ABSTRACT
To include gender aspects in the design of research projects is increasingly becoming a common standard of quality research and an issue of political correctness, which is regulated by funding policies. That such progress can be observed in academic contexts worldwide is due to the strategy of Gender Mainstreaming (GM). GM goes back to the development context where it aimed at securing gender equality in development projects. The UN then made it a UN policy instrument of general application and global outreach, endorsed in the Beijing Platform for Action from the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women 1995. In an official definition dating from 1997 GM is defined as
the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in all areas and at all levels. It is a strategy for making women's as well as men's concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality.
(United Nations 2002: 1)