Handbook of Gender Mainstreaming Practices in Communications, HR and Leader

Handbook of gender mainstreaming practices in communications, HR and leadership

A law, policy or programme can either reduce, maintain or increase gender inequalities between women and men. To help designing inclusive policies, the European Commission defined the Gender Impact Assessment (GIA) as follows:

The Gender Impact Assessment is the estimation of the different effects (positive, negative or neutral) of any policy or activity implemented to specific items in terms of gender equality.

This tool works in 2 steps. The first one is the analysis of the current gender-related position in relation to the policy under consideration; followed by the analysis of the projected impacts on women and men once the policy has been implemented. The final objective of the GIA is for users, that can also be the HR, to define the policy purposes, check its gender relevance, make a gender-sensitive analysis weighting the gender impact, and share findings and recommendations that could improve the inclusiveness of that policy.

Define Plan Act Check

Five main challenges of gender mainstreaming (by Lucille Griffon)

First of all, there are often misunderstandings on the reason why gender mainstreaming exists and what it is about. Too often, gender mainstreaming is simply understood as a tool to assess the positions of men and women in our societies. Although it covers a part of what gender mainstreaming is, I believe that this vision fails to take into consideration power structures.

We live in an unequal world where women are disproportionately being discriminated against, suffer from strong and entrenched inequalities. Thus, we cannot apply gender mainstreaming “all things being equal”, because all things are not equal. It is good to remember that the end goal remains women’s rights and gender equality. Gender mainstreaming should be a feminist tool.

Secondly, gender mainstreaming can appear as a technical, “boring” tool, which does not allow for concrete, “here and now”, types of results. It is part of the nature of the tool and people should understand that if you do gender mainstreaming correctly, you will not see “results” per se - you simply avoid making mistakes from the start.

Thirdly, gender mainstreaming has been thought of first as a public policy mechanism. As such, it is not always adequate for NGOs work for instance. Some work is needed there to provide concrete examples of gender mainstreaming’s implementation within organisations.

Fourthly, there is a need for an intersectional gender mainstreaming method. However, it is difficult to find a meaningful way to build an intersectional GM tool which is neither tokenistic, nor a never-ending checklist. If an intersectional lens is not applied to gender mainstreaming, this approach risks to re-entrench gender norms. Assuming the different “needs” and positions of women and men in our societies, without digging deeper into their lived experiences, can stereotypically reinforce gender roles and confirm gender norms.

Only by starting from an assessment of the real and complex identities of people of all genders, GM can become a tool of radical change.

Finally, gender mainstreaming, as it resolutely questions the very basis of organisations’ work, requires long and sustained efforts. These efforts should be undertaken by dedicated individuals, who have both the financial and political means to conduct their work efficiently. Human, financial resources and political will are key.

Gender mainstreaming in audiovisual and written language

Language, society and gender-sensitive language

Language is not a neutral tool: scientists and linguists agree that language shapes the way people think and behave. In the same way, the images we choose and the stories we tell have a strong influence on how we perceive reality and how we build our relations with other people. For these reasons, a serious agenda for gender equality should start from changing the way we speak and communicate through images.

Adopting a gender-sensitive and gender-inclusive approach to language is important for several reasons. First, it challenges unconscious bias about gender roles in society and it underlines the agency of women. Second, it raises awareness of how language affects our attitudes and makes people more comfortable with expressing themselves and behaving in ways that defy what is typically expected from their gender. This lays the foundation for greater gender equality throughout society.

But what is gender sensitive language? It is a language (verbal or audiovisual) that expresses the values of gender equality, i.e. addresses persons of all genders as persons of equal value, dignity, integrity and respect. Moreover, gender-sensitive language does not replicate (unconscious) bias and assumptions about gender roles in society. Finally, gender-sensitive language does not invisibilise or omit the existence and experiences of women (for example by using the ‘male generic’ in language). Gender sensitive language is not the same as gender-neutral language, which is simply not gender-specific and considers people in general, with no reference to women or men. Gender-neutral language can be more inclusive to those who do not identify in a binary way with one gender, but it often takes the male perspective as its basis and can therefore hide important differences in the roles, situations and needs of women/ girls and men/boys.

The media plays a very important role in shaping our imaginaries and in influencing our understanding of society and of social norms. For this reason, advocating for a media sector where people of different genders are represented as being of equal value and respect is greatly important. Right now, this is not the case.

In family movies between 2007 and 2017, male leads vastly outnumbered female leads—71.3% compared to 28.8%. Moreover, male characters received two times the amount of screen time as female characters in 2015 (28.5% compared to 16.0%). The Bechdel Test, or Bechdel-Wallace Test, evaluates whether a movie covers the following three criteria: (1) it has to have at least two women in it, who (2) talk to each other, about (3) something besides a man. In an analysis of 8076 mainstream movies only 57.6% pass all three tests.

When it comes to the news, in 2015, women made up only 24% of the persons heard, read about or seen in newspaper, television and radio news, and only 37% of stories in newspapers, television and radio newscasts are reported by women.

Not only women are strongly under-represented and invisibilized in the media, but the way they are depicted reinforces gender stereotypes. In Children’s films, female characters are six times more likely than male characters to be shown in revealing clothing, while male characters are more likely than female characters to be shown as violent (34.3% compared to 18.6%), and twice as likely to be shown as criminal (20.3% compared to 13.7%). In children’s TV shows, male characters are more likely to be shown in professional positions such as doctors and lawyers (16.8% compared with 12.3%), while female characters are more likely to be shown in service positions (25.8% compared with 21.2%). Among characters in STEM professions, male characters outnumber female characters two-to-one (70.2% compared with 29.8%). Moreover, in popular films, male characters are more likely to be shown in positions of leadership than female characters (53.6% compared to 46.1%).

Invisibilisation and stereotypisation is even more pronounced for queer characters. In popular films, 95% of prominent characters are heterosexual. LGBTQ+ characters are more likely to be shown partially nude (34.6% vs 10.4%) and to be portrayed as more promiscuous (13.3% vs 3.1%). Even more serious, in children’s television, LGBTQ+ characters are far more likely to be shown as criminal than heterosexual characters (50.0% compared to 8.5%) and to be portrayed as having low intelligence than heterosexual characters (50.0% compared to 6.7%).

It is very easy to imagine how this kind of representation is shaping our societies and our own way of thinking and seeing other people. At the same time, the media industry does not seem to take due account of these issues. In Europe, only one quarter of media organisations (26%) have a gender equality policy or code of conduct. Some organisations adopt an approach which they suggest is gender-neutral and based on merit, meaning that they do not feel it necessary to do anything which particularly advantages women. Other respondents suggested that they did not need gender-specific actions or activities as they did not have a problem with discrimination. Only 6% of media organisations support structured leadership or management training programmes for women, although slightly more (8%) provide equality-awareness training for staff.

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