Gender Concepts and Terms
This section is a list of gender concepts and terms which are proving useful for people to 'pull out' the essence, then find the right words and meaningful approaches to take in their local context.
Empowerment
Empowerment is about people - both women and men - taking control over their lives: setting their own agendas, gaining skills, building self-confidence, solving problems and developing self-reliance.
Source: UNESCO GENIA Toolkit for Promoting Gender Equality in Education
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Gender
Gender refers to the roles and responsibilities of women and men that are created in our families, our societies and our cultures. The concept of gender also includes the expectations held about the characteristics, aptitudes and behaviours of both women and men (feminity and masculinity).
These roles and expectations are learned. They can change over time and they vary within and between cultures. The concept is vital because it facilitates gender analysis revealing how women's subordination is socially constructed. As such, the subordination can be changed or ended. It is not biologically predetermined nor is it fixed forever.
Source: ABC of Women Worker’s Rights and Gender Equality, ILO, Geneva, 2000
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Gender Analysis
Gender Analysis is the collection and analysis of sex-disaggregated information. Men and women perform different roles. So do girls and boys. This leads to males and females having different experience, knowledge, needs, access to and control over resources. Gender roles can result in one sex having an unequal role in decision-making or being denied the benefits from development. Gender analysis explores these differences so policies, programmes and projects can identify and meet the different needs of women, men, girls and boys. Gender analysis also facilitates the strategic use of their distinct knowledge and skills. It should include qualitative and quantitative data.
Source: ABC of Women Worker's Rights and Gender Equality, ILO, Geneva, 2000
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Gender and Development (GAD)
The GAD approach focuses on intervening to address unequal gender relations which often lock women out of full participation. It seeks to have both women and men participate, make decisions and share benefits by meeting practical needs and promoting strategic interests. The GAD approach is rooted in solid gender analysis.
Source: UNESCO GENIA Toolkit for Promoting Gender Equality in Education
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Gender Audit
A gender audit is a management and planning tool. An audit evaluates the gender-responsiveness of an organization's culture and how well that organization/company is integrating a gender perspective into its work. The audit recommendations aim to assist the organization to become more gender responsive.
Source: UNESCO GENIA Toolkit for Promoting Gender Equality in Education
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Gender Division of Labour
Gender division of labour is the result of how society divides work among men and women according to what is considered suitable or appropriate.
Source: UNESCO GENIA Toolkit for Promoting Gender Equality in Education
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Gender Equality
Gender equality means that women and men have equal conditions for realizing their full human rights and for contributing to, and benefiting from, economic, social, cultural and political development. Gender equality is therefore the equal valuing by society of the similarities and the differences of men and women, and the roles they play. It is based on women and men being full partners in their home, their community and their society. Gender equality starts with equal valuing of girls and boys.
Source: ABC of Women Worker’s Rights and Gender Equality, ILO, Geneva, 2000
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Gender Equity
Gender Equity means “fairness of treatment for women and men, according to their respective needs, including the equal treatment or treatment considered equivalent in terms of rights, benefits, obligations and opportunities”. To ensure fairness, measures must often be put in place to compensate for the historical and social disadvantages that prevent women and men from operating on a level playing field.
Source: Gender Equality and Equity: UNESCO Paris, 2000
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Gender Lens
Think of a gender lens as putting on spectacles. Out of one lens of the spectacles, you see the participation, needs and realities of women. Out of the other lens, you see the participation, needs and realities of men. Your sight or vision is the combination of what each eye sees. A gender lens often has these characteristics:
• It is a list of questions, a checklist or a list of criteria
• It is routinely used
• It is created in a participatory manner by those who will use it
Source: UNESCO GENIA Toolkit for Promoting Gender Equality in Education
See examples of Gender Lens in the Toolkit for Promoting Gender Equality in Education
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Gender Mainstreaming
Gender mainstreaming is an approach used to integrate women’s and men’s needs and experiences into the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic, religious and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally, and inequality is not perpetuated.
Organizations that most effectively mainstream gender into their activities have a gender-responsive organizational culture. This is a culture in which everyone responds positively to the organization's requirement that they actively demonstrate their commitment to advance gender equality in their daily work and in their interaction with others.
Source: ECOSOC Agreed conclusions (E/1997/100)
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Sex
Sex is the biological difference between men and women. Sex is determined at birth.
Source: M.Candida, S.Ines, M. Maitrayee (1999). A Guide to Gender-Analysis Frameworks (An Oxfam Publication) England.
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Sex-Disaggregated Data
Sex-disaggregated data is quantitative statistical information on differences and inequalities between women and men.
Source: Gender Manual: A Practical Guide for Development Policy Makers and Practitioners (DFID), April 2002
There is widespread confusion over, and misuse of, the terms “gender disaggregated data” and “sex-disaggregated data”. Data should necessarily be sex-disaggregated but not gender-disaggregated since males and females are counted according to their biological difference and not according to their social behaviours. The term gender-disaggregated data is frequently used, but it should be understood as sex-disaggregated data.
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Strategic Interests
Within a gender context, strategic interests are usually about getting more choices, more options or more voice. They focus on fundamental issues related to women's (or less often men's) subordination and gender inequities. Strategic interests are long-term and rarely material which differ from practical needs which are immediate and often focus on acquiring essential material goods. Structural change such as legislation for equal rights or reproductive choice and laws setting quotas for women in elected positions, aim to help the disadvantaged sex fulfil strategic interests. In striving to meet their personal strategic interests, individuals are often seeking to increase their own capacity or their ability to take control of their own lives.
Source: UNESCO GENIA Toolkit for Promoting Gender Equality in Education
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Women in Development (WID)
The WID approach aims to integrate women into the existing development process by targeting them, often in women-specific activities. Women are usually passive recipients in WID projects, which often emphasize making women more efficient producers and increasing their income. Although many WID projects have improved health, income or resources in the short term, because they did not transform unequal relationships, a significant number were not sustainable.
A common shortcoming of WID projects is that they do not consider women’s multiple roles or that they miscalculate the elasticity of women’s time and labour. No gender analysis was done to ensure that WID activities would meet the needs of women involved or would be accepted by men who were not consulted. The GAD approach is based on gender analysis.
Source: UNESCO GENIA Toolkit for Promoting Gender Equality in Education
