TradeMark East Africa's (TMEA) gender responsive programming adopts a three pronged approach: the rights-based approach, the gender mainstreaming approach and the targeted gender specific approach. 
The rights-based approach ensures that women and men have equal socio-economic rights. This approach underlies all TMEA work and is embedded in the legal frameworks upon which international and regional commitments to gender equality are based. 
Gender mainstreaming approach provides fair or equitable conditions for men and women. It focuses on the attainment of equal participation, equal opportunities, equal rights and equal power relationships.
Targeted gender specific approach addresses specific gaps for women as an unrepresented group.  It seeks to provide visibility, voice and access to opportunities and resources to a group that did not have them in the past. A good example is TMEA’s Women in Trade program that specifically supports women’s greater participation in trade.
So, how do you adopt gender mainstreaming approaches in your project?  This is best illustrated by Damali Ssali’s article on Uganda Electronic Single Window (UeSW), and how the intervention successfully adopted mainstreaming (read it here). During project design and inception, the Uganda team reviewed lessons of other Information Communication Technology (ICT) projects and adopted measures that will ensure UeSW benefits are accessible to both men and women.
This follows TMEA’s deliberate efforts to mainstream gender across all its programs be it OSBPs construction, rehabilitation of Ports, or removal of Non-Tariff Barriers. The first step towards mainstreaming is a gender analysis. Gender analysis informs projects design. It includes collection and analysis of sex disaggregated data which helps to evaluate the effects a project might have on women and men.
Progress has been made towards this as currently, TMEA is in the process of conducting a gender analysis of Mombasa Port, to assess how men and women access and use the Port. The results will be applicable learnings for parties interested in port and other large infrastructure projects. If you would like to understand how to best mainstream gender within your program please get in touch with the TMEA Gender Team.

Makena Mwiti ,TMEA Technical Gender Adviser