Mainstreaming gender into poverty reduction policies and interventions

Discrimination based on sex, religion, race, ethnicity, class and age remains at the core of social exclusion, poverty and human misery. Women are poorer than men because they are often denied equal rights and opportunities, lack access to assets and do not have the same entitlements as men. They also carry the burden of reproductive and care work and represent the majority of unpaid labour.

Gender mainstreaming means being deliberate in giving visibility and support to women's contributions rather than making the assumption that women will benefit equally from gender-neutral development interventions. Policies and programmes that ignore differential impact on gender groups are often gender-blind and potentially harmful for human development. Gender mainstreaming requires a focus on results to improve the well-being of poor women.

En-gendering UNDP's agenda includes the development of capacity - both in-country and in-house - to integrate gender concerns in the provision of policy advice that is both pro-poor and pro-women. UNDP advocates for participatory approaches to budgeting, creating strategies and targets aimed at reducing gender disparities, examining linkages between poverty reduction and women's empowerment, and improving national capacity for gender -disaggregated monitoring and analyses.

These strategic elements represent the crux of UNDP's work on mainstreaming gender into poverty reduction policies and interventions. For example, an increased number of UNDP country offices are currently working on gender sensitive budgeting at both national and local level, in India, Malaysia, Guinea, Turkey, Mauritius, Georgia and Chile, among others.

As scorekeeper and campaign manager for progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals, UNDP has the responsibility to highlight and focus attention and resources on the gender dimensions of these goals. In addition, it has a role to play in monitoring disparities between men and women in the achievement of MDGs, in flagging gender gaps, and in ensuring gender monitoring of all goals and indicators.

Selected Resources

UNDP/UNIFEM/WEDO Financing for Development Gender Policy Briefing Kit

Trade, Gender and Poverty, Nilufer Cagatay, UNDP BDP/SDG (PDF file 300KB), 2002

Choices for the Poor: Lessons from national poverty strategies, Grinspun, Alejandro (ed.),UNDP, New York, March 2001

Engendering Macroeconomics and Macroeconomic Policies by Nilufer Cagatay SEPED Working Paper #6, 1999 (Hardcopy & on-line)

Pro-Poor, Gender- and Environment-Sensitive Budgets Workshop June 28-30, 1999 (Abstracts available on-line)

Gender and Poverty by Nilufer Cagatay SEPED Working Paper #5 May 1998 (Hardcopy & on-line)