| Date 01-Nov-2021 to 01-Nov-2021 |
Location Virtual |
Format PRIA@40 |
The Acceleration Plan agreed to at the end of Generation Equality Forum in July 2021 identified a number of concrete actions that various stakeholders have committed to bring about real progress in gender equality across generations by 2026. UN’s first ‘Decade of Women’ began in 1975 with an international conference in Mexico City. Nearly five decades later, a renewed call for gender equality is placed in front of us all.
The process of integrating womens’ practical and strategic needs began in earnest in the 1980s, and a concerted effort was made to build understanding and capacities among development planners and implementers to integrate gender in policies and programmes. A wide variety of educational and training programmes have since been implemented around the world by governments, NGOs and other professionals.
Over the past two decades, several practitioners and scholars have begun to explore how organizations themselves can become gender transformational. PRIA’s efforts at gender mainstreaming institutionally grew out of the realisation that mere sensitisation of individuals and leaders was not enough. Through a process of ‘participatory gender audits’ co-facilitated within organisations, critical assessment of organisational systems, procedures, rules and regulations were made from a gender equality lens. Organizational assessments can further reveal the hidden and invisible dimensions of organisational culture, and norms of society which influence everyday behaviours of members of the organisations.
PRIA’s efforts also stemmed from the understanding that many of the design assumptions behind organisational structures, recruitment and HRD policies, and management theories underpinning the same, were gender discriminatory, although shrouded by the term ‘gender neutrality’. Hidden power arrangements, and tacit acceptance of inequality tend to perpetuate deep-rooted prejudices and unequal gender relations. Interestingly, organisation renewal and development (OD) approaches generally do not integrate gender perspective in theory and practice.
Such a situation exists in all types of formal organizations—business, educational, public services, government agencies, judiciary, hospitals, development agencies, including civil society. As a consequence, societal gender stereotypes and myths which discriminate against gender equality are inadvertently adopted in such organisational design and functioning. Approaches towards mainstreaming gender institutionally tend to facilitate such an OD and institutional renewal process such that there is less disconnect between aspirations of gender equality and everyday experiences of gender relations in organisations.
In recent years, issues of bullying and sexual harassment at workplace have begun to gain much attention, and regulatory frameworks for prevention of such practices in formal organisations have been legislated and enforced. But, subtle and invisible forms of gender discrimination may continue even when attention to visible transgressions is given by organisational leadership. Therefore, it is imperative that organisations committed to gender equality—beyond the binaries—undertake renewal towards gender transformational organisational systems, rules, culture and everyday practices.
As PRIA completes four decades of its impactful journey, we will be convening a digital Samvad (conversation) in partnership with UN Women, and Martha Farrell Foundation on November 1, 2021 between 5-7 pm to reflect upon-
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