This article is written by Linda Wirth, Former Director, ILO Bureau for Gender Equality.

Your organisation most likely has a gender equality policy, or maybe a gender equality and diversity policy.

But, having a policy is not the same as delivering on the policy, or even insurance that the policy is the right one. Decades have passed since the equality of rights for women were recognised in law. Yet the world is still grappling with how to ensure women enjoy those rights, for example, in education, employment, pay health services and freedom from violence.

Since the Fourth World Conference in Beijing in 1995, there has been broad, global agreement that gender mainstreaming is the most effective way for institutions and organisations to fully implement their gender equality policies.

But if the “how to” of gender mainstreaming is not understood and internalised by the institutions and their staff, it’s a lost opportunity to effectively implement their own gender equality policy. More concerning is the risk that existing inequalities and gender stereotyping can be reinforced or exacerbated.

The upside is that we do have excellent tools at our disposal that can help us mainstream gender in all organisations. One of these is the Participatory Gender Audit (PGA).

What is the PGA exactly?

The PGA can be described as an “institutional audit”. It examines comprehensively all aspects of an organisation’s policy, governance, operations and culture with respect to the integration of gender equality as a core value.

First developed by the Dutch Development Agency, my colleagues and I adapted the PGA methodology to the technical and operational mandate of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in the early 2000s.

Doing a PGA involves working with your organisation’s partners, which provides an opportunity to see how your gender equality efforts are perceived externally and to learn how to work better with partners on gender equality

The PGA is a tool for evaluating and establishing a baseline on gender mainstreaming and staff capacity in an organisation. It does this through a desk review of key documents, a staff survey, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with employees and partner organisations, as well as workshops. The different steps are triangulated to verify both employee perceptions and factual material applying a framework of key areas of analysis with regard to the organisation’s mandate, policies, capacities, operations and culture.

The process takes 4-6 weeks with a team of 2-4 facilitators depending on the size of the organisation. The final product is an audit report documenting good practices, gaps and recommendations. To the extent possible recommendations are elicited from the employees themselves for greater ownership of the PGA outcomes. The report belongs to the organisation which decides on how to implement the recommendations.

Benefits of the PGA

One of the reasons that the PGA has become so popular — hundreds have been done in all regions of the world — is that it delivers such a wide range of benefits, for example:

  • Employees usually appreciate the fact the PGA is a participatory tool. It decreases resistance to the notion of a gender audit and opens up internal space for dialogue among staff.

  • Many experience the PGA as an opportunity to learn about gender although this is not an explicit objective of the PGA.

  • Doing a PGA also involves working with your organisation’s partners, which provides an opportunity to see how your gender equality efforts are perceived externally and to learn how to work better with partners on gender equality. New potential partners with gender expertise are often identified and included as an audit recommendation.

  • Last but not least, it allows organisations to identify their good practices. All organisations have them! Examples include gender policies and action plans, targets for gender balance among employees including at managerial level, gender-sensitive research and projects that have fully mainstreamed gender using gender analysis and requiring reporting on gender indicators. Highlighting these good practices provides motivation to pursue gender equality goals. The PGA allows team members to share these good practices across the organisational silos.

Challenges

If you are the focal person for your organisation embarking on a PGA or other efforts to mainstream gender, I want to applaud you and give you a word of caution. You are doing important work that your colleagues will appreciate, but don’t be fooled: it’s not easy and there are many pitfalls.

After personally facilitating PGAs with around 20 organisations, as well as observing those facilitated by colleagues, I have seen a number of patterns emerge:

Lack of resources: Resources are nearly always limited! The cost of a PGA mainly depends on the number of facilitators hired and whether they are required to travel and be accommodated in another country or region. To limit costs, identify if there are certified facilitators already in your country. If an external facilitator is required, that person can lead one or two gender experts from your country to form a PGA team. Also, it is a good idea to plan ahead for inclusion of an allocation for a PGA in annual budgets.

Despite the global uptake of the PGA there still isn’t a clear institutional coordination mechanism to promote PGAs, to keep track of the PGAs conducted, to be a point of reference for organisations to contact and for monitoring the follow-up of PGAs undertaken

Lack of time: Time is also money! Many managers and employees fear that the PGA is too time intensive, especially since it’s a participatory approach.

However, as it is a collective process, the individual time commitment is not too demanding. The main time commitment falls on the facilitators. They need to be available full-time for about a week before the on-site phase to conduct a desk review and a staff survey, then around two weeks on-site at the institution for interviews and workshops and up to a week post on-site for completing the PGA report. The team leader will need some more time for coordinating arrangements with the institution.

Within the institution, the focal person for the organisation of the PGA needs to be engaged on a part-time basis for the whole duration in order to establish schedules for interviews, workshops and meetings and to collect documents for the desk review.

Lack of institutional coordination: Despite the global uptake of the PGA there still isn’t a clear institutional coordination mechanism to promote PGAs, to keep track of the PGAs conducted, to be a point of reference for organisations to contact and for monitoring the follow-up of PGAs undertaken. As the PGAs spread to all kinds of institutions, this was beyond the mandate and coordination capacity of the ILO.

Fortunately, the ILO’s International Training Centre (ITC) provides a point of coordination through its training programmes for PGA facilitators. Since 2012 ITC has trained and certified over 200 facilitators in several languages, creating a network around the world. ITC maintains a data base of certified facilitators who contribute information about the PGAs. ITC also responds to requests for information on conducting PGAs and links trained facilitators with organisations interested in conducting a PGA — see how to get in touch here.

A way forward

Despite good practices, the reality in most organisations is that gender mainstreaming is not systematic, either in terms of consistency across different parts or offices of the organisation. But individuals and organisational cultures are generally positive about gender equality, and diversity is often valued.

So how do we move from good intentions to global implementation?

UN Women has a global mandate and reach on gender equality and the empowerment of women. Institutionally, it connects with the so-called "national machineries" for gender equality and women (government ministries or departments). Using the resources at their disposal — the pool of certified PGA facilitators can be utilised to assist countries to strengthen their own capacity.

Expanding the uptake of the PGA can mobilise and provide direction to public sector employees on the “how to” of gender mainstreaming, and for their organisations to find out what they need to put in place to institutionalise gender mainstreaming. — Linda Wirth

(Picture credit: Unsplash)

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