Gender-responsive budgeting is a strategy to ensure that budgets strive for a fair distribution of resources, including allocating and ring-fencing specific budget lines and adequate resources for gender equality and ending VAWG work. 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 case study in the law, policies and institutions section on improving the use of gender-responsive budgeting in 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. Evidence suggests that SRGBV can also have long-term and far-reaching consequences for young people who have witnessed such violence, as 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 ensure that addressing SRGBV is incorporated into national policies and action plans and set out strategies for prevention, responses to mitigate against impact, and accountability.

• Support whole-school approaches to make schools safer, more learner-centred and a better environment for children to learn. Whole-school approaches aim to create safe and welcoming spaces, promote strong messages that SRGBV is not acceptable through the curriculum and pedagogy, and enforce codes of conduct that detail the recognised ethical norms and standards of behaviour for all school staff, and potentially also students and their parents.

• Ensure clear, safe and accessible procedures and mechanisms are in place for children to report incidents, to assist victims and refer cases to the appropriate authorities. This 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 

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 in the workplace requires work on the broader enabling and regulatory environment of national policies and laws, but also specific work with companies and institutions in a whole range of areas: 

• Develop and implement policies on zero tolerance of harassment and violence. 
• Develop gender-responsive complaints processes, both formal and informal, which are accessible to and trusted by women and ensure clear accountability measures for perpetrators. 
• Develop broader human resources policies to support the recruitment, retention and advancement of women; ensure equal, fair pay; and provide assistance to any women 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. 
• Support gender-transformative training and mentoring for managers and workers to address harmful norms 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 women to engage in collective bargaining to ensure their rights and freedom from harassment and violence. 

Governments are increasingly acknowledging the negative impacts of VAWG on women, families, communities, business and the national economy - and are committing to do more to prevent violence. Whilst it is known that government action to create an enabling environment of laws and policies and to allocate resources for prevention is critical, there has been limited progress on tracking impacts and measuring change. However, measuring population-level change is just as important as measuring programme-level change. Key approaches include:

• Develop a realistic vision of the expected processes of change at population level over the shorter, medium and longer term
• To measure longer-term progress over time, conduct 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
• Establish a range of interim results and indicators that measure key changes in risk and protective factors for violence 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