Gender Mainstreaming Assessment

Gender mainstreaming is the overall strategy, defined by ECOSOC in 1997, of making gender equality an integral dimension of all policies and programmes. Gender impact assessment (GIA) is one of the concrete methods for doing it: an ex-ante appraisal that screens a specific policy for gender relevance, gathers evidence, assesses differential impact, and recommends changes. Mainstreaming is the goal and institutional commitment; GIA is a practical tool that operationalises it for a given policy.

The relevance check is a screening question asked before any detailed work: does the policy affect people, and could it affect women and men differently given existing inequalities? If clearly not, the policy is screened out and no full assessment is needed; if there is any plausible gender dimension, the assessment proceeds. It comes first to keep the method proportionate, so scarce analytical effort is spent on the policies where gendered effects actually matter.

Because the whole point is to replace the implicit genderless 'average citizen' with a differentiated picture of who is affected and how. Without data broken down by sex — and ideally by other characteristics too — the assessment cannot show whether a policy will reduce, maintain, or widen inequality. When such data are missing, good practice is to document the gap and use proxies, research, and consultation rather than to assume neutral effects.