for the crime. According
to their new gender-sensitive definition, a trafficker is someone who uses
‘coercion, force and deceit to exploit women and children sexually and in
other ways’ (British Broadcasting Service 2001). This common EU foreign

policy on sex trafficking is the successful outcome of transnational policy
coordination among gender-mainstreamed institutions. The mainstreaming
process within national institutions achieved a major shift in the framing of
sex trafficking from an illegal immigration issue to an issue of women’s
human rights. In their policy reframing, EU member governments benefited
from the research and advocacy of transnational women’s NGOs, who were,
in turn, supported by the European Commission in its own efforts to put
gender mainstreaming into practice (European Commission 2000; Mazey
2000).
Another example reveals the potential for gender mainstreaming initiatives
to change global public policy. The high politics of international security
policy is no longer exempt from the agenda-setting efforts of women’s
movements. In October 2000 the United Nations Security Council for the first
time designated a special session for discussing gender issues in international
peace and security. Security Council members openly debated the impact of
war and armed conflict on women, violence against women and girls, gender
issues in peacekeeping missions, the role of women in rebuilding societies in
the post-conflict phase, and women’s participation in peace negotiations and
decision-making processes. 5 The Security Council session lasted two days
and produced a Security Council Resolution, which recognizes the importance
of a gender perspective on international peace and security and for gender
expertise to inform the planning of peace and security operations.6 The
Department of Peacekeeping Operations’ 2000 report, Mainstreaming a Gender
Perspective in Multidimensional Peace Operations (United Nations 2000),
noted inter alia that a critical mass of women in peacekeeping missions
fosters confidence in local populations, enhances peace negotiations and
breaks down traditional views of women in local communities, thus affecting
the participation of local women in decision-making positions in the post-
conflict phase (see also Mazurana with Piza-Lopez 2002).
These two recent examples suggest that global policymakers are beginning
to take gender inequality and injustice seriously, although International
Relations scholarship has often lagged behind, not recognizing the signifi-
cance and implications of gendered power relations for global cooperation
and conflict (see Enloe 1997; Tickner 1997). Despite this IR scholarly neglect,
efforts to mainstream gender in foreign and multilateral policies require more
critical feminist analysis. Do the ideas and interests involved in gender
mainstreaming enhance the potential for the transformation of global politics
and policy? How might we expand the possibilities for mainstreaming to
become a feminist transformational politics?
A RADICAL FEMINIST FUTURE OR A LIBERAL POLITICS?
At the global level, mainstreaming has been both facilitated and inhibited by
some important structuring factors. Gender concerns are routinely mar-

ginalized and good intentions often do not translate into meaningful social
change. The factors enabling the shift of gender concerns from the margin to
the centre of policymaking explain why mainstreaming occurs even when
male-dominated governments and international organizations resist, and
when democratic accountability is threatened by the structural power of
global capital. By paying attention to enabling and constraining factors in
the mainstreaming process we see both its limits and its possibilities as a
feminist strategy for global social change.
Enabling Factors
There are at least three enabling factors that have served to put gender
mainstreaming on the global policymaking agenda: the spread of a new
language for promoting women’s rights and gender equality around the
world, the proliferation of women’s networks and transnational linkages, and
the growing numbers of feminist-oriented or gender-sensitive women and
men in foreign policy and global governance leadership positions. Three
groups with similar goals but different perspectives have been at the forefront
of this change. Feminist scholars have created the conceptual language
and causal stories/ideologies that underlie gender mainstreaming initiatives.
Feminist activists have forged transnational networks to leverage political
support, the sharing of information, resources and strategies, and feminist
policymakers have built bridges to women’s NGOs and feminist research while
working inside institutions to change them. In general, these networked
feminist actors have sought constructive engagement with institutions. Unlike
larger and more unified environmental movements they have not employed
confrontational political tactics (O’Brien et al. 2000: 33).
DISCURSIVE CHANGE
Efforts to bring a gender perspective to bear on global policy, whether it is
through the advancement of human rights and democratization or through
the critical analysis of global macroeconomic policy, rest on the persuasive
language and the conceptual frameworks devised by feminist scholars and
activists. Words and concepts literally make it possible to think and to
see what was previously unthinkable or hidden. Powerful slogans such as
‘democracy without women is no democracy’, ‘women’s rights are human
rights and human rights are women’s rights’, ‘sexual harassment’ and ‘violence
against women’ have changed reality by changing the way we see and think
about the world around us. However, over time people grow immune to such
slogans as they become routine and take on almost ritualistic qualities.
Sometimes this suggests that the words have lost their original meaning, and
thus their political edge. But it may also reflect a change in actual practices,
as the meanings conveyed by the words become readily accepted norms.
Changes in language and meaning reflect broader social change processes, as

