Using a Gender Lens to
Understand Problems,
Find Solutions

ICRW works to empower women, improve their status and guarantee their human rights. Yet at ICRW, we speak not only of women, but of gender.

We recognize that women's roles, like men's, are not products solely of biology. They are an aspect of social organization and humanly constructed norms. "Gender" refers to the social norms and constructs that in a given society are associated with being female or male.

What is a Gender Lens?

When ICRW views a problem through a gender lens, it means we seek to understand what are the expected and common norms of behavior and how these differentially influence the lives of girls and boys, women and men. We ask tough questions: Do these norms create behaviors that harm women or men, or hold back communities? For example, if a society considers it normal and acceptable for men to control their wives through violence, the norm deprives women of their human rights and greatly undermines their productivity.

What is Gender Integration?

When we pursue "gender integration" in our research and programs, it means that when we analyze a problem — Why are HIV and AIDS spreading? How do we get the best nutrition to families? How do we advance the skills and earning power of poor women in developing countries? — we ask what the role of gender is in creating and sustaining the problem. We then use that information to find solutions for a specific context.

For example, in some communities HIV and AIDS may be spreading because many men consider the use of condoms to be a challenge to their masculinity. Part of the fight to reduce HIV prevalence then becomes finding effective ways to challenge that norm. In fighting hunger, the best way to improve family nutrition may be to work with women, because they decide what food goes on the table. And to advance the skills and economic capacity of a community, a gender lens may show us that fathers need to be persuaded to allow their daughters to attend school, especially to receive a secondary education.

Because gender is socially constructed, it can be re-constructed. Gender roles can change. Throughout history, in many different societies, they have changed dramatically. A gender lens helps us to understand essential ways in which societies are organized, and provides tools to imagine how they may be transformed.

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580885-001 Bruno De Hogues/ courtesy of Getty Images