Gender Equality Mechanism: Effective Path for Achieving Results

On July 15, east China's Jiangsu Province admitted several proposals by gender equality consultation and evaluation experts into a draft law, taking it forward on the next steps towards legislation.

The "Jiangsu Provincial Public Cultural Service Promoting Regulation(Draft)" has been in preparation since 2014. New proposals include recommendations such as to "build rooms for breastfeeding mothers and their babies".

Jiangsu Women's Federation has been involved in legislation suggestion three times, and the provincial gender equality consultation and evaluation committee has organized six experts to provide consulting and evaluating services.

In recent years, the federation has actively promoted the adding of gender equality into the policies and regulations, and established and gradually perfected its "gender equality consultation and evaluation mechanism" which was concerned with "legislative participation, post legislation evaluation, gender concept publicity".

Background: incorporating gender equality into policies and regulations

Gender equality is an important principle of the constitution in China. The 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China was the first to involve gender equality into a report on the work of the Party. In reality, some policies and regulations failed to fully consider the realistic gender differences and women’s special interests. As a result, women's rights continued to be violated to varying degrees. It also affected social fairness, justice and women's enthusiasm and creativity.

The core of gender equality issues is a question of rights. In the new journey to comprehensively deepen reform and push forward administration by law, it seems particularly urgent to involve gender equality into policies and regulations, to implement gender quality in parallel with "ruling the country by law, and administration according to law".

Based on the above considerations, Jiangsu Women's Federation and the provincial government's Legislative Affairs Office have jointly established the "policies and regulations of gender equality consultation and evaluation mechanism" in March 2012. 
Fifty-one experts hired by the provincial advisory assessment committee collected, studied and evaluated gender equality and women's legal rights. They have been involved in the formulation and implementation of local laws, regulations and standard documents, and assessed their legitimacy, rationality and effectiveness over time.

Implementation: three levels to ensure gender equality throughout

Over the past two years, the provincial consultation and evaluation mechanism has focused on the three levels of "legislative participation, post legislation evaluation and gender concept publicity".

President of Jiangsu Women's Federation Miao Zhihong has said that "consultation and evaluation experts actively participated in work of research, demonstration and drafting of policies and regulations to the rights and interests of women. They gave their opinions from the perspective of social gender to guarantee women's legitimate and special rights and interests."

According to statistics, provincial administrations have participated in the making and assessment of 28 policies and regulations, put forward 234 suggestions, of which 43 were finally adopted in the three years.

Even after the introduction of policies and regulations, the evaluation committee will select experts to form an advisory assessment group. They will mainly be responsible for the gender monitoring and assessment of implementation effects, make reports on inefficiencies and give specific comments and suggestions.

Through legislative participation and evaluation, advanced gender concepts were spread effectively. Gender equality awareness was continuously enhanced in the relevant government departments. Gender equality was carried out in practice as a mainstream cornerstone for decision-making.

Achievements: women's federations safeguard women's rights at source

How to carry out the constitutional principle of gender equality in earnest is an important issue for women's federations. The consultation and evaluation mechanism focuses on the improvement of gender consciousness for planners and executors. It is an effective way to transform their standpoint on gender equality into action.

According to the report, gender assessment has been included in Jiangsu province's public evaluation system of standard documents. At the same time, the consultation and evaluation mechanism construction has allowed the federation to make achievements from legislation improvement to the policy implementation.

The women's federation has safeguarded women's rights at the source, and opened up a new way for women's rights protection.

(Source: China Women's News/Translated and edited by Women of China)