You could see specific mechanisms through which gender mainstreaming was circumvented. But in terms of the characteristics of the subdepartments within DG Research, it was noticeable that the successful department was already used to trying to corral and administer policy aims that might compete. They were firmly fixed with a complex policy agenda, whereas the subdepartment, which strongly contested and resisted gender mainstreaming, was used to having a narrow focus and had difficulty coping with any kind of internal conflict or learning. They'd had a stable aim with their policy for the best part of 20 years. When you looked at implementation documents that had been created explaining how gender was relevant within that subdepartment, management produced documents explicitly undermining those, saying that gender was not relevant and that their mainstream aims were what was relevant.
I think this is one of the reasons why I emphasized resistance as a problem in gender mainstreaming. You do have politicians and civil servants who want to undermine policy and will take actions to do so.