Robin Morgan observes in her comments following the Fourth World confer-
ence on women in Beijing:
Language once used only by radical feminists has entered the so-called policy
mainstream. I can remember being criticized for decrying women’s oppression
and invoking liberation and power as opposed to using less threatening words
like discrimination and equality. Benazir Bhutto’s speech embraced all five of
those words. I can remember our first buttons reading, ‘All Women are Working
Women’ (for a welfare rights demonstration in the early 1970s) and how we
had to keep explaining just what that shocking concept meant. Now there it
was, in bold letters, on the front of the ILO press packet. We have a long journey
ahead in terms of action, the words and ideas – lovely and seductive, dangerous –
have arrived.
(Morgan 1996: 79)
Words and meanings emerging from second wave feminist theorizing can
now be found encoded in laws and policies, where they are subject to
interpretation and contestation as well as implementation. In some instances,
however, they may have lost their oppositional weight.
At the four United Nations women’s conferences, nation-states were
required to address and then vote on statements that deplored the injustices
faced by women and girls the world over. With each new world conference and
campaign, the language of gender injustice has become more institutionalized,
more global and more persuasive. Statements are read out aloud, different
groups and campaigns use the same documents and similar arguments are
made to advocate change on behalf of women in vastly different local social
contexts, often on the same day – as in the global ‘sixteen days to end
violence against women campaign’ (see Friedman 2000). Feminists have
hoped that, as the language of the Platform for Action or of the Declaration
Against Violence Against Women are quoted and repeated from one confer-
ence to the next and as states begin to conform their practices or at least
their discourse to the norms expressed therein, some of what is agreed upon
at global conferences may eventually become rules of customary international
law to be further applied and implemented by local and international activists
and institutions (Riles 2000: 8).
Ideas emanating from transnational feminist fora not only affect state laws
and policies; they open up new possibilities for local women’s organizing. By
participating in these discourses, local women’s groups have been able to tap
international funding sources and strengthen themselves organizationally,
while at the same time generating an indigenous gender discourse (Evans
2000: 233). After communism, in the countries of Eastern Europe there was
no language, certainly no untarnished language, with which to express a
gender perspective. However, engagement with western feminist concepts and
theorizing provided an inspiration, and sometimes a counterpoint for new
thinking and the creation of a new conceptual language in the post-socialist

context. For instance, after 1989 the term ‘sexual harassment’ was imported
into the Czech Republic. Initially it was poorly translated as ‘teasing’ (har-
ašenı́), and as such, rejected. But later, local advocates of women’s rights
found a better word (obtěžovanı́) for interpreting the meaning of the North
American term in the Czech language. The new legal concept of sexual
harassment subsequently entered Czech discourse making visible forms of
gender discrimination and harm at work hitherto taken for granted and
opening up a public discussion about power relations between men and
women, taboo under communism. Thus, feminist discursive frameworks
constitute an important ground for new collective identities and political
action. In the form of access to international legal instruments, such as the
United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women (CEDAW) or European Union law, they help to articulate
women’s interests in a range of different settings, while also bolstering the
local legitimacy of women’s groups.
Feminist scholars point out that gender issues will only be mainstreamed
in global policy when gender issues are given substantive meaning in specific
social contexts and policymaking processes (Ackerly 2000; Alvarez 2000). An
example of how the very language of gender equality and women’s rights
enables social change can be seen in the localization of CEDAW in two
different contexts. In India, in 1992, women’s NGOs were able to have a local
group of social workers arrested for gang-raping a woman colleague, despite
the lack of a local sexual assault law. Since there was no existing local or
national legal mechanism they could draw on, they used the language of
CEDAW, which India had ratified, to bring justice in this case. Similarly, when
Croatia presented its second report to the CEDAW in New York, to comply
with their ratification of the international treaty, a Croatian women’s NGO
presented its ‘shadow report’ as well. Back in Croatia the Government
publicized neither its report nor the critical comments made by the United
Nations Commission on the Status of Women Committee. Instead, Croatian
NGOs circulated these comments on Croatia’s compliance with the inter-
national treaty and their public disclosure by the local NGO community
provoked outrage in the parliament over the Government’s secrecy, and
stimulated a broader public debate about women’s rights (Pansieri 1999;
UNIFEM 1999).
Governments report to the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), a
United Nations body made up of judges from member states, that meets twice
a year (in January and June) in New York to review member states’ compliance
with the CEDAW treaty. This reporting process both promotes the diffusion
of the language of women’s rights and encourages transnational collaboration
among different actors, including governments, women’s non-governmental
organizations, women experts, the United Nations and other global govern-
ance institutions and the legal profession in any number of countries.7
Collaboration among these groups, in turn, further spurs the gender main-
streaming process in law and policy. NGOs now routinely present ‘shadow

reports’ to the Commission on the Status of Women in New York. Even in the
case of authoritarian states, these reports usually provide a more critical
evaluation than the official government reports.
As well as serving a monitoring function at the global level, shadow reports
have provided a focal point around which domestic women’s groups have
cohered as a national network in many countries. For example, the production
of a non-governmental shadow report for the United Nations Beijing confer-
ence in Australia gave rise to a new national coalition of women’s organiza-
tions, CAPOW (Coalition of Australian Participating Organizations of Women),
affiliated with a transnational ‘network of networks’, the International
Women’s Tribune in New York City. CAPOW has generated much new
local and transnational networking that has greatly strengthened Australian
women’s lobbying at the national level. Similarly in Japan, the impetus
of international reporting stimulated women activists to create new non-
governmental organizations and form the first national women’s network,
the Beijing–Japan Accountability Caucus (B–JAC) (Masumi 2000). Although
there was no NGO forum at the Beijingò5 women 2000 special session of the
United Nations General Assembly, Japanese women’s NGOs rallied together to
submit an alternative country report on the progress made towards gender
equality in Japan since Beijing. This organizing of women’s groups for the
purpose of international reporting and global conferencing has consequently,
often unintentionally, increased the effectiveness of women’s lobbying of
local and national governments.
TRANSNATIONAL NETWORKING
The mobilization of networks of women’s organizations connected across
domestic and international settings has made gender injustices and inequities
salient issues and placed gender mainstreaming on the policy agendas of
global governance institutions and national governments. These transnational
networks serve as conduits not only of information about differing policy
models and gender mainstreaming initiatives at the local and national levels
but also – and crucially – of knowledge concerning alternative political
strategies and how they may be applied to further promote gender policy
change.8 Although women have been organizing at the global level for more
than 150 years, the United Nations International Women’s Decade (1975–
85) marked a new era in women’s transnational activism (Stienstra 1994).
Thousands of women participated in the four UN women’s conferences in
Mexico City (1975), Copenhagen (1980), Nairobi (1985) and Beijing (1995) –
the largest United Nations world conference ever held (West 1999). As Tinker
and Jaquette note, ‘tens of thousands more women were mobilised by the
process in countries around the world’ (1987: 419) in a proliferation of
women’s networking. This networking involved many local, national and
regional conferences in preparation for the ‘major event’ world conferences
and many follow-up meetings and actions to ensure their outcomes were
implemented (see Alvarez 1999). The years since 1975 have seen phenomenal

