Gender mainstreaming and social change

Abstract

This article goes into detail about the concept of gender mainstreaming, analyzing its two basic components: (i) its substantive content that is gender approach, according to which  inequality  between  men and women  is a systemic  phenomenon  whose  root would be the gender understood  as the social (re) construction  of difference  between  sexes and of the relationships between them; and (ii) mainstreaming as a strategy to achieve equality, a  strategy  for incorporating  the gender  equality  perspective  in all regulations  and in all policies  (global  approach),  a strategy  that  would  be complementary  not exclusionary  of equal treatment and positive action and that would aspire to be particularly incisive for the attainment  of the objective referred.

Given  that the goal of gender  mainstreaming  is social  transformation,  changing  re- lationship  between  the sexes,  as well  as their  social  representations  and given  the great ambiguity  that  exists  about  what  should  be  the  meaning  and  the  direction  of  changes, this paper  argues  that  social  transformation  must  go in line  to overcome  assimilationis- me  (assuming  male  models  by  women)  and  dualism  between  women  and  men,  keeping separate and distinct spheres, because they both make impossible to achieve true equality. Social transformation,  that needs to include men to change, should be oriented to achieve a  positive  mixture  (a positive  form of melding),  a new model  of society  that overcomes androcentrism,  because the paradigm of human that is susceptible of universalizing  would be not only “male” values but all the human qualities, skills and possibilities,  such as the ones that are part of the “male” model as the ones that are part of the “feminine”  model, since all of them are human values that any human being can practice.

Finally this article highlights  the potentialities  that holds the Gender Mainstreaming strategy and also its risks and diff iculties.