Gender mainstreaming 2.0: emergent gender equality agendas under Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

Global governance frameworks have been largely ineffective at advancing gender equality through development cooperation. Gender mainstreaming, understood as a dual strategy comprising initiatives directly targeting gender equality objectives and integrating gender equality agendas across all other areas of policy and practice, remains limited. Based on insight from over 180 development specialists across the multilateral and national contexts of Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda, this article situates the unachieved agenda of gender mainstreaming in the broader legitimacy crisis of global development. Traditional gender mainstreaming approaches are critiqued as insufficiently oriented towards the broader paradigm shift of global development that gender equality agendas require. Gender equality advocates are, therefore, increasingly leveraging the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (Agenda 2030) as a tool for their broader sector contestation. Through new policy arenas for nationally led development planning and coordination, Agenda 2030 enables cross-sectoral and multi-stakeholder exchange in which gender equality advocates engage as more legitimised actors navigating and strategically challenging traditional paradigms of global development. Dubbed gender mainstreaming 2.0, this emergent strategy is embedded in and contributes to new paradigms of global cooperation that valorise local gender expertise and national ownership.

Keywords:

• Gender mainstreaming
• development critique
• global governance
• gender equality
• SDGs

Acknowledgements

I thank the anonymous reviewers for their critical feedback that has strengthened the quality of the article. I also extend my sincere gratitude to Candace Johnson, Rianne Mahon, Laura Parisi, Elisabeth Prügl and Susanne Zwingel for their comments on earlier iterations of arguments presented in this article. Statements outlined in the article do not represent official positions of the above-mentioned scholars or funding institutions.

Disclosure statement

The author has not declared any conflicts of interest.

Additional information

Funding

Findings reflected in this article are the result of a research project supported by the Ontario Trillium Foundation, the International Development Research Centre of Canada, and the University of Guelph.

Notes on contributors

Gloria Novovic

Gloria Novovic is Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Ottawa’s School of International Development and Global Studies. She examines global public policy from a systems-level perspective and engages in feminist decolonial critique of international cooperation. Her scholarship is also informed by a decade of direct practitioner experience in civil society in Serbia and Canada, as well as the United Nations’ World Food Programme. Her research has been supported by the Ontario Trillium Foundation, the International Development Research Centre of Canada, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.