The Office for Women’s Policy (OWP) plays a central role in working with government and the community to raise awareness and understanding about the process of gender analysis and gender mainstreaming.
Gender Analysis (Pdf 1695kb) / (Word, 282kb) is based on the premise that women’s and men’s lives are largely different, and so they shouldn't be treated as homogenous groups. A key approach of gender analysis is to allow the unique needs and differences of women and men - in all their diversity - to be the guiding principles in developing policies, programs, projects or services. In other words, it's important for policies and services to target the real needs of both women and men.
Gender Analysis is an important way of assessing the impact of proposed and/or existing policies, programs, services and legislation on women and men.
Agencies, businesses and organisations using this approach can:
- develop more effective procedures for developing, implementing and evaluating policies, programs and legislation; and
- develop more enhanced, gender-sensitive data collection and analysis procedures, as well as more effective consultation processes.
Gender based analysis is increasingly used by governments around the world including Ireland, New Zealand and Canada. The Netherlands and Canada are two countries seen to be adopting models of excellence in Gender Analysis.
Visit Western Australian Developments to view current initiatives and developments occurring in Western Australia.