growth in the number of women’s international non-governmental organiza-
tions.9 Women’s international NGOs have empowered the United Nations
World conferences and in turn, the United Nations has opened spaces for
their global influence, though not always with enthusiasm (see Clark et al.
1998).10
During the Decade for Women, a new breed of non-governmental organiza-
tions emerged. With ties to each other, they took an innovative network form
in contrast to the hierarchical form of most state bureaucracies and many
NGOs (Karl 1999). The social theorist, Manuel Castells contends that the
de-centred form of these new organizations ‘mirrors and counteracts the
networking logic of domination in the information society’ (1997: 362).
Women’s movements have been pioneers in extending the principles of the
networked society to facilitate social change.11 Networking has brought
women together from the grassroots to the national and global levels to share
resources and information often unavailable to state bureaucracies, and to
exchange ‘best practice’ strategies for mobilizing societies and pressuring
governments. As Charlotte Bunch remarked before the 1995 Beijing women’s
conference ‘while the success of efforts [for example, to eradicate violence
against women] depends on local and national action, global attention in
Beijing and pressure on governments there can build the momentum that
women can use when they return home’ (1995: 232).
Most international relations scholars who have noted the influence of
transnational advocacy networks have been concerned primarily with changes
in definitions of state interests and identities as a result of transnational
influence. This causal relationship has been termed ‘the boomerang effect’
(Keck and Sikkink 1999: 12–13; Risse et al. 2000). But transnational feminist
networks have served to effect change at the global level as well as at the
national level, by mainstreaming gender issues in multilateral institutions
and policies. Constructivist international relations scholars argue that norms
diffuse to states and societies through the tutelage of international organiza-
tions and through peer demonstration effects in ‘international society’ (Finne-
more 1996; Armstrong 1998). Given their influence, feminists contend that
the institutional norms of global governance organizations need to reflect
greater gender sensitivity and gender equality, lest they become part of the
problem rather than the solution to global injustice.12 Some global governance
organizations have been more receptive to feminist interventions than others.
O’Brien et al. (2000: 34) argue that due to their more compatible worldviews,
women’s networks have had greater success in working with United Nations
social agencies than with multilateral economic institutions such as the
World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization.
However, Meyer and Prügl (1999: 12) contend that relatively centralized
international organizations such as the World Bank have actually been more
receptive to gender issues than decentralized organizations such as the United
Nations Development Program, where policy is influenced to a greater extent
by aid-recipient governments.13

O’Brien et al. (2000: 43) provide interesting insight into the impact of one
feminist campaign, ‘Women’s Eyes on the Bank’, to monitor and transform
an international organization. Launched at the Beijing women’s conference
by a petition signed by 900 activists, ‘Women’s Eyes on the Bank’ has resulted
in significant mainstreaming initiatives, including the establishment of an
External Consultative Gender Group, a Gender Analysis and Policy section
and an increase in the number of Bank gender specialists. O’Brien et al. argue
that there has been a ‘sea change’ in the strategies of women’s movements
from ‘challenging the Bank’s policies’ to seeing it ‘as a potential ally in
dialogues between women’s groups and their own governments’. Feminist
economist, Suzanne Bergeron (this issue) is sceptical of such dialogues with
the Bank. She argues that the ‘new paradigm’ of development embodied in
the Bank’s ‘Challenge of Inclusion’ initiative can only frame women’s needs
and goals within the context of inclusion into the global cash nexus.
Mainstreaming may change the practices of global governance institutions
like the World Bank by changing their relationship to the advocacy efforts of
local women’s movements. But, at the same time, it may allow the Bank and
other such institutions to appropriate the language of advocacy in order to
co-opt social movement resistance to their broader neoliberal structural
adjustment agenda.
GENDER POLICY ENTREPRENEURS

Gender policy entrepreneurs are able to see how proposing particular policy
innovations could alter the nature of policy debates. They strive to see
problems and issues from a range of perspectives, including the perspectives
of differently situated groups of women and men. As individuals they are
socially adept and able to mix in a variety of social and political settings to
acquire valuable information and use their contacts to pursue policy change
for gender justice. Gender policy entrepreneurs may make different arguments
to different groups while keeping the overall story consistent. They are
strategic team builders in the sense that they think about the type of coalition
best able to support their issue, or a series of issues over time (Mintrom 2000).
Gender policy entrepreneurs often lead by example, creating prefigurative
forms of the policy innovations they seek to introduce more broadly. For
example, gender entrepreneurs in the Australian Office for the Status of
Women created a ‘women’s budget’ to show other branches and agencies of
government how their spending affected men and women differently, with
potentially inefficient and inequitable results, and how they could improve
their budgeting by making it gender sensitive. The women’s budget pro-
gramme has since become very influential at the international level. Following
Australia, South Africa, the Philippines and at least eight other countries
have adopted women’s budgets. The United Nations and the Commonwealth
Secretariat have promoted gender budgeting in developing countries, and the
Women’s Budget Group has recommended it in the United Kingdom. Gender

