Gender impact assessment and mainstreaming. The experience of the Autonomous Government of the Valencian Community

Abstract

Gender impact assessment is a central tool for promoting gender mainstreaming in policies and regulatory frameworks. In this paper we focus on the ex-ante gender impact assessment reports (IEIG) produced by the Valencian regional administration, with the aim of contrasting their role in the establishment of gender mainstreaming in the Generalitat Valenciana (GVA). We have defined two variables for the meta-evaluation of these IEIGs: institutionalisation and quality. The first of these consists of three dimensions: legal framework,
resources and coverage. The second, the quality of the IEIGs, is assessed through the dimensions of structure, content and treatment of cross-cutting issues.
Documentary analysis is the priority research technique, having exhaustively analysed a sample of 268 gender impact assessment reports produced by the GVA in the period between 2015 and 2022. The selection of the reports was based on their availability on the institutional websites of the different ministries. Subsidiarily, data extracted from an in-depth interview was also considered for the research.
Among the results obtained, we observed that the gender impact assessment reports of the GVA present a widespread but weak institutionalisation, while at the same time showing a low quality. A series of proposals for improvement can be drawn from this reality. Among them, the establishment of mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation of gender impact assessment reports to improve their quality and thus make progress in the institutionalisation of gender mainstreaming.