Handbook for sustainable GEPs

The Handbook for Sustainable GEPs offers organizations a useful tool for integrating Gender Equality Plans and Gender Budgeting in their efforts to improve gender equality. Gender budgeting here is based on the human capabilities approach (Addabbo, Lanzi and Picchio, 2010) that broadens its focus from being solely centred on monetary income and assets to the impact of policies on well-being in its multidimensionality and complexity. The well-being gender budgets resulting from the application of this approach make the impact of organisations on the various dimensions of well-being visible, an impact that is referred to in each GEPs action from a strategic planning perspective.
The Handbook provides RPOs an overview of the theoretical background and methodological approach, and clarify the different steps to follow, consistently with the updated GEAR tool and the Horizon Europe Guidance on Gender Equality Plans. These shall make it possible to enact the expected structural change and discern a sensible improvement in gender equality. By maintaining the interplay between gender budgeting and gender equality plans, the Handbook makes it possible to extend the gender perspective to all actions and expenditure programmes and to lead to an assessment of the use of resources on different dimensions of well-being and in accordance with a gender perspective capable of guiding the structural change undertaken. The experiences of the implementing partners of the Leading Towards Sustainable Gender Equality Plans in Research Institutions project (funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme), are included in boxes, and contribute to increasing the usability of the manual as regards its application by highlighting concrete experiences and ways out.