budgeting has also been used as a demonstration project by women’s NGO
projects in Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique, Canada and the USA.14
In the gender and development literature, scholars have stressed the
importance of internal advocates of gender change in global governance
institutions, who seek support from outside constituencies to generate political
pressure and good information. In this way, gender-sensitive men and women
acting as policy entrepreneurs have been able to persuade others within
development institutions of the merit of implementing gender initiatives
(Razavi and Miller 1995; Kardam 2000). These gender entrepreneurs or
‘heroes’ (Woodward 2001) are key facilitators of the mainstreaming process
within and across states. Two cases serve to illustrate this point.
United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s efforts to bring
together women foreign ministers from around the world to discuss policy
issues of common concern is a good example of gender policy entrepre-
neurship. In October 1999, for example, foreign ministers from fourteen
nations wrote a letter to Kofi Annan, the Secretary General of the United
Nations, calling for measures that would end the widespread transnational
trafficking of human beings – predominantly women and children – in the
service of prostitution, domestic servitude and other forms of profiteering.15
These actions were prompted by the networking efforts of international
women’s non-governmental organizations to place sex trafficking on the
agendas of individual governments and international organizations, and the
new presence of feminist-oriented women in foreign policy decision-making
roles who have been reaching out to the women’s NGO community. In her
role as US Secretary of State, Madeleine K. Albright has made special efforts
to promote global gender issues. As she said in a speech given at the
Department of State in 1999:
Working with a variety of agencies and forward-looking NGOs . . . we have

made tremendous gains . . . from curbing violence against women to fostering
participation in the global economy. Meanwhile, we have brought international
women’s issues into the mainstream of our foreign policy, which is right where
they belong. 16
Several diplomatic missions of United Nations member states complained

about Secretary Albright’s effort to put women on the agenda and, in
particular they objected to the way she discussed policy issues with other
women foreign ministers from around the world. Because male foreign
ministers represented their countries, the countries reasoned, they were being
excluded from important high-level opportunities to network and deliberate.
Secretary Albright was quick to retort, if these countries feel excluded, then
they should appoint a women foreign minister.
In this endeavour and others, Secretary Albright can be seen as a gender
policy entrepreneur seeking to influence the global agenda. How she went
about the task of challenging the policy agenda is instructive. By assembling

women foreign ministers from around the world, Albright calculated that
people sharing two key identities – as women and foreign ministers – could
agree to new emphases and perspectives, and form a base from which to
leverage significant broader policy change. Albright created a strategic coali-
tion that could transcend cultural and political differences to forge inter-
national support for women’s issues. The commitment among these women
foreign ministers to meet face to face regularly, to take each other’s telephone
calls and to promote a unified front on issues of common concern, so far on
issues that have a particular impact on women, suggests the potential for a
gradual power shift in global politics and policy.17 Transnational policy
coordination and inter-governmental networking of this sort raises the profile
of gender perspectives on a range of global public policy issues. However, it
should be noted that in her tenure as US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
did not persuade the United States Congress to ratify the CEDAW treaty, and
while the United States has a state foreign policy for women’s human rights
this has hardly been extended to its domestic policy agenda (see Moravcsik
2001).
World Bank President James Wolfensohn has also acted as a gender
entrepreneur. According to insider informants, Wolfensohn came away from
the 1995 United Nations women’s conference with the impression that ‘a
coherent and massive women’s movement was pressuring these demands’ for
gender mainstreaming (O’Brien et al. 2000: 53).18 As a result, O’Brien et al.
quote women inside the Bank as saying that since his appointment as Bank
President he has become ‘a tremendous positive resource for change’ within
the multilateral institution (2000: 53).19 After attending the Beijing women’s
conference, Wolfensohn set up an External Gender Consultative Group of
fourteen women’s movement activists to dialogue with top Bank management
officials on an annual basis. He required Bank staff to produce regional
gender action plans, annual reports on progress in addressing gender issues
in development. As well, he launched gender flagship projects on girl’s
education and women’s development, and included gender equity in the
Bank’s internal institutional reform process (O’Brien et al. 2000: 43–4). Critics
of the Bank blame Wolfensohn’s friendliness to NGOs, attraction to the latest
development fad (for example: empowerment) and a ‘soft-headed’ (read:
feminine) approach, for the Bank’s failure to deliver on the neoliberal goals
of economic growth and efficiency in the developing world (Fidler 2001).
Nonetheless, Wolfensohn’s example holds a lesson, that is, we should recog-
nize the importance of having internal advocates for change inside institu-
tions, especially high-level leaders who support gender equality goals and are
prepared to pursue them practically from above in the context of broader
institutional initiatives to increase transparency, responsiveness and inclu-
siveness of global governance.
Some feminists who have studied both public and private institutions have
argued that a ‘critical mass’ of women, usually about 30 per cent is needed
to transform a previously male-dominated organization’s standard operating

procedures and allow women strategically to advance a feminist agenda from
inside an organization (see Moss-Kanter 1993). The research on feminists,
who enter state bureaucracies with the explicit intention of using their
position to advance feminist objectives, is suggestive. In Australia and Canada
these ‘femocrats’ have played key roles in policy formation, in shifting the
terms of debates and giving legitimacy to women’s interests, issues and
perspectives from within the bureaucracy (Chappell 2000). Australian feminist
scholars, Bob Connell (1990), Rosemary Pringle and Sophie Watson (1992)
argue that the state is not inherently patriarchal but an ongoing construction,
erratic in its discourses and practices. In their generalization from the
Australian case, feminists can ‘play the state’ by inserting their agenda into
its myriad agencies and institutional practices, especially when they can
count on a strong, relatively autonomous women’s movement and a commit-
ted cadre of feminist bureaucrats.
The implications of this research could be extended to global policymaking
institutions, although there have been no studies to date that investigate
changes in the institutional culture of international organizations as a result
of the presence of feminist-oriented women. Such a study of the United
Nations would be timely as it gets close to achieving a critical mass of women
employees in its professional and leadership ranks. In 2002 the United Nations
Deputy Secretary General was a Canadian diplomat Louise Frechette, the High
Commissioner for Human Rights was Mary Robinson, former Irish President,
the World Health Organization was headed by former Norwegian Prime
Minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland and the United Nations Children’s Educa-
tional Fund, the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, the World
Food Programme and World Population Fund were all led by women. However,
the United Nations failed to reach its target of 50/50 parity by 2000 (see
Reanda 1999). Last year just 30 per cent of UN personnel at all levels were
female. Likewise, in the United States State Department, where Secretary
Albright has said ‘women held seven of the top ten jobs since 1993’ (during
the Clinton administration), it would be interesting to have some qualitative
evidence to assess whether increasing numbers of women managers increases
the likelihood that a gender perspective will be mainstreamed in foreign
policy.20
There is considerable scepticism among feminists however, not only about
gender mainstreaming but also about the role of professional feminists in
the process of global social change. Post-colonial feminist scholars have
pointed out that, while the integrating women into development paradigm
may have failed to empower women in much of the ‘Third World’, it has
served the interests of western élite women. In her study of the World
Health Organization and HIV/Aids policy for Africa, Karen Booth (1998)
found that feminist-oriented, international bureaucrats were ultimately
accountable to member nation-states and not to women’s movements: ‘If
they challenged nation-state’s rights to control women, their social and
sexual activity’, they would ‘challenge their own legitimacy as experts in

