Podcast: How to talk about gender mainstreaming in government

Unfortunately, gender mainstreaming is still seen as an afterthought in the policy-making process, rather than a central focus that can produce momentous results. You may come across colleagues who have never heard of it. Or you might find yourself battling with institutions that say they believe in gender equality but don’t invest in their own people.

In this interview, Caroline Torén explains how to sell the concept of gender mainstreaming as an exciting and transformative approach to policy, rather than a burdensome box to tick. Torén’s insights are relevant for communicating policy in government, whether it’s with peers, the public or senior leadership.

Listen to the interview here or read the transcript below.

Apolitical · Gender Mainstreaming with Caroline Toren

Transcript

Caroline Torén: Adding an intersectional gender and racial lens to your work is often perceived as an additional task or a burden on someone's current workload, and not necessarily as a working method to achieve greater impact.

Emma Sisk, Apolitical: I’m Emma Sisk and I'm one of the journalists here at Apolitical. I'm so excited to be here today with Caroline Torén, who has a decade of experience developing gender responsive policies and programmes for the Swedish Defence and State Department in the city of Los Angeles.

CT: Thank you, Emma. It's so great to be here and I'm excited to get to talk about the gender mainstreaming process with you and how we can create buy-in for it. I know that this is one of our shared passions, how we can make the gender mainstreaming mainstream.

ES: So the purpose of our conversation today is to try to figure out how you create interest and buy-in; where do you start?

CT: So, I think it's important to recognise, you know, try to understand people's situation and meet them where they are. In my experience, many times, adding an intersectional gender and racial lens to your work is often perceived as an additional task, or a burden on someone's current workload and not necessarily as a working method to achieve greater impact.

ES: What sort of things could you try?

CT: Well, you can put gender equality on your agendas. Why not? Like just have it there. Like, you may not always know how it's relevant but if you put it there, it starts a conversation. Like, have we forgotten something? Is there a way and, like, can we look at this issue, this programme with a new lens? So, from a different perspective? Go back to, you know, your strategic frameworks, your reporting templates, see if there is an opportunity to kind of add components from the gender mainstreaming process to those. So again, I'm thinking about, you know, do you have data disaggregated by gender, but are not necessarily included in these frameworks? And if you can, you know, try to create that systems change, like, if you update one template, make sure that your other templates are updated too. Going to, you know, more conversations with your teams. Have, you know, you asked like, how is gender equality important to your team? How is it important to your organisational goals or business goals? What decisions are today informed by a gender analysis or based on data that is disaggregated by gender? And I think you know, the part of objectives is a really important one, we all have objectives in our various documents, but how can you define those objectives in terms of strength and gender equality?

ES: So you've got gender equality on your meeting agendas, and you've updated your frameworks. But what do you do if someone isn't even aware of what gender mainstreaming is?

CT: If someone is not fully aware of the gender mainstreaming process, and what steps they need to take, this is likely to create some uncertainty around what's expected of them. We all know that uncertainty creates stress. So again, I think in these conversations, take it slow. Always try to emphasise the benefits with this, you know, the possibilities are kind of increasing access, increasing participation rates, avoid any unintended consequences, and in some cases, even reduce programme costs. I also think it's, it's always worthwhile to bring up the many number of organisations that are already using gender mainstreaming, especially if those are your partners, and try to convey that, hey, you know, there's a lot of folks doing this already, it seems to be working, maybe we should get on this train. Lastly, on that note, I would say, always try to start with their colleague or the team where you've already registered some interest. I think that it's always you know, it's easier to start. And then you can leverage that partnership and what you have accomplished, or the changes that you have made, when you go to the next team.

ES: What sort of mapping or planning work could somebody do to understand their working environment where they've registered some interest?

CT: I would always start with, again, you know, trying to assess what's going on, like, what's the current stress levels? How much does everyone have on their plate right now? And then do some homework before I approach colleagues. I always review any relevant, you know, strategic frameworks, reports, any templates that we’re using, assessments to try to get an idea of how is the team working with gender today, how are they integrating, you know, components from the gender mainstreaming process, and what I enjoy doing that exercise that many times you often identify opportunities to bring in more components from the gender equality or gender mainstreaming process.

ES: A theme underpinning a lot of this, to me, is investment in training for yourself and others. Can you tell us more?

CT: Yeah, so more and more we see businesses, governments, academia, foundations, all organisations that are committing publicly to advancing gender and racial equality. This is the exact development that we want to see, right? But going back to the people, not everyone is doing so without necessarily investing in the management and in the staff who are expected to deliver on these commitments. And I think, again, it's hard to change the system if you don't help the people in the system. If we start with, you know, the first step of gender mainstreaming processes, is often the intersectional gender analysis and data process. And I think it's just a lot to expect from colleagues to know how to conduct one without any support or or training.

ES: Caroline, let's pause here quickly, and just double check our understanding. What does an intersectional gender analysis mean?

CT: Yeah, I know, we mentioned it a few times. So, this means that we look at social variables beyond gender, we can look at race, ethnicity, age, socioeconomic status, cultural beliefs, any social variable that is relevant to your programme. And we look at the way that these intersect, and people can experience discrimination because of many different social variables, not only because you're a woman, but because you are of a certain age, a certain race or ethnicity. And why this is so important too, linking it back to, you know, our programme or service that it really gives us a better idea of how to respond to those different needs and experiences. So that is what it means. It's basically, you know, a woman is merely not only a woman, she is also a certain age and and a certain race or ethnicity. So that's why that's so important.

ES: How can you provide training that's tailored to your organisation and team?

CT: Gender mainstreaming was pioneered in the international development sector, right? But not all teams can relate to examples and tools and case studies from the sector. And this was one of my first challenges when I moved to Los Angeles trying to, you know, trying to do the work there. I often, you know, it was so easy for me to find case studies from an economic development programme in the agricultural sector in East Africa, but I couldn't necessarily bring that to the economic and workforce development department here in LA. So the more the training hits home, the easier it will be for your colleagues to process it and start thinking about how it's relevant for their programme and how they can apply it. I also think it's important to talk about this, not only at the kind of programme level and the community that you're trying to serve, but also from a personal level and personal professional level. So yeah, if it's relevant for your context, I always think it's beneficial to bring up, you know, what are the linkages between gender equality and public bathrooms or gender equality in cars, gender equality and our retirement savings? There's so many good examples. And oftentimes, you know, people are not necessarily aware, but it starts to make them curious how it actually affects them personally. And yeah, on that note, you know, gender equality, it is really about all of us, right? And I think, again, that it's hard to change the system and get people on board if we don't open them up to the various benefits that the gender mainstreaming process brings. Because in the end, if we want to make sustainable change, it's all of our responsibility, it is something that needs to be kind of implemented and integrated across all departments in all of our work.

ES: One vital link to making change stick is engaging in leadership. Any additional thoughts on that?

CT: If your organisation or your country has committed to any of the international standards. I'm thinking about the, you know, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the UN Women principals, any of these. Have a conversation about how this applies to your work, to your programme. I also think it's always good to present solutions, like again, go and do the homework and then go to your leader or your manager and say like, hey, I identify that this is relevant for our programme, why don't we do it this way? And, on that note, we all know that our leaders and managers, they have their own priorities. So, another tactic could be to link this to one of their priorities and present it in a way as this could help advance your priority or this priority as well.

ES: Thanks so much Caroline. It was great to talk to you.