Gender Impact Assessment

A Gender Impact Assessment (GIA) is a key instrument of gender mainstreaming and supports the realization of the goal of equal opportunity and gender equality. A GIA supports the analysis and review of the effects on women and on men, as well as on gender relations, of policy measures. Its core function is to identify the effects that concrete measures, political decisions (or laws and regulations), programs, projects and the actions of organizations on equal opportunity have on equal opportunity. Given knowledge of these effects one can determine how to avoid negative consequences and achieve improvements. GIA’s were developed as a result of an awareness that the supposedly gender neutral design of a project, plan or program can have unintended, serious and often negative consequences.  

As an assessment instrument GIA’s borrow from other impact assessment instruments, in particular environmental impact assessments. A GIA prototype developed by ISOE contains an organizational/institutional anchoring plan for GIA’s, which must be worked out specifically for each organization. At the same time the prototype has a theme and task specific component, a so-called GIA checklist, which is used to carry out an assessment.  

A GIA checklist is a stage model, having three assessment steps which are carried out successively. As a first step a relevance assessment (pre-assessment) determines the gender relevance of a project. Following that, in a second step, a gender impact assessment (main assessment) is carried out by means of a detailed analysis. The results of this analysis form the starting point for the third step, the evaluation. The concept of evaluation used here for a GIA does not emphasize any lack of equal opportunity goals (negative evaluation); rather, it aims to ‘enrich’ concrete projects with equal opportunity goals (positive evaluation). By means of a reciprocal weighing of professional and equal opportunity goals conflicts between goals can be identified and goal alliances achieved. On the basis of these analyses concrete suggestions for improvement can be made. Overall, the GIA contributes to a differentiated assessment and provides a basis for more appropriate solutions and more adequate decisions.  

A GIA can be carried out as an ex ante or ex post facto evaluation: the former permits equal opportunity issues to be systematically included in decision making processes and enables the identification of negative effects and alternative (partial) solutions before implementation. This is the most far reaching goal of a GIA. As ex post facto evaluation a GIA can support the further development of ongoing projects.  

GIA’s have been applied to various professional fields (environmental protection, conservation, radiation protection, consumer protection, agricultural, forestry and forestry policy, as well as research policy in the areas of environmental and sustainability research) and at various levels. The current method is easily transferable to other professional fields and can be adapted serve in different institutional/organizational contexts.  

Contact Person:

Dr. Irmgard Schultz, schultz@isoe.de

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