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Advancing knowledge
| GENPROM has helped to ensure that policy-makers, planners and implementors have readily and easily accessible information and data to be able to conduct gender analysis and to design and implement gender-sensitive and responsive policies and programmes through:
- Research on innovative and effective policies and practices for enhancing opportunities for women in employment and enterprises, and promoting gender equality. The focus has been on identifying and testing good practices, developing an extensive portfolio of policy and programme options, and indicating the factors for success or failure in different contexts.
- Preparation, dissemination and practical validation of user-friendly manuals of
good practice. These manuals deal with, for example, the promotion of gender
equality by trade unions within their own structures, at the workplace and in the
wider community; the protection of vulnerable female migrants from debt bondage
or exploitative forms of overseas employment; and promotion of the rights of older
women workers.
- Establishment of an information base on equal employment opportunity policies and practices on a website and CD-ROM. The ILO is often approached by governments and the social partners for information that will assist them to translate international standards into effective national laws and company policies and practices, and to learn from the experience of different countries in promoting equal employment opportunities.
- Development of conceptual and analytical tools for gender analysis and gender
mainstreaming. It is critical that policy-makers and planners understand the gender
and employment implications of macroeconomic policies, especially in the context
of globalization and the feminization of poverty.
GENPROM has drawn attention to new and emerging areas of gender concern and special vulnerable groups of workers, so as to encourage pro-active and catalytic policies and programmes. GENPROM has initiated research, organizing seminars, mounting information and media campaigns, experimenting with small-scale "model schemes" to raise awareness and deepen understanding.
Adopting a generational approach to gender equality
 Equality of rights must be implemented over the entire life course - to enable girls and boys, women and men to progress from one stage of life to another and to ensure that discrimination encountered at one stage is not perpetuated or that gains made at one stage are not lost at later stages. In advocating a generational approach to the promotion of gender equality, GENPROM has focussed attention on:
- the different socio-cultural perceptions concerning the value of daughters and sons and human capital investments in children;
- the linked nature of economic and social reproduction and the particular problems faced by women attempting to combine career, marriage, family and civic responsibilities - hence, the importance of family-friendly policies;
- the growing likelihood in the twenty-first century that men and especially women will be having flexible working lives, moving in and out of the labour force and changing their work status several times over the course of their lives, and the need for lifelong learning and continuous training for such workers;
- the ageing of the population, with women accounting for the bulk of the older population but facing serious discrimination in the form of sexist and ageist stereotypes both within and outside the labour market.
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