an intergovernmental technical bureaucracy’ (Booth 1998: 135). Without
closer connections to women’s constituencies in global civil society and the
support of activist states that are advocates for women’s rights, femocrats
in international organizations can only achieve constrained social change.
Dependent on states for their operational funding, international organizations
are ultimately concerned with their own political survival and legitimacy.
A realist international relations perspective would come to an even more
pessimistic conclusion about the ability of feminists and feminism to tran-
scend national interests given the prevailing structure of the international
system.21
Constraining Factors
There are two major factors shaping and constraining efforts to mainstream
gender in global policymaking to be highlighted here: the gap between
feminist theory and institutional practice, and the conflict between feminist
concepts and values and the broader ideological framework of neoliberal
economics.
THE THEORY–PRACTICE GAP

It is well established among gender and development specialists that the lack
of sensitivity to gender differences in power, resources and opportunities
shown by international policymakers and practitioners leads to poor policy
and poor outcomes (Kabeer 1994). But in the context of mainstreaming
initiatives to rectify this gender insensitivity, other more complex problems
have been observed. Failure to appreciate the differences among women
and/or erroneous gendered stereotypes about women and men as natural
peacemakers and warriors, followers and leaders (Tickner 1999), for instance,
can also lead to poor policy in practice.
In her study of the post-civil war reconstruction of Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Martha Walsh (1998) shows how the assumptions of international humani-
tarian organizations about ‘Bosnian women’ as war-victims masked their
diverse ethnic, class and professional abilities and served further to victimize
them in the post-war peace-building and reconstruction. Rather than starting
from the perspective that different groups of women may have different needs
and a range of human capabilities, international donors primarily funded
psychological counselling services and ‘traditional female’ training pro-
grammes over than income-generating projects or projects directed towards
women’s economic and political empowerment. In Walsh’s analysis ‘the
pool of skilled and educated Bosnian women should have represented an
opportunity to incorporate gender by strategically drawing women into
emergency and relief interventions as partners rather than as mere service
providers and beneficiaries’ (1998: 340). Such a gendered approach would

have strengthened the position of these women in the post-conflict develop-
ment phase.
This Bosnian example underscores a persistent problem with the gender
mainstreaming strategy carried over from the women in development para-
digm. Western multilateral institutions think that by simply adding women’s
projects they are mainstreaming gender in their humanitarian assistance,
although these projects can marginalize women by creating or sustaining
unequal gendered power relations. A recent report to the Beijing Plus Five
Review in 2000 by the head of the United Nations mission in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Jacques Paul Klein, underscores the practical isomorphism
of the women in development and gender mainstreaming paradigms as
implemented in Bosnia and Herzegovina:
Both the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the international com-
munity must pay particular attention to the gender-related aspects of our work
by asking this basic question: was there sufficient energy invested in orienting
policy-making, legislation, and programmes towards women’s specific needs?
Secondly the question needs to be asked whether our policies had an impact on
women’s situation? The answer to both these questions is obviously no.22
When women are primarily seen as victims, ‘collateral damage’ or ‘uninten-

ded costs’, rather than agents the focus is deflected from biased and exclusion-
ary institutions and structures. For example, it has been argued that women’s
marginalization is an unintended cost of the transitions in Eastern Europe,
and that gender bias in processes of economic and political restructuring
is inadvertent (UNICEF 1999). The argument goes, if only international
policymakers and local decision-making élites were made more aware of the
negative impact of their policies and behaviour on women, they would
attempt to put things right. It is further argued that, if the current exclusion
of women from full participation in the new private sectors and governments
of Eastern Europe could be addressed, the costs of gender inequality could
soon be turned into the benefits of gender equality (Hunt 1997). But this line
of argument underestimates the gendered power relations at stake in structural
change even when monitored closely by well-intentioned international insti-
tutions. For example, the European Union has turned a blind eye to evidence
of blatant gender discrimination in Central and Eastern European accession
countries, placing equal opportunities low down on its list of rules and norms
that they must comply with in order to join the European Union (True
2003). This example of international organizations in democratizing countries
underscores one point: that gender mainstreaming efforts from above will
not change institutional practices and norms unless they are supported by
social movement activism on gender equity and subjected to the ongoing
critical scrutiny of a gender perspective by feminist scholars and activists. In
this respect, the ‘Women’s Eyes on the [World] Bank’ is a demonstration

model of how to conduct a coordinated, transnational effort at monitoring
an institution.
THE HEGEMONY OF MARKET IDEOLOGY

