Gender mainstreaming is the major strategy identified by the development community to integrate gender issues into policies, programs and projects. At the IWDA Gender and Development Dialogue, held in Brisbane, July 2003, stakeholders from academia, development NGOs, United Nations (UN) agencies, women’s organisations, consulting firms, bilaterals and gender specialists unanimously agreed that gender mainstreaming — as a term and a strategy — is problematic. Gender mainstreaming has not delivered what was anticipated when the concept was formalised in UN documents at the time of the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. This paper explores what I see as the reasons behind this failure.