Gender Policy

“So where are your gender statistics?” Anyone who raises their eyebrows at that question obviously isn’t up to speed with gender mainstreaming. For the past ten years, the German Government has been attempting to integrate the gender dimension across its policy agenda – with mixed success.

“Gender – what’s that all about?” is the amused response from some people when others proudly announce that they have adopted a gender approach to their language, target groups or even their budget. “Gender mainstreaming” is a public policy concept that also aspires to be an elegant means of making the world a better place. It assesses the different implications for women and men of any planned policy action and encourages reflection on their roles. The aim is to dismantle power inequalities between men and women. This ambitious undertaking was initiated at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. Since then, it has been enshrined in a range of international conventions, the UN and the EU have formally committed to it, and even the German Government officially introduced it in 1999.

Ten years down the line, Germany’s track record is mixed. There are some highly acclaimed pilot projects, but also a great deal of confusion and even opposition to the gender mainstreaming concept. Some journalists are even claiming that the state’s efforts to re-educate us are putting male identity at risk. And recently, the Federal Ministry with responsibility for women’s issues announced that the term was too provocative and should no longer be used. So what is it about the “gender mainstreaming” principle, which sounds so simple and yet triggers such strong reactions?

Politicising gender

Well, first of all, there’s the term itself. It’s cumbersome and awkward. The very word “gender” means very little to most people. In English, the word “gender” is used, rather than “sex”. “Sex” denotes biological sex, whereas “gender” is intended to describe “social gender”, i.e. role attributions. These role attributions can have a highly constraining effect on people. Men who always want to appear strong and cool in order to show that they are “masculine” can suffer so severely from this pressure that it makes them ill. Women can also be adversely affected: if they are ambitious and want to move up the career ladder, they may be accused of being “unfeminine”. However, it is the traditional allocation of sex roles, with women as the home maker for no pay and men financially supporting them, which is proving to be most enduring. It creates power inequalities – political, economic and in the private sphere.

Gender at the local level

As a policy principle, gender mainstreaming is intended to consider questions like these: does a policy measure benefit both men and women? Is it based on assumptions about roles which restrict people’s choices? Gender expert Marion Böker, who advises administrative bodies on gender mainstreaming, is quite used to seeing her audiences roll their eyes at first. Gender mainstreaming strikes them as being unnecessary and overcomplicated. “But once they’ve tried out a few ideas, they are often quite enthusiastic”, says Böker. In Berlin, for example, the districts opted to keep it small to begin with: library staff thought it would do men a power of good to look at emotional issues for a change, and so they started to shelve the self-help books in the technology corner. Lo and behold, men began to borrow them. And suddenly, more girls started to use a sports field: the administration had carried out a gender analysis and found that the boys were hogging the playing field for hours. The solution was simple: the staff drew up a timetable to give everyone access.

Gender at federal level

Gender mainstreaming can help to reach target groups more effectively, says Susanne Baer, a lawyer and head of the Federal Government’s GenderCompetenceCenter in Berlin: “The questions devised for the analyses are impressively simple: am I genuinely achieving what I want, and reaching the target groups I’m aiming for? It’s not complicated”. The GenderCompetenceCenter has developed guidelines and checklists for use at all levels. If tax policy were approached from a gender perspective, for example, a key question that would have to be addressed is whether joint taxation of spouses with income splitting reinforces traditional role models. The Federal Agency for Civic Education is one institution which has looked at ways of targeting both sexes more effectively. It has increased the number of women policy officers and developed offers specifically for women. As a result, it is now reaching its target group more effectively: the number of women participants increased from 30 to 43 percent between 2000 and 2005.

AHowever, the Agency has also found that there are limits to the gender mainstreaming concept: “Nowadays, women are so diverse that it is rare to be able to discern a uniform impact on all women”, says Barbara Kamutzki, the Agency’s officer responsible for gender. She suggests that instead, “diversity” should be taken as the starting point. What’s more, there are many issues where “gender” creates a lot of extra work: “Just try looking at the history of nuclear disarmament from a gender perspective!” sighs Kamutzki.

A challenge to traditionalists

Gender mainstreaming makes people rethink their attitudes – and that means their views on personal issues as well. People who cling to the old role models are suddenly noticing that breaking down these models is firmly on the political agenda. For a time, the conservative press in particular launched an assault on this “political correctness gone mad” which, it claimed, sought to “destroy” the identity of boys and men (Der Spiegel) and whose ultimate aim is supposedly a “political sex change” (FAZ). Susanne Baer from the GenderCompetenceCenter is a voice of calm: “We’re not taking the boys’ cars away”, she says. It’s simply about expanding the options for both sexes.

But this requires a lot of fresh thinking. Even the Federal Government has recognised that the new principle cannot be introduced as a sideline: its efforts to mainstream gender in its legislative initiatives have only been successful in individual cases. Indeed, the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth was keen to replace the phrase “gender mainstreaming” with the German term “Leitprinzip Geschlechtergerechtig-
keit” (guiding principle: gender justice), because the English term has caused “acceptance problems”. Jochen Geppert from the GenderCompetenceCenter is opposed to such a move, however: “The notion of “gender justice” could be used to justify fundamentally different treatment of women and men and could ultimately reinforce stereotypes. The impetus that gender mainstream generates for change would be lost.” It’s a concern which was apparently shared by many of the German ministries as well: they voted against a change of terminology in the Joint Rules of Procedure of the Federal Ministries (GGO).