The process of institutionalising gender in policy and planning: The 'web' of institutionalisation

Events like the Fourth UN Conference for Women which was held in Beijing in September 1995 help to focus the mind on issues like `how far have we come?' and `where are we going to?' Thus, while many are working towards setting and implementing new agendas for the millennium, the experience gained since the first formal national and international commitment to Women in Development in 1975 is also being reviewed. Despite 20 years of international, national and local activities on behalf of women, it is clear that most development activities continue without explicitly considering half the population as active participants in development - even when empirical evidence has shown that women are key actors in all development spheres, on their own, collectively with other women or with men. This observation reflects the critical question of concern in this paper: how to institutionalise or sustain change related to new perspectives in the practices of governments and other organisations involved in the development process. The term `institutionalisation' has been widely used in relation to integration of women or gender1 into regular development practices. The fact that a women or gender perspective has only very rarely been institutionalised in these practices suggests that both the conceptual underpinnings and the practical activities around institutionalisation need to be further explored.