Institutional gender mainstreaming in health in UN Agencies: Promising strategies and ongoing challenges

While the United Nations has long implemented strategies to tackle deep-rooted gender-based inequalities and discrimination in its programmes and policies, there is limited evidence on successful strategies to foster institutional structures and practices that promote gender equality or institutional gender mainstreaming. This paper explores and analyses the experience of institutional gender mainstreaming within UN Agencies working on global health, highlighting potential areas for learning. Overall, progress on institutional gender mainstreaming has been modest, with slow increases (if any) in investments in financial and human resources. The findings highlight the importance of well-established strategies, such as enforcing accountability, a robust gender architecture, and a cohesive capacity-building policy. Drawing on the experiences of gender experts, the paper shows that equally or more critical to the success of institutional gender mainstreaming were approaches such as leveraging strategic internal and external support and identifying strategic entry points for gender mainstreaming. There is considerable scope for strengthening gender mainstreaming within UN Agencies by reviewing and learning from UN system successes. In addition to learning from practice, the way forward lies in making visible and developing strategies to challenge embedded patriarchal organisational norms and systems.