Tool 6: Developing quantitative and qualitative indicators for advancing gender equality

This tool[1] will support you in two tasks.

  • Define specific quantitative and qualitative indicators for advancing gender equality, expanding on already defined common indicators for each fund. This will allow Member States and the EU to follow up on the funds’ contributions to gender equality
  • Align these indicators for advancing gender equality with national equality priorities. This will allow Member States to follow up on the funds’ contributions to specific national equality priorities.

This tool can guide managing authorities at the national and sub-national levels when developing OPs to promote equality between women and men in all their diversity. Specific gender equality indicators are the key to providing gender-sensitive inputs for annual performance reviews – a major occasion for a policy dialogue on key issues related to programme implementation and performance. They also provide relevant information for the monitoring committee, and for mid-term and ex post evaluations.

As defined in Article 17 (3)(d)(ii) of the CPR, each specific objective in an OPs must have “output indicators and result indicators with the corresponding milestones and targets'. The ERDF, Cohesion Fund, EMFF and ESF+ have defined common indicators in annexes to their specific regulations. However, Member States are also free to add indicators. In addition to this specific support for drawing up indicators related to gender equality, the collection of sex-disaggregated data is identified as a standard procedure. Collecting such data on gender equality indicators, alongside the disaggregation of all indicators by sex and other important characteristics, where possible and meaningful, is of the utmost importance as it has an impact on all phases of EU Funds' programming.