After evaluating your gender equality action plan

Conduct follow-up activities to understand the progress achieved, as well as the persisting gender and intersecting inequalities that continue to affect your parliament.

To achieve lasting gender-responsive institutional change, continuously renew your commitment to creating relevant gender equality action plans. This means starting the development of a new plan once the previous one expires, taking into account changes to the status quo.

Example of a parliament conducting follow-up activities

In 2022, the Swedish Parliament published a report evaluating the work completed under the 2018–2022 action programme[1]. The report describes the results of the plan, such as improved treatment and experience of women MPs, improved working conditions and working environment, and increased knowledge on gender equality in the institution. The report also presents recommendations for the next programme.

Similarly, the follow up plan for 2022–2026[2] states that at the end of the election period, the working group responsible for overseeing the plan must evaluate its work and submit a report to the Board of the Parliament. In the evaluation report, the recommendations for the following plan will be outlined.

Follow-up activities

  • Reflect on the forms of gender and intersecting inequalities that the previous plan addressed, and the inequalities the plan failed to address. Consider how a gender and intersectional perspective can be better integrated into a subsequent plan.

  • Consider how the parliament can improve the engagement of different groups of women and men in parliament (i.e. MPs, staff of MPs, parliamentary staff, etc.) in the process of developing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating a subsequent plan.

  • Assess how the process of data collection (disaggregated by sex and other characteristics such as age, family status, ethnicity or disability) can be improved to facilitate the delivery of a subsequent plan.

  • Go back to Step 1, and conduct another gender equality assessment for the parliament using EIGE’s self-assessment tool or another assessment approach.

  • Complete the preparatory measures required prior to developing a new plan, keeping in mind any changes that may have occurred since the previous plan was launched.