ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that positive changes were noticed in the status of women in all three institutions: the family, society and the UP. Friedman and Gordezky have identified two possible causes for the lack of progress in gender mainstreaming. It can be attributed to cultural factors: gender-behavioural norms; outright restrictions on women's behaviour; and other occupational and educational customs which have hindered the advancement of women and have not received adequate attention in constructing gender mainstreaming policy. Elected Women Members (EWM) and EDW from the Sharique intervention areas expressed significantly different opinions on the matter of how much encouragement they were getting to participate in the community. The functionalist view is that institutions change through necessity in response to a change in their environment that diminishes the efficiency of existing institutions. It is rather like the social scientific equivalent of the Lamarckian view that organisms evolve in order to adapt to changes in their environment.
