Gender Institutional Transformation

Rationale

Different goals for the advancement of gender equality are appropriate for different organisations, depending upon the organisation’s exact policy area and field of activity.

Key aspects

Using this framework as a background for the implementation of gender mainstreaming, it is essential to specify the overriding equality goals for the respective policy areas and spheres of activity. These goals can then act as a driving force and offer clear guidance to staff members, e.g. for developing gender equality action plans.

Developing specific major goals for advocating gender equality within a specific organisation involves ‘translating’ general – and often very abstract – goals for a specific policy area or field of activity.

Whilst defining specific major goals for gender equality:

• considerations should be made about how to observe and evaluate the attainment of these goals
• use an organisation’s regular reporting and controlling procedures to examine the objectives for gender equality
• all evaluations should include the organisation’s equality goals as part of the analysis and assessment

The objectives of public institutions are prescribed by policy. At an international and European level, the overriding framework for the national gender equality politics of EU member states is formed by the following documents: ‘Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)’, the ‘Beijing Platform for Action’, the EU Treaty (Articles 1a & 2) as well as resulting directives, the ‘European Pact for Gender Equality’ concluded by the Council of the European Union (7 March 2011) and the Women’s Charter, launched by the European Commission in 2010 (COM (2010) 78 final).