Gender-responsive budgeting is a strategy to ensure that government budgets strive for a fair distribution of resources, including allocating and ring-fencing specific budget lines and resources for gender equality and ending VAWG. Over 100 countries have started using gender-responsive budgeting, although as of 2023, only 26% have comprehensive systems to track gender-equality allocations in the budget. UN Women has developed guidance on best practice to support gender-responsive budgeting: 

• Introduce laws mandating gender-responsive budgeting and clear guidelines and tools for implementation. 
• Analyse gender gaps and use findings to shape and monitor existing and future budgets.
• Increase transparency on how budgets are allocated and spent to address gender gaps, follow the money, and ensure people can hold their governments to account.
• Recognize the diverse needs of women, considering factors like socio-economic status, location, race, and ethnicity and encouraging lawmakers to engage with women from various backgrounds to ensure policies and public financing adequately support women and girls in all their diversity.

Spotlight Initiative has worked with public sector ministries to build the capacity of government officials on gender-responsive budgeting and developed tools and methodologies to assess the gender-responsiveness of budgets. For further information, see the gender-responsive budgeting sub-module and this case study on Timor-Leste.

School-related gender-based violence (SRGBV) affects millions of children, families and communities. It can be defined as acts or threats of sexual, physical or psychological violence occurring in and around schools, perpetrated as a result of gender norms and stereotypes, and enforced by unequal power dynamics. SRGBV violates children’s rights and can compromise a child’s well-being, their physical and emotional health, as well as harming their cognitive and emotional development. SRGBV can also have long-term and far-reaching consequences for young people who have witnessed violence, and they may grow up to repeat the behaviour that they have ‘learned’ and to regard it as acceptable. Key learnings on how to tackle SRGBV include:

• Work with the ministry of education to incorporate SRGBV  into national policies and action plans. Set out strategies for prevention, responses to mitigate against impact, and accountability.
• Support whole-school approaches to make schools safer and more learner-centred. Approaches aim to create safe and welcoming spaces, promote messages that SRGBV is not acceptable through the curriculum and pedagogy, and enforce codes of conduct and standards of behaviour for all school staff, as well as students and their parents.
• Ensure clear, safe and accessible procedures and mechanisms are in place for children to report incidents, to assist survivors and refer cases to the appropriate authorities. Programmes should ensure the availability of easily-accessible, child-sensitive and confidential reporting mechanisms, healthcare services including counselling and support, and referral to law enforcement where appropriate.

For more information, read UNESCO and UN Women's Global guidance on addressing school-related gender-based violence or visit UN Girls' Education Initiative for additional resources and tools. 

Women often experience violence and harassment in the workplace, in both the informal and formal economy. This ranges from women receiving lower pay than men for the same work and women’s lack of representation in decision-making, to women experiencing physical and sexual harassment and violence from managers and co-workers. Tackling VAW and GBV more broadly in the workplace requires work on the enabling and regulatory environment (including national policies and laws) in addition to specific work with companies and institutions. This may include: 

• Policies on zero tolerance of harassment and violence. 
• Gender-responsive complaints processes, both formal and informal, which are accessible to and trusted by women and ensure clear accountability measures for perpetrators. 
• Human resources policies to support the recruitment, retention and advancement of women; ensure equal, fair pay; and provide assistance to any workers who experience violence outside the workplace in their home or community – so they can get the support services they need and safely continue their employment. 
• Gender-transformative training and mentoring for managers and workers to address harmful norms, stereotypes and behaviours, and create more inclusive, respectful and violence-free work environments.  
• Support women’s formation or membership of trade unions and workplace support groups which allow them to engage in collective bargaining to ensure their rights and freedom from harassment and violence. 

Many governments have publicly committed to preventing violence against women and girls (VAWG), but there has been limited progress on tracking impacts and measuring change at a national level. Key approaches to be supported could include:

•  A realistic vision of the expected processes of change at population level over the shorter, medium and longer term
• Measuring longer-term progress over time, through periodic data collection on the national prevalence of key forms of VAWG and known risk factors e.g. through including modules on VAWG in Demographic and Health Surveys or Multi-Indicator Cluster Surveys
• Establishing a range of interim results and indicators that measure changes in risk and protective factors e.g. gender attitudes, attitudes to VAWG, women and girls decision making power, rigidity/flexibility of gender roles, relationship quality, harmful substance use, enforcement of laws on gender equality and VAWG. Again, these measures would ideally be integrated in regular national surveys such as the DHS and MICs.

Read more in the Equality Institute (2021) Making Progress in Prevention Possible: A monitoring framework for the prevention of VAWG in the Asia Pacific region

In addition, civil society and women's rights organisations are well placed to track and monitor progress, including national governments' fulfillments of their commitments. Training and supporting WROs on mechanisms such as community scorecards or human rights shadow reporting can build civil society's skills in tracking governmental adherence to global norrms and standards. Many civil society organisations use techniques such as CEDAW Shadow Reports as a way to monitor progress and keep government accountable.