Gender Training Community of Practice

Gender training as a concrete mechanism for building capacity for gender mainstreaming, and a way to make development cooperation more inclusive and responsive, has been implemented - from differing perspectives, with differing methodologies, and with varying levels of commitment - since the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995. It has been presented as crucial to organisational development and capacity building, as well as key to changing attitudes and behaviours and building capacity at the operational level.

While both institutions and governments have attempted to instil gender-sensitivity and responsiveness into their staff, what has passed for "gender training" has, overall, not worked to the wider purpose of supporting, contributing to, initiating or effecting transformative change in gender relations or to an increase in capacity to deliver development programming services for women equally with men. Overall, the results of gender training, whether part of larger gender mainstreaming processes or not, have been mixed. What has passed for "gender training" has covered such a wide variety of experiences, topics and audiences that there is no longer an agreed definition of what gender training is, how it should be done, and with whom.

Though evaluations of individual gender training sessions may be positive, evaluations of gender training overall have not indicated significant organisational level change in programme and practice. Individual, one-off, or ad-hoc training delivered on short-term contracts gives the people responsible for gender training - at the programmatic and oversight levels - no opportunity to compare experiences, forge relationships with other practitioners for mutual support, feedback and possible co-facilitators, or identify what works in gender training and how to capitalise on it.

Considering this situation and as a result of several virtual discussions and other networking experiences, UN-INSTRAW is developing a Community of Practice (CoP) on Gender Training , which aims to bring together practitioners from all over the world with a diversity of knowledge and experiences on gender training in multiple topics and contexts. This CoP will promote dialogue and analysis of the state of the art in gender training, identification of the achievements and challenges and reflection on how gender training can be strengthened as a component of gender mainstreaming and sustainable development.