Transforming the climate change-gender nexus? : revisiting gender mainstreaming in the context of climate change and disaster risk reduction: experiences from the Swedish Embassy in Bangkok

Sammanfattning: The gendered nature of impacts from climate change and disasters has become increasingly apparent. As such, this thesis analyses gender mainstreaming at the Development Cooperation Section of the Swedish Embassy in Bangkok with specific reference to its climate change and disaster risk reduction contributions in the Asia-Pacific region. Gender mainstreaming is contextualised within a wider theoretical debate on neoliberalism and the gendered nature of institutions that constrain the potential of such processes. Through semi-structured interviews and a content analysis of project documents, this thesis examines how gender is mainstreamed and to what extent this process can be characterised as ‘transformative’ using a five-criteria framework developed by van Eerdewijk (2013). The thesis finds that gender mainstreaming can only to some extent be categorised as transformative. Whilst there is a high ambition on gender mainstreaming, and some innovative support functions have been developed, the process is hindered by significant external and institutional constraints. Staff adopt several tactics to overcome these, the most prominent of which is the promotion of a technical and instrumental approach to gender mainstreaming that is seen as less politically sensitive. They also promote a ‘business-case’ for gender mainstreaming. However, such tactics have been criticised by several feminist scholars.