The creation by the United Nations of its new entity for women’s empowerment and gender equality (UN Women) in 2010/11 represents the latest effort by the UN system to design architecture that will deliver on its global commitments. Dubbed by some commentators as a “superagency” for women’s rights, UN Women has an ambitious mandate incorporating normative work and country programming. Its strategic priorities areas are: violence against women; women, peace and security; leadership and participation; economic empowerment; human rights and the Millennium Development Goals. It is also charged with holding the rest of the UN system to account for its own commitments on gender equality, including regular monitoring of system-wide progress. Bringing together four smaller extant entities under the leadership of a new Under Secretary General, this fundamental restructuring aimed to address the UN’s ‘incoherent, under-resourced and fragmented’ character ) and indifferent performance to date on issues of women’s rights and gender equality (UN 2006; Rao 2006; Kettel 2007). The new blueprint represents the outcome of intensive negotiations and lobbying by would-be architects ( member states, UN actors and global civil society) exercising power and persuasion to insert their preferences into the design of the new institution. Applying new institutionalist theory on design processes and informal institutions this paper argues that the fledgling entity has struggled from the outset with powerful legacies, the unintended consequences of design decisions – and wider institutional norms – which threaten to constrain and limit its potential.
