All Government policy decisions should be scrutinised to assess their impact on gender equality, delegates to a conference on gender issues have heard.
The Minister of State for Justice, Mr Willie O'Dea, said the Government already "widely" applied gender mainstreaming, whereby consideration was given to equality issues in the decision-making process.
A Gender Equality Unit has been set up to provide training, support and advice to officials responsible for implementing the National Development Plan (NDP) 2000-2006.
And yesterday the body published a handbook to assist community organisations to develop their own gender equality policies.
But Ms Ursula Barry, a UCD lecturer who is carrying out a pilot study on gender mainstreaming in State-funded organisations in Co Roscommon and Co Limerick, said "the jury is still out" on whether equality issues were taken seriously in policy decisions.
Ms Barry said the NDP unit was "quite advanced" in demanding a gender impact analysis of infrastructural investments.
"But we don't know how significant these impact assessments are because they have not been made public. My sense of it is that we have had a lot of aspiration rather than practical application," Ms Barry said.
Speaking at the Gender Mainstreaming conference in Dublin Castle, which brought together experts in the area from throughout Europe, Ms Barry also called for gender mainstreaming to be "systematically applied" to all policy areas, and not just budgetary ones.
Gender mainstreaming studies in the UK found that road safety campaigns benefited men more than women as more men die in road accidents. They also established that spending on sports and recreation was skewed in favour of men as such spending tended to be on capital projects such as stadia which women were less likely to use.
"It's all about looking at the implications of policies which at first appear gender neutral," said Dr Katherine Rake, co-chairwoman of the UK Women's Budget Group, which advises the British government on the gender implications of economic policy. "One policy we looked at was investment on transport because we found women were more likely to use local bus services and make repeated trips on such services, while men were more likely to take the train or car. If you have a huge subsidy on roads then that favours men's use of transport over women's."
Dr Rake said the NDP unit provided Ireland with a "huge opportunity" to advance the gender equality agenda.
She added gender mainstreaming did not stop decisions from being assessed for their impact on other "disadvantaged groups" such as low-income households or minority ethnic groups.
