ICIMOD has placed itself at the cutting edge of gender mainstreaming in the Himalaya region, by successfully developing a gender equity policy with strong management support; establishing a high level of gender expertise within the organization; including components, activities and M&E indicators on gender in Regional Programs and the strategic framework; developing many good practices and strategies on gender in Initiatives; recruiting women in key professional positions and improving gender balance overall in the organization; monitoring and coaching for gender-sensitive communications; and making important strides in creating a gender-friendly organizational culture and human resources policies.
Challenges to further gender integration identified by ICIMOD staff include the absence of a Gender Action Plan to operationalise the gender policy, lack of accountability in results, lack of gender balance in professional and management staff and governance and the absence of a mentoring culture, the low level of female authorship and of gender content in publications, insufficient gender specialists, and limited resources
to implement the gender policy. A key challenge is how ICIMOD will work with partner organizations on gender integration over the next five years.
Opportunities to take gender mainstreaming to the next level in ICIMOD, as identified by ICIMOD staff and the consultant, include operationalising the Gender Equity Policy through a Gender Action Plan, as part of MTAP IV; improving accountability with agreed and feasible M&E metrics, with a timeline for adding other metrics; strengthening the core institutional gender function to include strategic orientation, quality control and cross-cutting research; ensuring that all programs and initiatives have adequate access to gender expertise, commensurate with the growth of ICIMOD; improving gender mainstreaming in programming by reviewing, sharing and systematizing use of existing good practices; strengthening ICIMOD staff capacity on gender integration and analysis through training, reflection and sharing of ICIMOD and other good practices; continuing the gender-sensitive approaches in human resource policy and knowledge management and communications and strengthening these; establishing a “mentoring culture” that provides more opportunities for women to move into professional and managerial roles, and preparing a plan to increase capacity and commitment of partner organizations to gender integration.
