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Gender mainstreaming has become the primary tool to advance gender equality in international organizations. The United Nations and its specialized agencies, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (oecd), the European Union, Organization of American States (oas), and Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (apec) all have adopted gender mainstreaming, and governments around the world have followed their lead (True and Mintrom 2001; True 2003b). Despite the widespread acceptance of the strategy, there is considerable debate about what exactly gender mainstreaming means and how it should be implemented. Angela King, the special advisor to the un secretary-general on gender matters, has listed conceptual confusion among the major constraints inhibiting gender mainstreaming (United Nations 2002, vi). In the European context, gender experts have bemoaned the difficulty of …