Gender mainstreaming in Africa

Abstract

This chapter explores how global norms stipulated in the Beijing Platform for Action on Gender Mainstreaming (GM) are translated into practice in three local African contexts – Ghana, Malawi and South Africa – highlighting African GM trajectories. It presents different understandings of gender mainstreaming and the contestations and ambiguities associated with the strategy and its translation into practice, taking stock of gender-mainstreaming failures and successes in selected countries. We give a specific focus on the role of national gender machinery and the establishment of gender focal points or gender desks as the main vehicles to promote gender-mainstreaming institutional challenges identified in the three African contexts. The chapter also notes the extent to which and how gender mainstreaming policies in these contexts involve women’s organisations or movements in processes of translating gender mainstreaming into practice. It ends with a recommendation of more comparative research in Africa on factors, such as the development of national machinery, the role or retreat of the women’s movement in gender mainstreaming, persistent misogynist and sexist patriarchal structures, and the role of external actors (donors) that influence processes of translating gender mainstreaming into practice.