The Gender Management System (GMS) Toolkit

The Gender Management System (GMS) is the Commonwealth Secretariat's approach to ensuring that gender equality is a guiding principal in all government policies, plans and programmes. It calls for a broad-based partnership in society in which government consults and acts co-operatively with other key stakeholders, including civil society and the private sector. To this end, the Commonwealth Secretariat produced a series of reference manuals presenting the concepts and methodology of the GMS, with both general and sector-specific guidelines and tools for analysis and planning. These manuals focus on gender mainstreaming in such key sectors as finance, development planning, the public service, legal and constitutional affairs, as well as cross-cutting development issues such as HIV/AIDS, poverty eradication and the Millennium Development Goals, and gender-based violence. The GMS Toolkit is a learner-centred and training-oriented package designed to help those who are responsible for action on gender equality in government and other stakeholder organisations to more easily use these GMS manuals. The Toolkit includes: an 'action guide' to facilitate individual learning formed of ten self-study units; a training manual for gender trainers which gives advice about designing and delivering gender training, examples of resources and activities, and materials based on the experiences of practitioners in the field; and a change management briefing for anyone committed to effecting gender equality through institutional change.