Step 5: Findings and recommendations
Conclusions must be formulated in terms of the impacts on women and men within the target group(s). Furthermore, proposals should be put forward that will promote gender equality in response to the existing situation.
To do this, one should identify how gender equality could be strengthened in the different parts of the draft initiative, taking into account the conclusions reached:
- Gender equality should be mentioned in the preamble of the law or in the definition of the context of the policy or programme as well as in the legal framework referring to it.
- Gender equality should be also be remarked in the objective(s) so as to set a starting point and encourage the commitment of all stakeholders involved in the development of the initiative.
- Actions to reduce imbalances and inequalities and measures to promote gender equality should be included among the different aspects of the law, policy or programme. This measures could be related to:
- promoting the access of women in sectors where they are under-represented;
- promoting the access of women to decision-making;
- promoting the co-responsibility of public administration, companies and care work;
- promoting the use of gender statistics and studies;
- preventing gender-based violence;
- promoting proactive actions to eradicate gender-based violence;
- eliminating gender stereotypes and roles
- Language should be revised to ensure that gender neutral language is used and to guarantee that there is a fair visualization of both women and men throughout the document.
Another important component in this last step is the identification of indicators to allow for monitoring and evaluation of the actual outcomes. To do this, the following aspects should be taken into account:
- It is important to assess what indicators are currently available and how useful they are in tracking progress on gender equality. Alternatively, it may be necessary to set new indicators based on pertinent sex-disaggregated data.
- Where lack of information curtails a proper analysis and thus produces inconclusive findings, it is important that this is explicitly mentioned in the gender impact assessment report. Making data and information gaps known allows action to be taken by those responsible to remedy this problem.
To conclude, any gender impact assessment report should contain a table of contents, such as the example given below, which can either be expanded or made more concise.
To conclude…
Every gender impact assessment report should contain a table of contents, such as the example given below, which can either be expanded or made more concise.
- Definition of the policy purpose
- Gender relevance of the proposal
- In-depth gender analysis of the proposal
- Conclusions from a gender perspective
- Proposals to improve the project in terms of gender equality