Section 1.6. MEAL and Gender Mainstreaming Gender Mainstreaming is essential to ensure gender equality considerations are included as you develop your MEAL Framework, MEAL Plan and as you move forward with your MEAL process. It measures whether your work is fair, inclusive and accessible to all genders. Gender is defined broadly in this Guide as involving women, men and gender diverse people. The main concepts of Gender Mainstreaming are: • Gender: a term that refers to socially constructed roles of, and power relations among women, men and gender diverse people, all of whom may be affected differently by an NHRI’s activities. • Gender Mainstreaming: a strategy to achieve gender equality. It is a process to assess gender implications across all activities of an organisation followed by action taken to achieve gender equality and ensure gender inequality is not perpetuated. • Gender equality: refers to the equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities for people of all genders. It means the aspirations and needs of all genders are considered, valued and favoured equally. • Gender sensitive MEAL: considering the diverse experiences of people due to their sexual orientation, gender identity or expression and sex characteristics. • Intersectionality: other characteristics—such as race, disability, age, socio-economic status/class, caste, indigeneity, sexual orientation, sex characteristics, rurality, and migrant and refugee status—that can compound gender inequalities. CASE STUDY: ASIA PACIFIC FORUM’S GENDER MAINSTREAMING STRATEGY Considering that women and girls have historically experienced discrimination as a result of patriarchal norms and power structures, the APF focuses its work on advancing gender equality between women and girls/men and boys, including cisgender, transgender and gender diverse peoples. The APF has adopted a ‘twin-track’ approach to promoting and integrating gender equality which includes specialisation and mainstreaming initiatives. Under its mainstreaming strategies, the APF supports members to mainstream gender considerations into their work through capacity programs and gender guidelines. Over the next two years, we aim to: • Mainstream gender across all APF capacity programs and develop two gender mainstreaming guidelines for NHRIs. • Incorporate APF gender mainstreaming guidelines into an APF ‘NHRI community of practice’ via APF professional networks. • Support three NHRIs to gender mainstream their institutions. 19