Gender-responsive governance (GRG) is a process of making and implementing decisions at all levels that is aimed at ensuring gender equality and social justice. GRG takes into account the needs, interests, and capacities of women and men belonging to various groups in policy-making, planning, budget allocation, and service delivery.

Implementation of GRG is based on the principles of good governance and the concept of gender equality, in particular, equal participation of women and men in decision-making; ensuring equal opportunities for women and men; non-discrimination on grounds of gender; equal access of women and men to resources and services.

Implementation of GRG includes gender mainstreaming in governance and administration. Gender mainstreaming in governance involves taking into account the gender aspect in governance decision-making at all stages of the governance cycle. Gender mainstreaming in governance should result in gender-sensitive services in the community, while gender mainstreaming in administration is carried out through its inclusion in regulations, policies, procedures, as well as the work of relevant structural units, etc. This results in the adoption of gender-sensitive policies, procedures, provisions, regulations, etc.

Implementation of GRG promotes social justice, increases the efficiency of service delivery, ensures the effectiveness of governance activities and makes such activities gender-sensitive. Thanks to GRG, public authority specialists study the needs and capacities of women and men who receive services; based on these needs and capacities, they determine the priorities of governance activities, make effective decisions in governance that are focused on women and men, and ensure that gender-sensitive services are provided. This lays the basis for increasing citizens' trust in public authorities at the local and national levels.

Most frequently, some visible results of GRG implementation include: 

1) introduction of gender-sensitive services in communities and in the country as a whole; 

2) inclusion of the gender approach in normative legal acts, policies, procedures and the work of public authorities; 

3) development and implementation of gender-sensitive policies, procedures, regulations, rules, measures, etc.; 

4) improvement of professional competencies of public authority specialists related to the implementation of gender-sensitive policies.

Gender sensitivity is the ability to notice and recognize the existing gender differences in society, gender gaps, gender-based discrimination, and other manifestations of gender inequality, and to take these aspects into account when developing strategies and taking action. Gender-sensitive governance results in gender-sensitive services that are created and provided based on their impact on different groups of women and men; such services do not involve the signs of sexism and are aimed to ensure gender equality.

According to GRG, governance decision-making should be based on the impact of each decision on various groups of women and men. For example, when deciding on road construction, it should be taken into account that for drivers, the road is mainly about high-quality asphalt, for pedestrians, it is about a sidewalk, a bike path matters the most for cyclists, for parents with children, it’s all about a comfortable and safe pedestrian crossing, farmers with livestock need a convenient area for cattle crossing, while those who often come home late need street lighting, etc. Thus, if governance decision-making is based solely on the interests of car drivers, and the number of men is higher among them, the road will be suitable only to their experience and capacities, while the needs of women and children, who mostly use public transport or walk, will not be met.

For effective implementation of GRG in the work of public authorities, gender sensitivity and competence of public authority specialists are crucial, in particular, when it comes to their knowledge of the current legislation and legal framework related to the implementation of gender policy, their understanding of gender-related issues and gender gaps in various fields, and their ability to analyze and identify gender indicators. All these components are part of governance, and thus, they do not create additional workload for public authority specialists. On the contrary, thanks to gender mainstreaming in governance and in work processes, public authority specialists enjoy decent and safe working conditions. For instance, conditions allowing to combine professional and family responsibilities, transparent requirements regarding professional competencies and opportunities for career growth, which contribute to work productivity overall.

Besides, public authority specialists mostly live in the communities where they work, and therefore, they will be involved in decision-making processes and will be the ones to experience better quality and better targeting of services for women and men.

GRG is a cross-cutting governance tool, and therefore, various specialists at all levels and from various fields can be part of its implementation.

According to article 12 “On ensuring equal rights and opportunities for women and men,” the institutional mechanism for ensuring equal rights and opportunities for women and men at the local level should include the following components:

1. an authorized person (a coordinator) on ensuring equal rights and opportunities for women and men, preventing and combating gender-based violence;
2. advisory and consultation bodies, which are responsible for ensuring equal rights and opportunities for women and men;
3. advisors on equal rights and opportunities for women and men, preventing and combating gender-based violence;
4. responsible structural units on equal rights and opportunities for women and men.

