Why We Missed the Gender System
- Tajmary Akter
- 29 minutes ago
- 5 min read
It was not long ago that I began to truly understand gender as a system. Getting here was neither quick nor comfortable. It was slow, unsettling, and shaped entirely by experience rather than theory. Along the way, I learned something difficult to accept: we are not simply mistaken in how we treat gender – we are trained not to see it clearly. For years, one question travelled with me across projects, meetings, policies, and programme frameworks: Why is gender everywhere in development work, and yet almost nowhere that matters?
In meeting rooms and board discussions over the years, I repeatedly heard statements like:
“Gender is cross-cutting; it will improve if we focus on our project goals.”
“Gender is not a core donor priority; it’s a nice-to-have.”
“We are not a gender organization.”
“Why do we need a gender role when there is no gender project?”
They all sound different but communicate the same thing: gender is non-essential.
THE PARADOX
Over nearly two decades of working in development and humanitarian programmes – advising leadership, designing tools, and facilitating gender and social equity integration – I encountered the same paradox in different forms and spaces.
Gender and inclusion appear as priorities in strategic plans. They show up in indicators, participation targets, and results frameworks like, “women’s participation has increased,” “income has increased,” and “representation has improved.” Yet something has not changed – power. I have seen that:
As participation increased, power did not move.
As access widened, control remained narrow.
As visibility grew, authority stayed firmly in place.
In every crisis – pandemics, displacement, conflict, and climate disasters – inequality repeats itself in familiar patterns:
Women’s care burdens multiply.
Gender based violence escalates.
Safety declines.
Inequality deepens.
Despite decades of work, injustice returns with alarming speed.
This forced me to confront a difficult truth: much of our work had focused on surface-level change. We have become skilled at measuring visibility, not transformation. We learned to integrate gender into projects, but we rarely challenged it as a system. And that is the blind spot.
THE BLIND SPOT
This failure is not the result of individual neglect or bad intention. It is structural. Most of us entered development work through project cycles, logframes, deliverables, and donor requirements. We were trained to manage outputs but not to question power.
We met “gender” as a theme, a cross-cutting issue, or a technical component, as something to add to a project output or outcome or at best to a section in a report. It was hardly understood as the Gender System.
Most development and humanitarian organizations treat Gender as a soft or inclusion issue, and they fail to realize that gender is an organisational compliance and risk management function. There is evidence showing that power abuse is gendered, gender norms are one of the core drivers of harm and gender based violence; when gender is only framed as values, attitudes, respect, and an inclusion mindset, it becomes non-accountable, non-auditable, and non-sanctionable.
Every project enters an already-existing gendered reality, which is shaped by politics, culture, emotions, history, and long-standing social norms. It adapts over time and often resists change. Projects operate inside this gender system. Gender does not operate inside projects.
This does not mean that gender work is shallow or meaningless. The problem arises when gender efforts only focus on activities or numbers, without addressing:
Who holds power?
Who makes decisions?
Whose voices carry weight?
For example, a project may work exclusively with women, offering skills-training or income-generating activities, without engaging men, institutions, or other key stakeholders who shape norms and decision-making. If women’s participation increases, but they still cannot influence decisions, control resources, or shape priorities, the gender system remains unchanged. Participation grows, but authority does not shift.
GENDER IN THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF AID
Global development operates within donor priorities, funding cycles, and institutional risk management. Gender mainstreaming fits this system well because it is measurable and reportable. Over time, gender became technical and, therefore, “safe”.
Research on foreign aid governance shows gender priorities rise and fall with donor and recipient country politics more than justice commitments. When political will weakens, gender work becomes symbolic. When funding disappears, women’s rights programmes are often the first to be reduced. This pattern is not a coincidence. It reflects a system built to deliver outputs, not challenge power.
Inside institutions, the same logic holds. Leadership remains narrow. Decision-making remains centralized. Organizational culture often mirrors the very inequalities programs intend to dismantle.
Humanitarian scholar Michelle Lokot has shown how organizations promote gender equality externally while remaining reluctant to examine power internally. Gender equality policies exist, but practices remain protected.
THE POLITICS OF COMFORT
Systems do not live only in the institution; they live inside us. This is where the most unsettling truth appears. Silence is not neutral; comfort is political. This learning taught me that the “comfort” is often chosen from fear of resistance, fear of conflict, fear of being seen as political, difficult, or “too radical.”
Within organizations, this fear quietly shapes behaviour. People learn which questions are safe to ask and which ones carry risk. They learn when to speak and when silence is rewarded. In my work, I have seen:
Leaders avoid difficult conversations
Professionals hide behind neutrality
Organisations choose reputation over rights
Donors reward paperwork instead of courage
Often development and humanitarian approaches have an illusion that we can change power without confronting it. This was the moment when systems thinking finally gave language to what I had always felt. Gender justice demands that we move beyond technical solutions into political responsibility.
Gender is the architecture of social life. It governs access, safety, authority, identity, legitimacy, and value. It shapes who decides and who complies.
THE TRANSFORMATION
Not every organization can dismantle patriarchy. But every organization already decides whether it will stabilize it or disturb it. The Justice Based Approach deepens this reflection with more questions:
Who holds power?
Who decides?
Who controls resources?
Who has a voice — and whose voice is ignored?
Gender justice is not “inclusion.” It is transformation.
Systems do not change when activities improve. They change when power moves. In JBA, a Radical System is not only fair; it is alive, regenerates, redistributes, and learns. The system that resists change is already fragile. The system that invites change has begun to heal.
Tajmary Akter is a Fellow of United Edge’s Justice Collective and a passionate development practitioner from Bangladesh, working as a human rights, gender justice, and system change advisor. She is a committed advocate of the Justice Based Approach to social change.