ELA - Latin American Justice and Gender Think Tank (Equipo Latinoamericano de Justicia y Género)

Public policies

Policies are a collective action strategy deliberately designed and calculated in view of given objectives. It implies and triggers a series of decisions to be adopted and of actions to be performed by a broad number of players.
When public policy is mentioned, it generally refers to processes, decisions, results, but without excluding conflicts of interests present every time, tensions in the definition of the problems to solve, among various organizational and action rationalities and among different scales and assessing perspectives.
Planning may have several levels of completion:
· National economic and social public policies
· Specific women policies
· Sectorial policies
· Specific programs and projects
Considering these levels implies understanding the specificity in the definition of public policies with a gender approach at a macro level (formulated by the Executive Branch, whether by the president, the ministers or the Legislative) and its inclusion, for example in economic and job promotion projects.
Between macro policies and sectorial policies it is necessary to harmonize a global gender approach with the specific and particular views. The inclusion of the global approach allows overcoming the consideration of women’s affairs in an individual and separate manner. In turn, the institutionalization process (gender mainstreaming) implies, on the one hand, the integration of the gender approach in the already existing policies, and on the other hand, including gender and its analysis in the decision-making agenda.
The formulation and execution of a gender policy requires diagnosis, indicators and information. This process implies the institutionalization of procedures in order to produce relevant information segregated by sex.
Although the inclusion of gender approach means formulating policies with gender equality, the design of sectorial policies should also incorporate social equity in general. This means that women should not be considered as a “vulnerable group” and nor should it be thought that by including a “woman component” or “beneficiary women” in social programs or political development, the gender perspective has been considered. The latter precisely implies the consideration of the asymmetric distribution of power at a micro and macro political, economic and social level.