Gender equality has made its way into the various discussions on the post-2015 development agenda, with some citing the lack of integration of gender throughout the Millennium Development Goals as a cause for rethinking how gender should play out in development once the MDGs end next year. Others meanwhile say that the everywhere-but-nowhere nature of gender in mainstream programming has strengthened support for gender as a stand-alone goal.
But while targeting women is important to the gender equality agenda, gender equality is, as the term itself connotes, more than just about women. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s gender policy marker, for instance, counts activities that can “target women specifically, men specifically or both women and men.”
While the gender policy marker cannot measure outcomes or impact, it has been crucial to the goal of enhancing data collection on activities related to gender equality. Writing about the gender marker in 2012, Patti O’Neill, coordinator for the OECD-Development Assistance Committee Network on Gender Equality, noted that donors’ reporting of gender-related data made those who had not been reporting respond to the “peer pressure to address any deficiencies in their collection and reporting of aid data.” The United States, as we will see below, is one example of this.