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Enabling women to realize their due status,
rights and opportunities in all aspects of life
Women’s Commission of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
E
nabling women to fully realize their due status, rights
and opportunities in all aspects of life is the mission
of the Women’s Commission (the commission) of
the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR).
Appointed by the Chief Executive of the HKSAR, the commis-
sion is tasked to take a strategic overview of women’s issues,
develop a long-term vision and strategy for the development
and advancement of women, and advise the Government on
policies and initiatives which are of concern to women.
The United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which
was extended to Hong Kong in 1996, has continued to apply
to the HKSAR following resumption of exercise of sovereignty
over Hong Kong by China on July 1, 1997, under the principle
of ‘One Country, Two Systems’. The HKSAR has all along been
faithfully implementing CEDAW in accordance with the Basic
Law and local laws.
In January 2001, the HKSAR Government established the
Women’s Commission as a high-level central mechanism
to promote the well-being and interests of women in Hong
Kong. Currently, the commission is chaired by a non-official
and comprises 20 non-official and three ex-officio members.
Coming from diverse backgrounds, the non-official members
bring to the commission a wealth of knowledge and expertise
from different professions and community services.
The commission has adopted a three-pronged strategy,
namely the provision of an enabling environment, empow-
erment of women through capacity-building and public
education to advance the status of women and enhance
gender awareness of the public. To discharge its duties, the
commission advises the Government on the development of
appropriate policies and initiatives, identifies priority areas for
action, engages in independent surveys and research studies,
and maintains close ties with local and international women’s
groups and service agencies. The commission also plays an
important role in assisting the Government in faithfully
implementing the CEDAW as extended to HKSAR.
The commission has been proactively advocating and
promoting gender mainstreaming as a key strategy in achieving
gender equality. Gender mainstreaming seeks to make women’s
as well as men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimen-
sion in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation
of all legislation, policies and programmes. The aim is to ensure
that women and men will have equitable access to, and benefit
from, society’s resources and opportunities.
In 2002, the Government accepted the commission’s recom-
mendation on the introduction of gender mainstreaming into
various policy areas on an incremental basis. To facilitate this
process, the commission developed a Gender Mainstreaming
Checklist, comprising a series of simple questions, to assist
Government officers in evaluating the gender impacts of new
and existing public policies, legislation and programmes in a
more systematic way. Between 2002 and 2014, the checklist
was applied to more than 50 policy and programme areas,
covering welfare, public building design, rehabilitation
services, healthcare and village representative election, etc.
In 2014, the commission recommended that the time was
ripe for the Government to ‘institutionalize’ gender main-
streaming as a regular feature in its policy-making process.
The Chief Executive of the HKSAR accepted this recommenda-
tion. In January 2015, the Chief Executive announced that all
Government bureaux and departments would be required to
refer to the checklist and apply gender mainstreaming to formu-
lating and evaluating Government major policies and initiatives.
Starting from April 2015, all Government bureaux and depart-
ments have been mandatorily required to, having regard to
the checklist, formulate and include an assessment on gender
implications in their policy submissions. The gender implication
Members of the Women’s Commission celebrated the
International Women’s Day 2016
Image: Women’s Commission of Hong Kong
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