Abstract
Gender mainstreaming was acknowledged as an indispensable strategy for achieving gender equality at the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action. Since then, governments have made substantial efforts in developing gender-responsive policies and implementation strategies. The advent of climate change and its effects, which have continued to impact rural livelihoods and especially food security, demands that gender mainstreaming efforts are accelerated. Effective gender mainstreaming requires that gender is sufficiently integrated in policies, development plans, and implementation strategies, supported by budgetary allocations. This study analyzes the extent of gender integration in agricultural and natural resource policies in Uganda and Tanzania, and how gender is budgeted for in implementation plans at district and lower governance levels. A total of 155 policy documents, development plans, and annual action plans from national, district, and sub-county/ward levels were reviewed. In addition, district and sub-county budgets for four consecutive financial years from 2012/2013 to 2015/2016 were analyzed for gender allocations. Results show that whereas there is increasing gender responsiveness in both countries, (i) gender issues are still interpreted as “women issues,” (ii) there is disharmony in gender mainstreaming across governance levels, (iii) budgeting for gender is not yet fully embraced by governments, (iii) allocations to gender at sub-national level remain inconsistently low with sharp differences between estimated and actual budgets, and (iv) gender activities do not address any structural inequalities. We propose approaches that increase capacity to develop and execute gender-responsive policies, implementation plans, and budgets.
Highlights
Gender mainstreaming has been acknowledged as a global strategy for achieving gender equality since the 1995 Beijing platform for Action where governments were required to promote an active and visible policy for its implementation
We focus on Uganda and Tanzania as two of the East African countries that have in recent years been involved in developing and implementing gender mainstreaming strategies in the agricultural sector
We had access to policy documents based on the trust built with partners while implementing the Policy Action for Climate Change Adaptation initiative implemented by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS)
Summary
Gender mainstreaming has been acknowledged as a global strategy for achieving gender equality since the 1995 Beijing platform for Action where governments were required to promote an active and visible policy for its implementation. In response to this appeal and to an increasing emphasis on women’s empowerment, mainstreaming gender in policies took root in both development institutions and national policy (Parpart 2014). Sociocultural and gender norms, the gender division of labor and differing levels of access to productive resources and cash, make women more vulnerable and affect women’s ability to respond and adapt to climate impacts and shocks (Alston 2014). In some households where men are working off-farm in cities, women may lack the power to make timely farming decisions or to convince their husbands to agree to new practices (World Bank et al 2015; Habtezion 2016)
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