Major advances have been made by feminist researchers, activists and policy-
makers to mainstream a gender perspective on macroeconomics in the public
policies of national governments and multilateral institutions. Together,
socialist and Third World feminists have developed a new gendered analysis
of political economy based on a practical-theoretical critique of structural
adjustment programmes in the South and economic restructuring in the
North.23 Within this new paradigm, gender issues of human development and
social reproduction at the micro-level of households have been linked to
macroeconomic policy at the national and global levels (for an overview, see
Hannan 2000). Innovative policy tools have been developed, including pro-
poor, ‘gender budgets’. Building on these initiatives, Gita Sen (2000) recently
produced a series of guidelines for en-gendering finance ministries’ ongoing
macroeconomic management, their management of structural reforms, such
as privatization, and of financial liberalization and micro-credit. One gendered
macroeconomic guideline suggested that government officials conduct budget
trade-offs that clearly identify the opportunity costs of reducing budget
deficits versus strengthening human reproductive needs and the impact of
that trade-off in terms of economic growth and poverty reduction.
As far-reaching and radical as these mainstreaming efforts are, they face
deep resistance in most national and global economic policymaking bodies
where the ostensibly gender-neutral, neoliberal, rational economic framework
has been institutionalized. Consequently, in order to integrate a gender
perspective in the work of institutions such as the World Bank and even the
United Nations Development Programme, those who have entered these
institutions with the explicit intention of furthering feminist goals, have had
provisionally to accept aspects of the neoliberal frame. For example, in the
OECD a ‘business case’ has been made for gender mainstreaming in public
and private sectors (OECD 2000). Likewise, feminist economists at the World
Bank and other institutions have made some of their arguments for women’s
empowerment and human development in terms of the ‘efficiency gains’ to
be had from investing in ‘human capital’. Sometimes these arguments are
effective insofar as they have directed more resources towards funding girls’
education and women’s health programmes. However, articulating gender
equity goals in this way may also mean resources are diverted from basic
needs and human development areas to development initiatives that further
economic growth through the expansion of markets and consumption. Only
rigorous analysis of gender mainstreaming policies by feminist activists and
scholars will tell us on balance whether they serve to further or reduce
women’s social and economic rights.
A case where the gender mainstreaming strategy may not be serving
women’s basic needs or empowerment can be found in UNIFEM’s report,

Progress of the World’s Women 2000. This report discusses how a gender
perspective might be incorporated into global economic policy and gives
examples that include increasing women’s participation in national and
global economic policymaking, and ensuring that women entrepreneurs in
developing countries have access to global markets for financial credit,
markets for goods and services, and to new information technologies. With
the latter goal in mind, one project highlighted in the report is the Grameen
Bank’s Telecom Village Phone initiative in Bangladesh. This initiative lends
village women money to purchase digital GSM cellular phones so that they
can reach potential markets at a distance and bring customers to their homes.
The ‘phone ladies’, as they are called, use microcredit from the Grameen Bank
to acquire the phones; they then sell phone calls and phone services to other
village women and men who come to their homes (The Economist 1999). So
far this pilot project has involved 950 women entrepreneurs in rural areas,
but it is expected to expand to 40,000 Bangladeshi rural women. According
to UNIFEM, ‘the lack of telephone connections in these areas makes this a
profitable business’ (2000: 134): A profitable business for whom we might
ask? For the companies and the women equally? How can we as feminist
scholars and activists be sure that this project overseen by a global gender
mainstreaming institution will actually empower rural women and not exacer-
bate their social and economic oppression?
The mobile phone initiative and others discussed in Progress of the
World’s Women (UNIFEM 2000) certainly do not view poor women as
victims or as potential victims. They seek to bring women into the global
economy who have been hitherto excluded from it, and who would probably
have remained excluded from it without the acquisition of technology and
micro-credit loans. This is the value of the gender mainstreaming approach
taken in the report as a whole. But will these loans to purchase mobile
phones and computers really enable women to ‘leapfrog’ development? Is
there a trade-off between providing personal loans for phones and providing
funding for basic infrastructure necessary for meeting human needs and/
or achieving human development, such as clean water or free, quality
education? One of the effects of the Grameen Bank initiative at least, is
the incorporation of rural women individually and collectively into an
expanding market as well as the globalized credit economy. Such an out-
come does not change the unequal exchange relations in the global economy
but it does give new impetus to capitalist development, even in those parts
of the world so obviously marginalized by global market forces. On its
face, the Grameen Bank project suggests the power of this development
model and the lack of alternatives to it, rather than an accomplishment
of efforts to mainstream gender issues in economic policymaking. More
critical attention needs to be paid to such initiatives that claim to be
mainstreaming a gender perspective. Assessing the theoretical and practical
implications of gender mainstreaming provides a context for activists and
scholars to engage with one another.

CONCLUSION
Ideas originating in women’s movements and feminist theory are becoming

part of the practices and institutions of global governance. It is clear that
they are having political effects beyond academic disciplines and the western
feminist community. In their various ways, these policies and programs ‘on
the ground’ both conform to and deviate from the hopes and aspirations of
the feminist theorists whose guiding ideas gave rise to them in the first place.
Surely that is grounds for a sense of accomplishment and also for a sense of
unease.
For feminist scholars of international relations, gender mainstreaming in
the realm of global governance opens up an important new area for critical
study. It is politically interesting to consider how feminist thinking about
gender gets translated into global public policy, and with what implications?
Feminists confront ethical dilemmas as well in the context of gender main-
streaming: who is responsible when our ideas about gender become institu-
tionalized as international norms and policies in such a way that they lose
their socially transformative content?
As social critics, we may find ourselves in an ironic position rather like
Edward Said, who instead of celebrating efforts to create a Palestinian state,
a goal he has struggled for most of his life, remarked that, once established
the state would provide him with a new object of criticism. This ethical
dilemma and the broader theoretical issues at stake in en-gendering global
policy demand that feminist scholars pay careful attention to the movement
of theory and research into practice. The ongoing trade in feminist ideas
requires that we become more self-conscious of our scholarship; for whom
and for what purpose we theorize and the variety of possible ways in which
our work may be received by activist and policymaking audiences for
example. Further, as feminist scholarship rapidly grows and becomes more
specialized there is a danger that it will lose its traditionally close ties to
activist and policy debates and that as a result, global public policy will not
receive the critical scrutiny it needs, and that advocacy and policymaking
will not benefit from feminist knowledge and reflection.
As scholars, we need to become more knowledgeable about the worlds of
advocacy and policy, and position ourselves to forge mutually advantageous
relationships with feminist researchers, activists and policymakers.24 There
are too few links between gender advocates inside mainstreaming institutions
and feminist activists and scholars ‘on the outside’. Only collectively, however,
can we expand the local and global spaces for promoting women’s empower-
ment and for transforming the sources of social power that reproduce
inequalities based on gender, race, class, sex, sexuality, ethnicity, caste,
religion, country of origin, national identity, aboriginal status, immigration
status, regional geography, language, cultural practices, forms of dress, beliefs,
ability, health status, family history, age and education. Although feminist
policymakers in global governance institutions are typically constrained by

