Gender Mainstreaming, An Overview

Gender mainstreaming was established as a major global strategy for the promotion of gender equality in the Beijing Platform for Action from the Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. The ECOSOC agreed conclusions (1997/2) established some important overall principles for gender mainstreaming. A letter from the Secretary-General to heads of all United Nations entities (13 October 1997) provided further concrete directives. A number of persistent constraints remain, however, to be addressed including conceptual confusion, inadequate understanding of the linkages between gender perspectives and different areas of the work of the United Nations and gaps in capacity to address these constraint, including fact sheets on the concepts underlying gender mainstreaming, briefing notes on the linkages between gender and different sectors and competence development programmes.

Publisher: United Nations
Year of Publication: 2002