Examples

Examples

There is no area of life that is gender-neutral. So gender issues are important everywhere. Gender Mainstreaming is necessarily application-related and context-related, so there are no good or bad examples of the application of the strategy of Gender Mainstreaming, just experience gained from various areas of practice.
Promotion of sport: if you take a gender-sensitive look at the way public money is given to the promotion of sport, you will notice that there is a “secret” gender bias. It is primarily male-dominated types of sport that are promoted. Gender Mainstreaming tools would here see to it that resources are allocated equally to all sports.
Medicines: medical research and development has tested new medicines mainly on male test persons. But effects and side effects can be very different for men and women. Gender Mainstreaming therefore calls for medicines always to be tested on the people who will most probably be using them.
Compatibility: compared with mothers, fathers have greater difficulty in taking parental leave. Gender Mainstreaming sees to it that men and women are treated equally in families policy, bearing in mind their differences. The goal is to let both have a real choice in what duties they take on in career and family.

The following search criteria [German link] can be used in selecting good examples.

In other countries and in international organisations, there are a great many examples of Gender Mainstreaming; the strategy came in much earlier than in Germany. The United Nations can be said to have led the way. They offer a collection of examples of Gender Mainstreaming.
The German Federal Ministries have tried out Gender Mainstreaming in pilot projects. You can find their descriptions under www.gendermainstreaming.net and from the various ministries.
Examples on a local level can be found at the Stadtverwaltung Freiburg [German link].
You can find further information on the website of the European Commission on Gender Mainstreaming, where you can also find the Report on equality between men and women 2004.