bureaucratic procedures and by their obligations to carry out the mandates
of member states, feminist scholars are less encumbered.25 We can raise
theoretical issues, and develop innovative research projects that link gender
relations at the micro level with processes and policies at the macro level,
and that help feminist activists and policymakers to achieve their goals.
Finally, we can continually evaluate local and global policies and practices
in light of the principles and norms that have been collectively developed by
women’s movements over the past twenty years and codified in living
documents such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women and the Beijing Platform for Action.
Jacqui True
Department of Political Studies
University of Auckland
14 Symonds Street
Private Bag 92019
Auckland, New Zealand
E-mail: [email protected]
Notes
1 See Elson (1991); Kabeer (1994); Goetz (1995); Rathergeber (1995).

2 Scepticism about ‘gender mainstreaming’ was evident in the debate over the use
of the term ‘gender’ in the Platform for Action at the Fourth United Nations
Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995. The word ‘gender’ wherever it
appeared was initially bracketed throughout the whole text of the Platform for
Action document in the preparatory meetings leading up to the Beijing conference,
see Morgan (1996).
3 Other religious and conservative critics at Beijing saw ‘gender’ analysis as a
threat to the traditional institutions of marriage and the patriarchal family. They
took issue with the use of the word gender in the Platform for Action in order to
push their own agenda opposing reproductive rights, see Baden and Goetz (1997).
4 See, for example, Kardam (1991); Razavi and Miller (1995); Alvarez (1997); Beall
(1998); Goetz (1998); Meyer and Prügl (1999); O’Brien et al. (2000).
5 United Nations (2000) Press Release SC/6939, ‘Security Council Concludes Open
Debate on Women and Peace and Security).
6 United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000). Adopted by the Security
Council at its 4213th meeting, on 31 October 2000. See also the two-day Security
Council debate, Press Release SC/6937 24 October 2000.
7 International Women’s Rights Action Watch (IWRAW) is one of the main inter-
national women’s NGOS that has facilitated this collaboration and interchange
between local/national NGO members of its network and the CEDAW Commission
in New York City.
8 The twelve online working groups set up by the UN Division for the Advancement

of Women in 1999–2000 (in preparation for the Beijingò5 Conference) were a
good example of how transnational networking can promote the diffusion of
policy ideas and political strategies.
9 The growth of women’s international NGOs is well documented in the reports
and scholarship on the United Nations women’s conferences. Jackie Smith
(1997: 47) calculated the growth in women’s international non-governmental
organizations from 1953–93 in collaboration with Kathyrn Sikkink (Keck and
Sikkink 1998: 11) using the Yearbook of International Organizations for those
years. According to her methodology, in 1953 there were ten women’s INGOs, in
1963 there were sixteen, growing to twenty-five organizations in 1983 and sixty-
one organizations in 1993 thus clearly indicating the catalysing effect of the four
United Nations women’s conferences. However, in my view this methodology
greatly underestimates the number and this growth of women’s INGOS since
141 accredited INGOs and 1761 women’s organizations (including local and
international affiliates) were represented at the Fourth United Nations Women’s
conference in Beijing in 1995. (The List is available from Department of Policy
Coordination and Sustainable Development (DPCSD), United Nations, New York.)
10 The transnational networking of women’s NGOs was effective not only in shaping
the agendas of the United Nations World Women’s conferences, but also the
United Nations conferences on human rights (Vienna, 1993), social development
(Copenhagen, 1994) and the environment (Rio de Janeiro, 1992) (see Clark et al.
1998). As Elisabeth Friedman (2000: 10) has pointed out ‘women have been the
most organized sector at United Nations conferences not focused on their own
constituency and they have mainstreamed issues in such a way as to influence
the overall framing of conference topics by gendering other agendas’.
11 Annelise Riles argues that the network form is constituted by informational,
knowledge practices, including:
constant meetings and conferences, the ubiquitous coordination tasks, the

endless cataloguing and discussion of documents and the numerous exer-
cises of drafting and redrafting. They include the funding such entities
receive from international aid agencies and the procedures they must go
through in order to secure this funding. They include travel to meetings
and the contacts they develop with similar organisations in the region and
other parts of the world.
(2000: xvi)
12 For example, the United Nations becomes part of the problem of global injustice
when United Nations peacekeepers stationed in Bosnia become a lucrative and
ready market for brothels containing women enslaved as prostitutes, illegally
trafficked from the former Soviet Union and other parts of Eastern Europe (see
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty 2001; McKenna 2002).
13 It would be interesting to mount a rigorous comparative study of the different
political and institutional contexts of international organizations and how they
have shaped these organizations’ engagement with women’s movements and

