Advancing Gender Equality in Public Administration
On average, women constitute nearly half of the national civil service workforce but are underrepresented in higher-level positions and certain policy areas, such as information technology, due to occupational segregation. The UN-DESA project “Building Capacities for Promoting Women’s Presence and Leadership within Public Institutions at National and Local Levels,” funded by the Government of Italy, aimed to support Governments in Bhutan, Lao PDR, Mauritius, and Senegal to address these challenges. The project enhanced governments’ capacity to prioritize gender equality in public administration, focusing on means to advance women’s careers into leadership positions and supporting SDG 5 and SDG 16.
Testimonials from participants
“This meeting helped immensely in refining the measures as the success stories of different countries and their experiences while implementing the gender related activities exposed the areas where we need to refocus and refine.”
“This workshop, with a good blend of expert input and sharing of country experiences (good practices) has made me realize that there are many effective strategies that we can immediately adopt to progress the role and future of women leadership in our civil service. We learnt concrete, practical and lived strategies, which will guide us.”
Participants of the “Promoting the presence and leadership of women within public institutions at the national and local levels in Asia and the Pacific”, Thailand, 22-25 April 2024.
Public Administration Action Plans
Through national reviews, training, and national, regional and global workshops, the project identified gender equality gaps and structural barriers hindering women’s advancement in public administration in Bhutan, Lao PDR, Mauritius, and Senegal and supported the development of tailored action plans to address those.
The action plans focus on updating legal and policy frameworks to strengthen gender equality, revising civil service rules, enhancing gender infrastructure in government entities and raising awareness through campaigns. They also promote gender-responsive recruitment, work-life balance and gender equality training, along with leadership and ICT skills development for women. The plans include measures to strengthen harassment protection in the workplace in the public sector. Additionally, the plans aim to enhance gender-disaggregated data collection, establish national databases and build data management and analysis capacities. They also focus on improving monitoring systems to track progress and ensure accountability.
Knowledge Exchange and Capacity Building
The project engaged over 100 organizations across national and subnational governments and civil society groups. It fostered South-South knowledge transfer among countries in Africa and Asia-Pacific, promoting cross-regional learning, peer reviews and collaboration. Officials from Angola, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Cape Verde, Lesotho, Nigeria, São Tomé, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Thailand, The Philippines, Uganda, Vanuatu and Zambia peer reviewed the action plans and were sensitized on integrating gender equality into their public administration systems. Ninety-one percent of workshop participants reported increased capacity to develop national gender parity plans.
The creation of self-paced online modules through a dedicated Moodle platform enabled policymakers to acquire essential skills to identify and address gender disparities. The platform facilitated access to resources, reports and discussions, ensuring that the learning process extended beyond workshops. The community of practice established by the project allows countries to share best practices and refine their gender parity strategies.
Promoting Gender Equality in Public Administration beyond the project
The project had tangible impacts, as shown by the commitment of the governments of target countries to officially approve and implement the action plans. In Bhutan, for example, the National Commission for Women and Children adopted and has begun implementing the national action plan. Key international partners in the project countries, including the RCOs, UNDP and UN Women, expressed strong support for building on the momentum generated by the initiative, with plans for post-project reviews and further capacity-building activities.
Learn more
To learn more, visit the dedicated project website or engage with the community of practice on Moodle. Check out the video showcasing challenges and opportunities in Bhutan.