Barriers to Gender Equality in Project Management
BARRIERS TO GENDER EQUALITY IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT INTRODUCTION
Gender mainstreaming is a synthesizing concept that addresses the well being of women and men. It is a strategy that is central to the interests of the whole community. The Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing 1995 pushed the dialogue on gender mainstreaming to the fore at an international level and was endorsed by the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action as the approach by which goals under each of its Critical Areas of Concern are to be achieved. All players in the development sector since the Fourth World Conference on Women have been in agreement that gender matters. Since then, widespread commitment has been made by governments, donor agencies, non-government organizations and other international and national players to gender mainstreaming. There is substantial evidence to demonstrate that the key players in the development industry have identified gender equity as a priority objective. For example, each donor agency has a gender strategy paper. Some donors require organizations receiving funds to have a gender policy.
The business of this paper is to identify barriers to gender equality in Project Management. However, a proper understanding of some basic concepts such as Gender, Gender Equality, Gender Mainstreaming, is immediately essential.
Basic concepts
Equality, which is the corner stone of democratic nations, successful organizations and a basic human right, are time and space dependent phenomena. At least three historical waves of approaches to equality between the sexes can be distinguished (Horelli, Booth & Gilroy, 1998; Rees, 1998). They are:
• The equal treatment perspective which focuses on the human rights of women and also on those of men.
• The women´s perspective stresses the empowerment of women and the added value that women can bring forth.
• The gender perspective
Gender mainstreaming is a synthesizing concept that addresses the well being of women and men. It is a strategy that is central to the interests of the whole community. The Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing 1995 pushed the dialogue on gender mainstreaming to the fore at an international level and was endorsed by the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action as the approach by which goals under each of its Critical Areas of Concern are to be achieved. All players in the development sector since the Fourth World Conference on Women have been in agreement that gender matters. Since then, widespread commitment has been made by governments, donor agencies, non-government organizations and other international and national players to gender mainstreaming. There is substantial evidence to demonstrate that the key players in the development industry have identified gender equity as a priority objective. For example, each donor agency has a gender strategy paper. Some donors require organizations receiving funds to have a gender policy.
The business of this paper is to identify barriers to gender equality in Project Management. However, a proper understanding of some basic concepts such as Gender, Gender Equality, Gender Mainstreaming, is immediately essential.
Basic concepts
Equality, which is the corner stone of democratic nations, successful organizations and a basic human right, are time and space dependent phenomena. At least three historical waves of approaches to equality between the sexes can be distinguished (Horelli, Booth & Gilroy, 1998; Rees, 1998). They are:
• The equal treatment perspective which focuses on the human rights of women and also on those of men.
• The women´s perspective stresses the empowerment of women and the added value that women can bring forth.
• The gender perspective