Creating interfaces between the gender equality and sustainability policy fields — finding added value for both sides

The preceding section presented evidence that a range of factors accounts for the lack of traction of the 2030 Agenda’s gender equality commitments in the German domestic discourse. The problem is both substantive and institutional: the current sustainability architecture, as sophisticated as it may look on paper, does not succeed in creating coherence within the Government, and thus has no meaningful impact on domestic policy thinking with regard to sustainability overall, and gender and sustainability in particular. Germany’s 2030 Agenda commitment thus largely comes across as a rhetorical exercise when looking at its domestic policy impact – which, after all, is the major paradigm shift offered by the 2030 Agenda. Domestic social and gender equality policy does not appear to be influenced by the 2030 Agenda, despite the German Sustainable Development Strategy and its sophisticated institutional architecture. As one interviewee, working on SDG implementation at the local level, commented: “Germany likes to hide behind its beautiful architecture”.