Scenario Cards
Why does this distinction matter?
🔵 Practical Gender Needs
PGN interventions improve immediate conditions for women within existing gender roles. They're necessary — they remove barriers so women can participate. But they don't change who holds power or why inequality exists.
Risk: Programmes that only address PGNs can reinforce gender roles by treating women's disadvantage as a logistical problem, not a structural one.
🟣 Strategic Gender Interests
SGI interventions challenge the social norms, power relations, and institutional structures that produce gender inequality in the first place.
Challenge: SGI interventions are more contested. They require political will and run into resistance from those who benefit from the existing arrangement.
The goal of gender mainstreaming is to address both: PGNs make participation possible now; SGIs make inequality structurally impossible in the long run.