The value of CIDA's framework of gender analysis is that its policy objectives are explicitly equality-focused. Their objectives are to advance women's equal participation with men as decision-makers in shaping the sustainable development of society, to support women and girls in the realization of their full human rights, and to reduce gender inequalities in access to and control over the resources and benefits of development. Clearly, with this set of policy goals, when you do gender-based analysis you're looking for very particular outcomes.
In our case, what's happened is that gender-based analysis as a policy framework was implemented with the best of intentions, but other policy priorities got in the way very quickly, back in the mid-1990s.
In my view, gender-based analysis was never able to get fully on track. Even when the Unemployment Insurance Act was being reformed, gender-based analysis was done, but it was never taken into account.
I think there's an opportunity, with the action plan that has been committed to, to look very specifically at enhancing, improving, enriching the gender-based analysis strategy that has been put into place, however weak and marginal it might be. One of the key ways to do that, and one of the things the federal plan for gender equality neglected to see done, is to develop a set of indicators that actually helps you to define your success.
It would seem to me that those indicators should be defined in such a way as to fully situate women's equality as key to the whole exercise of GBA. That should give you some better sense of where you're going and why you want to get there.