From Beijing to Brussels: pathways to the integration of gender in research and development (IGIRD)

Abstract This article offers a first consolidated historical account of the institutionalisation of the Integration of Gender in Research and Development (IGiRD). We use IGiRD as an analytical umbrella term for policies, instruments and research practices that integrate sex and gender analysis into the content, design, evaluation and governance of research and development. The article centres on how sex and gender analysis became institutionally anchored as a question of research quality, responsibility and societal relevance, while treating gender representation in research careers as a related but distinct issue. Drawing on an event-based historical reconstruction of 186 policy and institutional events from 1957 to 2024, the article traces how IGiRD developed across four partially overlapping pathways: gender equality and anti-discrimination frameworks, women’s advancement in science and technology, health and medical research, and broader integration of sex and gender analysis across research fields and governance structures. Comparing the EU, US, Canada and South Korea, the analysis shows that IGiRD has not followed a single linear trajectory. The EU pathway is distinctive because gender mainstreaming became layered onto supranational research funding and evaluation structures, while North America demonstrates strong sectoral anchoring in health and biomedical research, and South Korea illustrates rapid formal-legal anchoring with incomplete operational embedding. The article contributes to historical-institutionalist science policy research by conceptualising IGiRD institutionalisation as layered, recursive and politically reversible. Formal anchoring in laws, strategies or funding rules matters, but durable change depends on operational embedding through review expertise, guidance, training, monitoring and feedback mechanisms, and on substantive methodological integration in research practice. This perspective clarifies why IGiRD can be stabilised, narrowed or reactivated under changing political conditions and offers policy implications for strengthening gender-sensitive R&I in emerging fields such as artificial intelligence.