Commonwealth Secretariat
  1. Gender Home
  2. Vision & mandate
    1. Plan of Action for Gender Equality 2005-2015
    2. Secretary General's Reports
    3. 1995 Commonwealth Plan of Action on Gender and Development
    4. Update 2000-2005
  3. What we do
    1. Poverty Eradication
    2. Gender and Human Rights
    3. Gender Mainstreaming
    4. Gender, democracy, peace and conflict
    5. Gender and HIV/AIDS
    6. Knowledge-Based network (KBN)
  4. WAMMs
    1. 8WAMM
    2. 7WAMM
    3. 6WAMM
  5. Documents
    1. Reports
    2. Papers
    3. Newsletters
    4. Meeting documents, New York, 23-24 February, 2008
  6. News Archive
  7. Publications
    1. Gender Mainstreaming Series on Gender Issues
    2. Gender Management Systems Series
    3. Gender Mainstreaming Series on Development Issues
  8. Gender Links

Gender Mainstreaming

The Commonwealth Secretariat works with member governments and partners to mainstream gender issues into all government policies, programmes and activities in order to achieve greater gender quality and equity.

Gender mainstreaming is an essential element of good governance. In order for gender mainstreaming processes and activities to be effective, a comprehensive, cross-cutting and gender-aware approach is vital.

Gender mainstreaming is a long-term strategy that attempts to redress the existing and emerging inequalities between women and men. The principle is that redressing this inequality is a shared responsibility by all aspects of government and civil society stakeholders - not just the remit of the women's ministries organisations to undertake. The gender mainstreaming approach has been used to address new challenges and redress the differential impacts of policies and programmes on women and men.

The Commonwealth Secretariat has spearheaded the development of the Gender Management System (GMS) defined as "a network of processes, mechanisms and structures to guide, monitor and evaluate the process of gender mainstreaming into all government policies, programmes and activities"

The Strategic Guide (June 2000) provides a model framework and makes recommendations on how to mainstream gender into the work of an inter-governmental institution like the Commonwealth Secretariat in order to contribute to the advancement of gender equality. 
 

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