Walking the Talk: Organizational Gender Mainstreaming

Most donor agencies and many programmes currently have a commitment to gender mainstreaming. This requires organisations not only to have gender policies on paper, or gender strategies for clients, but to make sure they have the internal skills, capacities and incentives to implement these policies. All staff must not only promote gender equity, but 'walk the talk' in their own behaviour in the field and with each other.

Organizational gender and empowerment mainstreaming requires:

• vision, mission and programme promotion to include an explicit focus on empowerment and gender equity.
  
  
• equal opportunities policies for staff as a human rights issue, to set an appropriate example for programme participants and to increase
  programme effectiveness in reaching and empowering women.
  
  
• gender and empowerment awareness for men and women staff to include an empowerment perspective throughout the programme interactions with programme participants including the whole process of micro-finance delivery, all routine training and advice for both women and men and complementary services and all group activities.
  
  
• concrete incentives for women's empowerment in programme implementation including incentives for women themselves, for male participants and male and female staff.
  
  
• integration of empowerment indicators into existing programme Management Information Systems