ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book explores how a pre-existing policy process stabilises gender blind and gender biased assumptions and practices. It focuses on how interrelationships between abstract aims, strategy, implementation procedures and impact and evaluation procedures, structure local perceptions of workable and relevant issues. The book argues that this acts as a constraint on the renegotiation of collective activity and makes the insertion of new aims, like gender equality, a highly resource-intensive endeavour. It discusses how these constraints can be tackled, so that gender mainstreaming (GM) can be effectively translated from an abstract rhetorical commitment, into workable, collective actions that render gender inequality visible and relevant in daily work. Gender knowledge contestation (GKC) analysis enables us to uncover the mechanisms involved in successful GM implementation and to identify varying degrees of success.
