Gender Integration

• Is the use of sexual- and gender-based violence as a weapon
of war criminalized?
• How are males and females affected differently as victims
of violence? What are the differences between males and
females as perpetrators of violence?
(See Module 9 on Integrating Gender into Reconciliation,
Peacebuilding, and Transitional Justice for more information.)
SECTION II. Integrating Gender into Rule
of Law and Justice Sector Programming:
Challenges and Opportunities
1. Within the Formal Legal Framework
Challenge: Create and implement gender-sensitive laws and
legal mechanisms.
Opportunities:
• International treaties. Support civil society efforts to
encourage governments to ratify international and regional
human rights treaties, such as the Convention to Eliminate
all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and
International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of
Racial Discrimination (ICERD), and to allocate adequate
resources to implement them fully through domestic law,
administrative acts, and judicial decisions. Provide technical
assistance on harmonizing domestic law with states’ treaty
obligations.
• Legislative reform. Provide support to legislators,
legislative staff and advocates to create, revise, and amend
laws to make them more inclusive and gender-sensitive in
accordance with international human rights standards.
See Module 4 on Integrating Gender into Legislative
Strengthening Programming for more information.
• Administrative law reforms. Support administrative law
reforms, which could include: (1) Limitation of discretion
(agency rule changes, second appeal process, establish
precedent setting decisions to ensure consistency, judicial
review to compare action with law and control arbitrariness),
(2) increasing administrative due process (notice of
rules, opportunity to be heard, impartial decisions, appeals),
or (3) increasing information (publish rules, public allowed
to provide commentary to rule changes).
• Gender analysis. Build the capacity of local CSOs, think
tanks and legislative staff to conduct gender analysis of draft
legislation and to provide relevant resources and analysis
to legislators.
• Training and raising awareness. Raise awareness of
gender (in)equality among government officials across all
levels and sectors. Ensure that trainings of government staff
or leaders build their capacity to apply a gender perspective
to the laws, policies, and practices within their competency.
• Gender-responsive budgeting. Train government officials
on how to implement gender-responsive budgeting 2 and
integrate gender-responsive budgeting into programming.
• Monitoring. Support the creation of government, crosssectoral,
and civil society bodies to monitor and oversee
the inclusive and gender equitable implementation of laws.
• Civil society capacity building. Enhance the ability of civil
society organizations (CSOs) to monitor and advocate for
legal changes on rule of law and justice sector issues and
to integrate fully gender into these efforts.
PROGRAM SNAPSHOT
When Turkey ratified CEDAW in 1985,
the women’s movement began lobbying
for reform of the civil code, noting that
it violated Turkey’s own constitutional
guarantee of gender equality and its
commitments under CEDAW. When
the government prepared a more
gender-equitable draft civil code in
2000 it was blocked by conservative
parliamentarians who claimed that the
proposed equal division of matrimonial
property was a threat to Turkish
society. In response, the women’s movement
built a coalition of over 120 NGOs
from around the country and representing
differing ideological viewpoints
to campaign on a common platform in
support of the reforms. The coalition
successfully gained the attention of the
media, leading to a public debate about
women’s rights and gender roles in
society. In 2001, a new civil code was
passed that was “based on the principle
of equal rights and responsibilities within
the household.” The civil society
coalition then advocated successfully
for a new penal code, passed in 2004,
which criminalized marital rape and
workplace sexual harassment, and
banned lenient sentencing in cases of
“honor” killings and rape.
Source: UN Women, “Progress of
the World’s Women 2011–2012:
In Pursuit of Justice,” 2011, p. 31.
http://www.unwomen.org/en/digital
-library/publications/2011/7/progress-of
-the-world-s-women-in-pursuit-of-justice
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USAID | Gender Integration in Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG) Programming Toolkit