Gender in Local Government: A Sourcebook for Trainers

Good local governance cannot exist without giving due attention to gender equality and women’s empowerment. UN-HABITAT has therefore made great efforts to mainstream gender both internally and in its work with partners. The Training and Capacity Building Branch has recently published a number of training tools which aim to increase the capacity of local governments in such areas as local governance, management, local economic development and financial management.

A strong gender dimension has been incorporated into these tools and ongoing training activities to further support UN-Habitat’s gender policy. Despite these efforts, many training institutes are inadequately equipped to provide training on gender issues in local government and in fully integrating the gender dimension in their day-to-day courses. This tool, ‘Gender Equality and Equity: A Sourcebook for Local Government Training’, is designed to assist training institutions in mainstreaming gender concerns in local government capacity building activities and in human settlements training activities conducted by Habitat Agenda partners.