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.