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The term informal sector refers to employment and production that takes place in small and/or unregistered enterprises. It includes self-employment in informal enterprises (small and unregistered enterprises) and wage employment in informal jobs (unregulated and unprotected jobs) for informal enterprises, formal enterprises, households or for no fixed employer.

Source: Hussmanns, Ralf. (2003) Statistical definition of informal employment: Guidelines endorsed by the Seventeenth International Conference of Labour Statisticians. International Labour Office: Geneva.

Heteronormativity is an expressed used to describe or identify a social norm relating to standardized heterosexual behavior, whereby this standard is considered to be the only socially valid form of behavior and anyone who does not follow this social and cultural posture is placed at a disadvantage in relation to the rest of society. This concept is the basis of discriminatory and prejudiced arguments against LGBT, principally those relating to the formation of families and public expression.

Source: LGBT Communication Manual, Brazilian Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transvestite and Transsexual Association and UNAIDS. 

This is a concept used to describe the ways in which care responsibilities are transferred from one household to another, across national borders, forming chains. As individuals move, work in the care sector is internationalized. Through these chains, households in different places around the world are interconnected, as they transfer care giving tasks from one household to another based on power hierarchies such as gender, ethnicity, social class, and place of origin. Global care chains are a phenomenon which is taking place within the context of globalization, feminization of migration, and the transformation of social welfare states. Chains are formed when women migrate to work in the care sector (domestic work, personal healthcare services, etc.), while transferring care work in their own households in origin and sometimes in destination to other women. 

Sources: Orozco, Amaia. (2009) Global care chains: Toward a rights-based global care regime? Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic: UN-INSTRAW (part of UN Women); Petrozziello, Allison. (2013) Gender on the Move: Working on the Migration-Development Nexus from a Gender Perspective. Santo Domingo: UN-WOMEN.

The term “glass ceiling” is a metaphor that has often been used to describe invisible barriers (“glass”) through which women can see elite positions, for example in government or the private sector, but cannot reach them (coming up against the invisible “ceiling”). These barriers prevent large numbers of women and ethnic minorities from obtaining and securing the most powerful, prestigious, and highest-paying jobs in the workforce.

Gender stereotypes are simplistic generalizations about the gender attributes, differences and roles of women and men. Stereotypical characteristics about men are that they are competitive, acquisitive, autonomous, independent, confrontational, concerned about private goods. Parallel stereotypes of women hold that they are cooperative, nurturing, caring, connecting, group-oriented, concerned about public goods. Stereotypes are often used to justify gender discrimination more broadly and can be reflected and reinforced by traditional and modern theories, laws and institutional practices. Messages reinforcing gender stereotypes and the idea that women are inferior come in a variety of “packages” – from songs and advertising to traditional proverbs.

Gender-responsive budgeting or GRB is a method of determining the extent to which government expenditure has detracted from or come nearer to the goal of gender equality. A gender-responsive budget is not a separate budget for women, but rather a tool that analyzes budget allocations, public spending and taxation from a gender perspective and can be subsequently used to advocate for reallocation of budget line items to better respond to women’s priorities as well as men’s, making them, as the name suggests, gender-responsive. 

Gender relations are the specific sub-set of social relations uniting men and women as social groups in a particular community, including how power and access to and control over resources are distributed between the sexes. Gender relations intersect with all other influences on social relations – age, ethnicity, race, religion – to determine the position and identity of people in a social group. Since gender relations are a social construct, they can be transformed over time to become more equitable.

The term ‘gender perspective’ is a way of seeing or analyzing which looks at the impact of gender on people's opportunities, social roles and interactions. This way of seeing is what enables one to carry out gender analysis and subsequently to mainstream a gender perspective into any proposed program, policy or organization.

Gender parity is another term for equal representation of women and men in a given area, for example, gender parity in organizational leadership or higher education. Working toward gender parity (equal representation) is a key part of achieving gender equality, and one of the twin strategies, alongside gender mainstreaming.

The primary objective behind gender mainstreaming is to design and implement development projects, programs and policies that:

1. Do not reinforce existing gender inequalities (Gender Neutral)
2. Attempt to redress existing gender inequalities (Gender Sensitive)
3. Attempt to re-define women and men’s gender roles and relations (Gender Positive / Transformative)

The degree of integration of a gender perspective in any given project can be seen as a continuum (adapted from Eckman, 2002):

Source: UN-INSTRAW (now part of UN Women), Glossary of Gender-related Terms and Concepts