This question is discussed on the basis of first hand data collected in Mexico between 2004 and 2007. The research aimed at examining how gender equity policies elaborated at the international level using an approach known as "gender mainstreaming" are transformed within national and local contexts. In a first step, the context of the emergence of the gender mainstreaming approach is reconstituted, and in a second step we try to clarify how and under what circumstances, in a country like Mexico, women can be instrumentalized within this approach, as for example, when gender mainstreaming is applied without any critical vision as it is so under neoliberalism. The main example rests on the case of microcredit for maya women in the state of Yucatan.
Gender; Transversalization; Washington Consensus; Mexico; Microcredit