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Data from interviews and document analysis show that JICA implements a guideline on gender to ensure that the agency does not overlook gender and development in its operations. The said guideline was last updated in 2009, and this is still the version currently used by the organisation. This means that JICA has not yet updated their gender policy based on the discourse around the Sustainable Development Goals. Moreover, their perspective on gender corresponds to ideas projected in Women in Development. For instance, despite making Gender and Development the pivot of their gender policy, two of their three Strategic Development Objectives on gender still make much reference to women empowerment rather than gender equality. These objectives include:

1) Promotion of women’s empowerment, which implements cooperation projects with women as principal target beneficiaries; and

2) Promotion of gender mainstreaming in all projects, which aims to integrate gender perspectives in project components by reflecting women’s perspectives based on accurate understanding of women’s roles.

The perspective that gender can only be mainstreamed in certain areas of assistance is validated in JICA’s latest annual report on gender published in 2015. It reported that only 6 out of 16 sectors of its assistance have projects that mainstream gender. JICA’s assistance related to information technology, resource and energy, fisheries, and economic policy did not have a gender component nor did any gender mainstreaming occur within the projects under these sectors. However, at least 50 percent of projects related to peace-building, health, education, and agriculture/rural development have mainstreamed gender or had a gender component. This validates JICA’s view that gender is only mainstreamed in traditional sectors, which is more understood as having women empowerment components in the projects rather than gender equality.

The organisation’s overall understanding of gender influences the perspective of its programme officers towards gender work, and eventually affects its operations. In particular, the view that gender can only be applied and mainstreamed in traditional sectors like health, education, and rural development and not in technical and engineering projects such as those in transportation, infrastructure, and information technology is widespread among all interviewees from JICA. Interviews from officers in JICA Headquarters and Philippines have expressed that technical assistance projects are not in need of gender mainstreaming as they do not have any issues specific to gender, and cater equally to both men and women. The notion that gender can only be applied to traditional sectors is a manifestation of concepts behind Women in Development, where women are seen as victims who need help and not necessarily crucial agents who can contribute to sustainable development.

According to previous studies, using the Women in Development lens to gender projects can pose a number of concerns (Benschop & Verloo, 2006; Parpart, 2009). While focusing on women’s empowerment does not necessarily negate the efforts of the organisation towards gender equality, failure to understand the real essence of gender and development and the importance of giving equal roles to and addressing the needs of both men and women can result in unsustainable interventions, and resistance in the community due to the perceived challenges

of power between men and women, among other consequences (Ariyabandu, 2009; De Silva & Jayathilaka, 2014; Enarson & Dhar Chakrabarti, 2009). Promoting women’s projects in isolation or as a special focus in traditional development intervention assumes that simply implementing projects for women will induce progress and change. Having development projects aimed at women in these selected sectors, like education, health, and agriculture, only aims to build women’s capacity in productive aspects of work. Thus, defining women’s disadvantaged position in this way means that men hold the norm and therefore this supports existing power relations (Benschop & Verloo, 2006; Rao & Kelleher, 2005; Rathgeber, 1990). JICA’s perspective that mainstreaming gender mostly applies to traditional sectors relegates women to the domestic sphere and further reinforces gender roles that underpin inequality. This is similar to research which concluded that donor agencies see gender as synonymous with women, as evidenced by their continuing efforts in gender being limited to women- targeted projects in traditional sectors (Davids et al., 2014; Moser & Moser, 2005; Subrahmanian, 2004). It shows the lack of long-term goals demonstrated by having limited analyses and investments in addressing structural gender inequalities (Cornwall & Rivas, 2015; Jaquette & Summerfield, 2006). This results in mainstreaming women, rather than gender, and can aggravate further the gender imbalance.

The research also explored JICA’s mechanisms and framework in mainstreaming gender into its operations. The JICA Headquarters has a gender office which consists of three permanent and three contractual staff. Aside from overseeing gender mainstreaming in the organisation, the office handles projects classified under the poverty reduction sector, as well as projects directly related to gender equality and women’s empowerment. Analysis of the guideline revealed that the organisation’s gender mainstreaming mechanisms mainly occur when operational departments in Headquarters consult the gender office about integrating gender in their projects. The consultation comes in at the project design and formulation stage, where departments share project documents with the gender office, and the gender office consequently sends their guidance in the form of comments on how to integrate gender in the project. The project formulation documents and forms were found to have a gender tick box to easily determine if the project is related to gender or not. The gender mainstreaming framework discussed in the guideline also shows that JICA’s Planning department and its corresponding director play an important role in promoting gender mainstreaming in operational departments and in pushing its officers to mainstream gender regardless of whether the project is directly

While JICA has identified three strategic development objectives for gender and development, the interviewees noted that not all projects fall into these three categories. Most of the projects and programmes are classified under the unofficial category: not categorised, despite the third objective aiming to mainstream gender in all projects. This connotes that having a gender guideline is not enough to steer the organisation to effectively integrate gender perspectives into their projects. Aside from the written policy, effective implementation, which includes allocating resources and establishing systems in place, is crucial to achieve the objectives of the gender guideline. The research found that JICA faces challenges in implementing its gender mainstreaming guideline, particularly:

1. The gender mainstreaming guideline is not a mandate to be followed by the