Gender Mainstreaming and Global Governance

This article seeks to explain the variable implementation of gender mainstreaming as a `policy frame' over time and across various international organisations (I.O.s). In the years since the U.N. Fourth World Women's Conference in Beijing (1995),mainstreaming has been endorsed and adopted by a wide range of international organisations, and we compare the adoption and implementation of mainstreaming in four specific I.O.s: the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the European Union. The rhetorical acceptance of mainstreaming by various international organisations, however, obscures considerable variation in both the timing and the nature of the mainstreaming process within and among organisations. This variation, in turn, can be explained in terms of the categories of political opportunity, mobilising structures and strategic framing, which have been put forward by social movement theorists. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

MANDATORY VISITATION

The term visitation rights connotes that noncutodial parents have the discretion, not the responsibility, to visit their children. This article examines the assertion that visitation rights should instead be viewed as an obligation owed by noncustodial parents to their children. Excluding circumstances in which visitation would be injurious to a child, the expectation of visitation should be enforced by the courts.