by Suzette Mitchell

06 June 2000

Bonn, Germany: Daddy helps mummy take care of my little sister and My father is a good cook are the titles of posters of some of the 40,000 entries submitted by Vietnamese school children to represent how they perceive gender equality. “I am too familiar with the image of my father reading the newspaper while my mother is cleaning or cooking to question why there is such an inequality,” said a 14-year-old winner in the poster competition. “Only recently I realized the inequality and now I feel uncomfortable with it.”

The national gender poster competition was the idea of one of the 21 UNV gender specialists who have been fielded to work on gender mainstreaming. These images make it easy to understand what gender mainstreaming means in the lives of people. Mainstreaming gender is no easy task, and even defining mainstreaming can be difficult.

Gender mainstreaming is the process of making sure that women’s and men’s issues are integrated into development planning. It is considering the impact on females as well as males of all actions and decisions. It also means making sure that outcomes are equal and equitable for women. Sometimes it means special programmes for increasing women’s status to a similar level to men, and sometimes it is implementing strategies to address men’s issues and behaviours, particularly in the areas of responsibility for family planning and preventing violence against women.

UNV gender specialists have been working on this in diverse ways, from supporting the implementation of a new law on equal opportunities for women in Panama to bringing the children of UNDP staff members in Côte d’Ivoire to the office to help celebrate International Women’s Day and to promote a family-friendly workplace. In Botswana, a UN Volunteer explained during a comprehensive training session for all staff of the United Nations Development Programme Country Office how everyone, from the Resident Representative to the cleaner, has a role to play in gender mainstreaming.

The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, adopted unanimously at the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, reflects a new international commitment to the goals of equality, development and peace for all women everywhere. Following the Beijing Conference and endorsement of the International Platform for Action, the UNV programme joined forces with the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) to develop a project proposal titled “Follow-up to the Beijing Platform for Action: UNV Support to Gender Mainstreaming”.

Five years after the adoption of the International Platform for Action, and as the Beijing +5 Special session is held at the United Nations from 5-9 June 2000, UNV gender specialists are working in UNDP Country Offices, with their major aim to increase gender expertise in UN country teams and programmes. Their work has catalysed activities throughout several UN agencies. This pilot programme has fostered close collaboration amongst the various UN agencies.

But many people assume that gender mainstreaming is the role of only the gender specialist, not all staff. “I am the person at UNDP that everyone talks to about the subject of women,” points out Jacqueline Rips, UNV gender specialist in Haiti. “If the subject of gender was an iceberg then I would be the visible part”.

Gender mainstreaming is not a women’s issue — it is just as much an issue for men, and is a social and community issue. It is about how men and women have access and control of resources and about how boys and girls are schooled and fed in different ways. This leads to different levels of health, education, salary, jobs and decision-making. The UNDP/UNIEFM/UNV project addresses these issues and targets men, especially with the help of Luis Mora, the first male UNV gender specialist.

“There is definitely a need to continue to focus some efforts exclusively on the advancement of women, but I think it is also necessary to think holistically about creating an enabling environment for women to then exercise rights, which of course requires a focus on men,” explains Melissa Roche, the UNV gender specialist in South Africa.

UNV gender specialists strive to make a real difference in the lives of people, not just in UN offices, but also in society to bring about greater understanding of gender mainstreaming so that the images of children will come true: men wearing aprons will cook dinner and women will venture into outer space.