National womeits machinery: state-based institutions to advocate for gender equality 1

This chapter considers the effectiveness of National women’s machineries (NWMs), examining their record of promoting women’s interests in five countries: Bangladesh, Chile, Jamaica, Morocco and Vietnam. ² These countries are each at different stages of integrating gender into development processes. They also differ in their degree of economic development, their political histories and the nature of their main economic constraints. What they have in common is a reasonable degree of political stability since 1990, though the specific characteristics of civil society and governance in each country differ. The singling out of these countries is not intended to give the impression that they are either particularly remiss or progressive in their approach to institutionalizing women’s interests in development — when it comes to institutionalizing women’s interests in policy processes, no country in the world can be considered ‘developed’.