The Gender Equality Toolkit is a set of tools, which allow communities to independently analyze the implementation of gender policy, as well as receive specific recommendations for the development and implementation of the Action Plan on ensuring equal rights and opportunities for women and men aimed to improve the way gender equality is ensured in a community.

The Toolkit consists of 7 indices:

• Index 1. The official commitment of local authorities to implement gender equality policy.
• Index 2. Local self-government bodies provide for specific measures that take into account gender needs at each stage of local policy development.
• Index 3. Availability and accessibility of gender-disaggregated data in different spheres at the local level.
• Index 4. Local self-government bodies have committed themselves to enhancing the competencies of their representatives and stakeholders related to gender policy implementation.
• Index 5. Implementing awareness-raising and educational campaigns on gender equality.
• Index 6. Specific measures/actions/practices in place to ensure gender equality in the executive bodies of local self-government and municipal enterprises/institutions/organizations.
• Index 7. Provision of gender-sensitive services.

The indices of the Gender Equality Toolkit are developed based on the principles of the European Charter for Equality of Women and Men in Local Life (2006) and indicators of the Toolkit to plan and monitor policies and practices (2015), developed by the Council of European Municipalities and Regions.

Gender policy is most often referred to as the work of public authorities (or their deliberate inaction regarding such policy), which aims to achieve gender equality in all spheres of society and guarantee equal rights, freedoms, and opportunities for women and men, promote gender democracy and the culture of gender equality in society.

A comprehensive perspective on ensuring equality between women and men, which involves gender mainstreaming in all areas of public policy implemented through the improvement and assessment of decision-making processes, development of legislation, gender-sensitive strategies, programs and budgets in all areas and at all levels aimed to ensure gender equality is the basis of building gender policy in Ukraine.

Analysis of the implementation of gender equality policy in the community allows to identify the most successful and problematic issues of governance and promotes effective and productive gender-sensitive decision-making in governance.

The Toolkit consists of two parts: 1) criteria for assessing the state of ensuring gender equality policy at the local level and 2) a list of recommendations and suggestions for developing the Action Plan on ensuring equal rights and opportunities for women and men.

In the first part, each of the criteria needs to be assessed with "yes" or "no" answers. Each answer is evaluated in scores. A total of the scores received determines the level of ensuring gender equality in the community. If the Toolkit is used at certain intervals, the progress in ensuring gender equality in the community can be tracked based on the scores obtained. 

In the second part, from the initiatives and measures suggested, one needs to select those that will help to set up the process of implementing gender equality policy in the community and will form the basis for developing the Action Plan on ensuring equal rights and opportunities for women and men. The list of recommendations is formed automatically, based on the answers selected during the assessment.

The Toolkit is intended for use at the level of local communities. It can be used by local self-government bodies and local authorities, represented by authorized officials and responsible specialists.

The Action Plan on ensuring equal rights and opportunities of women and men is the result of using the Toolkit that is immediately noticeable in practice. The Action Plan is a document that includes key tasks, directions, and measures on implementing gender equality policy in the community. Development, adoption, and implementation of the Action Plan signify that the community has started/continued the work on ensuring gender equality.

A change in the attitude of decision-makers in the community to ensuring gender equality and the transition to providing gender-sensitive services is one of the results of using the Toolkit.

Over 100 communities in Ukraine are already using the Gender Equality Toolkit. Their experience demonstrates that a Resolution of the local council session is the most common way of adopting the Action Plan, however, there are examples when the Action Plan was adopted by an order of the head of the local council. Each community chooses its own individual path. 

There are also cases when the Action Plan lays the foundation for adopting the Local Target Program, in which case the procedure for its adoption is based on the Procedure for the development, implementation, and monitoring of local target programs, established in the community