Toolkit

Promoting gender equality and the social and economic empowerment of women and girls is essential, and yields benefits for everyone. All cities should strive to consider gender equity in every city policy, program, or initiative.

The Gender Equity Toolkit from the City Hub and Network for Gender Equity (CHANGE) provides cities throughout the world with a guide to help advance gender equity. It offers a menu of best practices within four categories delineated by the major functions of local government. Cities can draw from this toolkit to pursue approaches that can be adjusted to meet the specific challenges and needs of their residents.

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Explore four different ways to build gender equity in your city:

• The City as Innovator: Embed gender in city systems
• The City as Employer: Build and maintain a gender-inclusive workforce
• The City as a Provider: Integrate gender in city policies
• The City as a Connector: Work with stakeholders to improve city programs to the benefit of all

Use the reflection questions in the toolkit to help you explore how centering gender can help your city advance equity to the benefit of all:

• Are we collecting gender-disaggregated and/or sex-disaggregated data when measuring the impact of city policies and programs?
• Has city leadership made it clear that gender equity is a priority?
• Are city communications inclusive and gender-neutral?
• Are we making every effort to achieve gender equity among city staff?
• What more can we do to ensure that a diverse range of voices are included in policy-making and management positions?
• Is there a safe, accountable, and transparent system for reporting discrimination and harassment?
• Are we applying a gender lens to every city policy, program and initiative, recognizing the intersectionality between gender equity and other critical challenges?
• Are we continually seeking input – both formally and informally – from women, girls, and other marginalized genders?
• Are we capitalizing on new/ongoing political or social movements to build support for advancing gender equity?

• What more can we do to make our cities inclusive, safe, and welcoming for all genders?

Learn how other cities are applying a gender lens in their city operations, outreach, services, programs, hiring, and partner-supported initiatives. Within each category, the toolkit spotlights examples from CHANGE’s six founding cities–Barcelona, Freetown, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and Tokyo.

About CHANGE:

The City Hub and Network for Gender Equity (CHANGE) was launched in November 2020 with the shared vision and commitment to achieve gender equity within this generation. To empower women in all their diversity, CHANGE harnesses the collective power of cities to transform government services and systems to the benefit of all. Member cities create systemic change by identifying disparities, implementing initiatives to address needs across city operations, and tracking measures for success. CHANGE believes that to be successful, our work must explicitly recognize and address intersecting inequalities predicated upon race, religion, ethnic origin, disability, sexual orientation, and gender identity or expression.