3 Ways to Start Incorporating Gender Mainstreaming in your Organisation

Implementing Gender Mainstreaming

Since you now know and understand the term gender mainstreaming*, you can go about  learning how to implement it! You can begin gender mainstreaming in your civil society organisation (CSO) by undertaking an analysis of your organisational strategies, communication policies, internal policies, budgeting, programming, and project development.

Don’t know where to start? Here are 3 ways you can start incorporating gender mainstreaming in your CSO:

1. Be aware of bullying and sexual harassment:

Bullying and sexual harassment can take place in many different shapes and forms – face-to-face or online, through pictures or words, by jokes or even suggestive teasing. Recognising that bullying and sexual harassment are the result of an abuse of power makes everyone responsible for combating bullying and harassment. Train your organisation team to take up the role of an ally and to support those who are most vulnerable to bullying and sexual harassment.

1. Equal opportunity and recognition = Equal pay:

Create a salary scale that doesn’t discriminate based on gender, age, race, colour, and religion. In other words, focus on creating a pay scale based on years of experience in the sector, level of education, and skill-set needed for the position, etc.

1. Internal gender advocacy through communication:

Often times we use language (i.e. gendered pronouns) that indirectly upholds power relations between women, men, and gender non-conforming individuals. Other times, we are simply unaware of the terms used to support gender awareness. Make your team aware of patriarchal language constructs and educate them to use inclusive language on a daily basis.

A list of basic gender-related terms and how to use them can be found on page 4-5 of Lebanon Support’s “A Practical Guide for Civil Society Organisations in Lebanon towards Gender Mainstreaming.”

For more on gender and sexuality related terms in English and Arabic, you can also refer to our bilingual Gender Dictionary: Traveling Concepts and Local Usages in Lebanon available as an online interactive tool here, or as pdf here.

Why is incorporating gender mainstreaming in your Civil Society Organisation important?

The answer is simple: gender equity.

By making gender mainstreaming an integral part of your CSO, you are not only an ally to women, men, and gender non-conforming individuals whose access to resources, opportunities, and rights has been compromised but you are also setting the standard for the potential growth of gender mainstreaming in Lebanon.

In 2017, Lebanon Support published the Gender Manual: “A Practical Guide for Civil Society Organisations in Lebanon towards Gender Mainstreaming”. This manual is published on our Gender Equity Network project on the Civil Society Knowledge Centre [civilsociety-centre.org/gen], and as part of our Civil Society Incubator programme. It is available in English and Arabic here.

This Gender Manual has been published in collaboration with Diakonia.

*Gender Mainstreaming is the process of adopting a gender-inclusive perspective across different types of activities or projects. It can be viewed as a means of achieving gender equality. Gender mainstreaming involves the examination, reorganisation, improvement, and evaluation of measures, legislations, and policies in cultural, societal, political, and economic domains, with the purpose of incorporating gender equality in all policies.