Glossary of terms
Flexible work arrangements: Work practice that allows the employees a certain degree of freedom in deciding how the work will be done and how they will coordinate their schedules with those of other employees. Flexible work arrangements include any type of time and/or space arrangements to carry out work, such as flexi-time schemes, part-time, remote working/tele-working.
Gender Equality Training (GET): Is a ‘tool, strategy, and means to effect individual and collective transformation towards gender equality through consciousness raising, empowering learning, knowledge building, and skill development'. It is an important component of the gender-mainstreaming strategy, and is recognised as such by several international and European normative instruments on gender equality.
Gender Equality Plan (GEP): A set of actions aiming at: conducting impact assessment / audits of procedures and practices to identify gender bias; identifying and implementing innovative strategies to correct any bias; setting targets and monitoring progress via indicators.
Gender Impact Assessment (GIA): An ex-ante evaluation, analysis or assessment of a law, policy or programme that makes it possible to identify, in a preventative way, the likelihood of a given decision having negative consequences for the state of equality between women and men.
Gender budgeting: A gender-based assessment of budgets, incorporating a gender perspective at all levels of the budgetary process and restructuring revenues and expenditures in order to promote gender equality.
Gender disaggregated data: Gender-disaggregated data are collected and presented disaggregated by sex as a primary and overall classification.
Gender indicators: Gender indicators are established to measure and compare the situation of women and men over time. Gender indicators can refer to quantitative indicators (based on statistics broken down by sex) or to qualitative indicators (based on women’s and men’s experiences, attitudes, opinions and feelings).
Gender mainstreaming tools: Gender mainstreaming cannot be implemented with one single tool. Since it is a process whereby a gender equality perspective is integrated into a range of different processes and tasks, a variety of methods and tools that support its implementation are therefore used in the different operational work flows of a particular field of activities.
Harassment: Unwanted physical, verbal or non-verbal conduct of a sexual nature, violating the victim’s dignity and creating a hostile environment. Acts are inclusive of, but not limited to, vulgar actions, requesting sexual favours, threatening or forcing with the purpose of gaining sexual satisfaction and forcibly imposed sexual intimacy.
Legislated quotas: Legislated candidate quotas regulate the gender composition of the candidate lists and are binding by law for all political parties in the election; they are mandated either through national constitutions or by electoral legislation.
National gender equality bodies: Equality bodies are independent organisations assisting victims of discrimination, monitoring and reporting on discrimination issues, and promoting equality. They are legally required to promote equality and combat discrimination in relation to one, some, or all of the grounds of discrimination covered by European Union (EU) law – gender, race and ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, religion or belief and disability. The EU equal treatment legislation requires Member States to set up an equality body. Most EU Member States have implemented the Gender Equal Treatment Directives.
Oversight function: The parliamentary oversight function is a means for holding the executive accountable for its actions and for ensuring that it implements policies in accordance with the laws and budget passed by the parliament. Besides the parliament’s legislative function, it is through oversight that the parliament can ensure a balance of power and assert its role as the defender of people’s interests.
Voluntary quota: Voluntary party quotas are adopted by individual parties for their own candidate lists, and are usually enshrined in party statutes and rules.
Women's caucus: Women’s caucuses or parliamentary groups are mechanisms that have been created within the parliaments of many countries to strengthen cooperation among women engaged in political life. Such caucuses can bring women parliamentarians together across party lines in effective alliances around a common goal.
Women's committee: A cross-party committee for gender equality, such as the FEMM Committee in the European Parliament.