Leaving no one behind: can (indigenous) education ensure effective gender mainstreaming in sustainable development programme?

The recent wave of financial predicament and challenge will, without doubt, push millions additional people into extreme poverty and lead to their involvement in other socio-economic and political vices. The implications are deeply and extremely different for women and men, and the existing gender discrimination and power imbalances, in the distribution of socio-economic and political benefits, depict that additional problems are falling disproportionately on those who are already structurally disempowered and marginalised. Women constitute significant proportion of the global population. Interestingly they participate in about sixty (60) percent of the world’s work and surprisingly receive ten (10) percent of the income, and own less than one-hundredth of the world’s property. This situation, coupled with the emerging interest in and engagement with gender issue in development raises some important questions. What could have been the reason for this disproportionate in women contributions and rewards? Can this be traced to institutional factor exemplified by social, cultural, religious, legal and economic factors? Does their engagements in development policy and practice risk, harm and impact already fragile gender relations? What are the challenges and opportunities in negotiating the relationships between religion, culture, gender, and development? Can education remain as effective strategy in solving the crises between (of) religion and culture and, gender for effective gender mainstreaming? This paper, relying on secondary data and qualitative inquiry presents the analysis of gender equality and equity and explores in different ways the relationships between religion, gender, and development as well as how (indigenous) education can serve as effective strategy for gender mainstreaming.Keywords: disproportionate, disempowered, equality, equity, gender discrimination, marginalise