By TII News Service
PARIS, MARCH 09, 2018: TO bridge the gender gap the OECD has launched an initiative to help governments, parliaments and judiciaries to design gender-sensitive public policies and services and accelerate their efforts to enable equal access for women in public decision making. The Toolkit was launch hosting around International Women's Day.
The OECD aimed at identifing proven measures to increase women's participation across the board and outlines pitfalls to avoid in institutionalising gender equality. It will help create systemic change across state institutions and decision processes, which is necessary to lead culture change across society to finally address the entrenched gender roles and behaviours that prevent true gender equality. The toolkit includes many country examples of good practices to illustrate the most effective policies and practices.
Most OECD countries now have some form of gender quota in politics, ranging from voluntary political party quotas, legislated quotas in parliament, quotas in electoral law or gender quotas written into constitutions. Nevertheless, women still hold less than a third of seats, on average, in lower houses of national legislatures in the OECD and less than a third of ministerial positions. The share of women in senior management in central government and serving as Supreme Court judges is 32%. The use of measures to enhance the hiring and promotion of women is low in the civil service, and only a few countries have affirmative action in the judiciary to ensure gender balance.
The Toolkit looks at how gender goals need to be incorporated into hiring, career development and budget cycles. It promotes a comprehensive and coordinated approach for across the executive, courts and parliaments and examines gender pay gaps, occupational segregation, complaint and appeal mechanisms and leadership accountability, and it includes priority checklists and self-assessment questions for institutions to monitor their performance. |