Gender mainstreaming in health research and organizational development

Abstract

The German Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt - UBA) has identified genderas a topic of major interest for raising the quality of its own research, administrative actionsand the transfer of science into policy. The UBA has adopted gender mainstreaming as a topdown,cross-cutting and ex-ante approach in research and organizational development.<BR>1. Relevance<BR>The process of implementing gender mainstreaming can look back upon more than a decadeof experience. Since the milestone project "Gender Relations and SustainabilityŁ wasimplemented in 2000-2004, the agency has acknowledged that integrating the dimensions ofsex and gender creates innovative research that addresses both the environment and thepeople (women/men) living in it. In many cases, taking sex/gender aspects into account hasalready led to more relevant and more target group specific results in departmental research,resulting in better governance and policy advice.<BR>2. Aims & Objectives<BR>Since 2002, the German Ministry for the Environment has provided all divisions with theinstrument "Gender Impact Assessment", and since 2010 the UBA has used its own specifictool "Checklist: Gender Mainstreaming in Research," designed to assist with the integration of sex/gender dimensions into research. Achieving good stewardship in the implementation ofgender mainstreaming corresponding to the cross-cutting mandate in a systematic fashionremains a challenge.<BR>3. Methods<BR>In 2015 the UBA entered yet another new phase, in which a collegial bottom-up approachsupplements the top-down approach within an overall paradigm of stewardship. The agencyaims to improve the dissemination and application of gender mainstreaming instruments in research, based on strong cognitive educational elements, with the goal of making gendermainstreaming a collective practice. It also includes procedural aspects and sex/gender relatedresearch topic in its own process of developing policy advice from scientific data. Oneresearch focus will be the integration of sex and genderaspects in the development, evaluation and data interpretation of the population representative human biomonitoring study"German Environmental SurveyŁ (GerES).<BR>4. Results<BR>The presentation will describe the genealogy of gender mainstreaming at the UBA and present the existing instruments and their design. Finally, the new concept of a planned implementation of gender mainstreaming that controls for gender in the three overarchingareas of organizational development, human resources and research will be elaborated on.Narrowing down the focus to departmental research, in the second part of the presentation sexand gender will be addressed from a toxicological/epidemiological point of view and give oneexample of good procedural and integrational practice, being the research project GermanEnvironmental Survey GerES, its preparation, premises and use.<BR>5. Conclusions<BR>The integration of a sex and gender perspective in research adds value and informs betterpolicy making. A systematic approach to gender in research isbeneficial to its quality andexcellence.<BR>Quelle: Gender Summit 7 Europe : Mastering gender in research performance, contexts, and outcomes ; Abstract Compendium. Portia Ltd. 2015. ISBN 978-1-910663-06-6, S. 8