Why is women’s participation important?

Gender mainstreaming is one of the strategies we use to promote gender equality. It is a process of ensuring that all of our work, and the way we do it,contributes to gender equality by transforming the balance of power between women and men. This means ensuring that both women and men areconsulted, and their different needs and perspectives considered at all stages of the programme cycle – design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation -to be sure that our programmes benefit women and men equally, do not harm or exclude women, and help to redress existing gender imbalances.