Gender Impact Assessment in Law-Drafting Projects . Helsinki 2007. 32 pp. (Publications of Social Affairs and Health, Finland, ISSN 1236-2050, 2007:25),
ISBN 978-952-00-2491-8 (paperback), ISBN 978-952-00-2492-5 (PDF)

According to the Act on Equality between Women and Men it is the responsibil-ity of all the public authorities to promote gender equality in their own activities. Mainstreaming means such administrative and operational practices that support the promotion of gender equality as a part of a ministry’s or authority’s activities. In other words, that the civil servants responsible for the content of each policy area take the promotion of gender equality into account in their activities. The purpose of mainstreaming is to bend the gender-neutral, partly even gender-blind procedures and cultures. One tool of mainstreaming is gender impact as-sessment.

Assessment of the gender impact of law projects and opportunities to promote gender equality are a means of promoting the realisation of gender equality. Mainstreaming is applied to the drafting of all legislation and preparation of the State budget, to various programmes and projects, and to personnel policy in the state administration. Mainstreaming is also taken into consideration in the performance agreements made between the government ministries and the of-fices and agencies under them.

The present handbook is applied to the drafting of legislation. Gender impact assessment in law drafting means trying to find out in advance the impacts of the law on women/men in order not to cause indirect discriminatory gender effects when applying the law. A further aim is to ensure law drafting of a high quality.

Keywords: equality, gender, gender mainstreaming