gender issues in the contemporary period. To my knowledge, such a study has
yet to be conducted.
14 Online Working Group on National Machineries for Gender Equality, DAW,
8 February–19 March 1999. See also Budlender et al. (1998); Elson (1999).
15 United Nations News Agency, ‘14 Women Ministers Seek End to Human Traffick-
ing’, 15 October 1999. Other collaboration among these now fifteen, women
foreign ministers, referred to as the ‘Women Foreign Ministers of the World’
includes getting two women judges on the International War Crimes Tribunal,
condemning the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi – the leader of the democracy
movement in Burma – and human rights violations in Burma, and more recently,
leading an international campaign to stop the spread of HIV/AIDs.
16 Text of Albright’s speech can be found at the website of the President’s Interagency
Council on Women (www.secretary.state.gov/www/picw/index.html). See also
Mattras and Lightman (1997), and the President’s Interagency Council on
Women’s report (2000), which documents all the efforts within the United States
federal bureaucracy to mainstream gender issues.
17 US Secretary of State, Madeleine K. Albright in a speech at the Reception for
Women Foreign Ministers, New York, 11 September 2000.
18 President James Wolfensohn’s assumption that there is a powerful, unified global
women’s movement no doubt comes in small part from his Australian origin and
experience, where the women’s movement has a history of political successes
and where feminists have made important inroads into government and the
bureaucracy.
19 Between 1985 and 1995 WID entrepreneurs inside the World Bank played a critical
role in promoting gender equity (Kardam 1991). However, a 1994 evaluation of
gender programs at the Bank found that it was ‘the leadership of senior
management . . . which most affected the amount of funds devoted to gender
equity and its credibility in the organisation’ (O’Brien et al. 2000: 53). Accordingly,
O’Brien et al. (2000: 26) observe that the shift to promoting participatory social
development and women’s empowerment in World Bank activities was most
marked after President James Wolfensohn took office in June 1995.
20 US Secretary of State, Madeleine K. Albright in a speech at Women’s Foreign
Policy Group Luncheon, Washington DC, 20 November 2000. Research has shown
that increasing the number of women representatives in legislatures makes some
(although not always the most significant) difference to the representation of
women’s concerns, to the legislative agenda and to policy outcomes (see Karam
1998; Phillips 1999).
21 Realists are sceptical about feminists in foreign policymaking for other reasons
too. For instance, Fukuyama (1998) suggests that if women ruled the world their
soft stances would likely threaten national and international security. See Tickner
(1999) for a critique.
22 Remarks by Ambassador Jacques Paul Klein, United Nations Mission in Bosnia
and Herzegovina, Special Representative of the Secretary General at the Beijing
Plus Five Review, New York, 29 March 2001. Available at http:/www.unmibh.org/
news/srgspe/20mar00.htm

23 See especially, Elson (1991); Bakker (1994); Çağatay et al. (1995, 2000); O’Brien
et al. (2000).
24 Lycklama à Nijeholt et al. (1998) call these three groups, advocates, practitioners
and scholars, the ‘triangle of empowerment’. Irene Tinker (1990) has described
the different ways in which these groups, who share goals but not perspectives,
exerted influence on the making of the ‘Women in Development’ field. She
suggests that WID advocates were primarily the agenda-setters, WID practitioners
the implementers of this agenda and that feminist scholars were the evaluators
of the WID paradigm, rethinking theoretical conceptions and assumptions under-
lying the activism and projects in the field. These three roles complemented one
another:
WID advocates and practitioners, because their objective is to influence

the development community, tend not to raise basic theoretical issues but
rather seek to adjust current development practices to include and benefit
women . . . As the field matures, the pragmatic approach of the WID
practitioners and advocates and the detail of women’s lives coming from
WID scholars have begun to influence theorists.
(1990: 48)
25 While seemingly unencumbered relative to feminist bureaucrats, feminist scholars

do confront disciplinary and institutional rules and boundaries that can also
constrain them in their efforts to act as social critics.
Acknowledgement
This article was first presented at a conference entitled ‘Gender in International

Relations: From Seeing Women and Recognizing Gender to Transforming
Policy Research’. The conference, which was held at the Center for Inter-
national Studies, University of Southern California in February 2001, was
part of a joint USC/Wellesley College project funded by the Ford Foundation,
which was designed to strengthen connections between feminist international
relations scholars, international policymakers and international social activ-
ists. I am grateful to the Center for International Studies for their support
while I was a postdoctoral fellow in the academic year 2000–01, and to the
Director Ann Tickner and Brooke Ackerly for many stimulating conversations
about feminist international relations theory and practice. I would like to
thank them for their contributions to the ideas developed in this article.
I would also like to thank Jane Jaquette, the journal editors and two
anonymous readers for their thoughtful reading of my work that helped me
to clarify and strengthen the argument presented here.

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Mainstreaming Gender in Global Public Policy

Article in International Feminist Journal of Politics · November 2003

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International Feminist Journal of Politics, 5:3 November 2003, 368–396

‘Gender mainstreaming’ surfaced as a concept in the early 1990s (Andersen

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370 International Feminist Journal of Politics –––––––––––––––––––––––––––

THE GLOBAL DIFFUSION OF ‘GENDER MAINSTREAMING’

Gender mainstreaming includes attempts to establish a gender-equality

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A RADICAL FEMINIST FUTURE OR A LIBERAL POLITICS?

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378 International Feminist Journal of Politics –––––––––––––––––––––––––––

GENDER POLICY ENTREPRENEURS

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Working with a variety of agencies and forward-looking NGOs . . . we have

Several diplomatic missions of United Nations member states complained

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382 International Feminist Journal of Politics –––––––––––––––––––––––––––

THE THEORY–PRACTICE GAP

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When women are primarily seen as victims, ‘collateral damage’ or ‘uninten-

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THE HEGEMONY OF MARKET IDEOLOGY

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Ideas originating in women’s movements and feminist theory are becoming

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1 See Elson (1991); Kabeer (1994); Goetz (1995); Rathergeber (1995).

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constant meetings and conferences, the ubiquitous coordination tasks, the

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WID advocates and practitioners, because their objective is to influence

25 While seemingly unencumbered relative to feminist bureaucrats, feminist scholars

This article was first presented at a conference entitled ‘Gender in International

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396 International Feminist Journal of Politics –––––––––––––––––––––––––––

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