The growing influence of transnational process, institutions and policy communities has contributed to the emergence of a global public policy that is distinct (although not separate) from the national process of policy-making. In this context gender equality and gender mainstreaming have become dominant policy and political narratives for addressing gender injustice. The focus of this paper is on developing the conceptual and theoretical links between global policy paradigms and gender equality and incorporating multi-scalarity, translation and disjuncture into our understanding of the ways in which policies are made, processed and enacted. The discussion begins by extending Hall's concept of policy paradigm as a nationally bounded entity and highlighting the transnational processes and institutions contributing to the emergence of a global policy paradigm and global policy space. It then goes on to highlight the fluidity of policy paradigms and the importance of moving beyond the focus on techno-managerial “order” as the essence of the policy paradigm and indicators of change and instead to bring into sharper focus disjuncture and tensions.

This paper explores gender mainstreaming in the context of health policy and health variations between women and men. Despite the adoption of gender mainstreaming at international, regional and national scales since the Beijing Platform for Action in 1995, gender inequalities in health persist. The paper argues that the translation of gender mainstreaming as a global policy paradigm across and between policy scales has significance for health policies aiming to address gender. The paper suggests that while gender mainstreaming originated to address women's needs, the paradigm is founded on goals that do not translate in health policy; that the representation of the problem of gender in this global paradigm is problematic in a health context; and that the role of global networks in policy translation as part of this paradigm has led to the replacement of transformative ideals with technocratic solutions which shift the focus away from gender relations of power.