Recent approaches to international development policy stress the growing importance that cross-cutting themes and social issues have attracted since the 1990s. With poverty reduction embodied in the UN Millennium Declaration as an overarching development objective, the fact that women are disproportionately affected by extreme poverty has once again come to the attention of the community of bi- and multilateral donors. With a view to supporting the conceptual work of the "Gender Equality" and "Poverty Reduction" Divisions of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) in these two fields and the areas at which they interface, the BMZ's Research Division commissioned the German Development Institute (DIE) to conduct a research and advisory study on the question of "Gender Issues and Poverty Reduction in Development Cooperation." In close coordination with the BMZ divisions "Equal Rights, Child and Women's Rights, Participation and Sociocultural” and "Poverty Reduction and Social Policy," and under the terms of a contractual agreement, the author of the present study prepared a number of contributions on approaches and means to accord enhanced consideration to gender in the concept of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP). The author conducted case studies in Ghana and Kenya in this connection. Aside from these short-term empirical surveys, the author conducted a number of different cross-sectional analyses and literature-based studies on the incorporation and implementation of the gender-mainstreaming approach in national and international development policy papers.