The Gender Policy and Plan (GPP) 2020-2023 is UN-Habitat’s roadmap for promoting gender equality throughout its work. It is aligned with the organizational Strategic Plan (2020-2023) and supports the New Urban Agenda (NUA) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through its contribution to their implementation. The GPP elaborates the gender dimensions of the programmatic results and the relevant indicators for measuring success, as well as steps to strengthen gender equality across UN-Habitat systems and processes. It builds on the evaluation results, lessons learned and recommendations from the independent external evaluation of UN-Habitat’s Policy and Plan for Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women in Urban Development and Human Settlements, 2014-2019 that was conducted in 2020.

This Policy and Plan for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women for 2014-19 (PPG) sets out UN-Habitat’s commitment and strategy to ensure that all its activities reflect and advance the global consensus on non-discrimination and equality between men and women.

It provides the means by which UN-Habitat will collaborate with
national and city authorities, and civil society, so that the knowledge, skill and experience of both men and women are included in all aspects of urban development, both as a matter of equality and equity, and so that no resources are overlooked in the quest for inclusive and sustainable urban governance, planning, economic management and basic service delivery

Whilst we recognize that much work has been done in the mainstreaming of gender equality in human settlement, UN-Habitat acknowledges that much more is required. This compendium of case studies is designed to bring into one document some of the gender mainstreaming initiatives UN-Habitat implemented from 2008 to 2012. The case studies provide the most comprehensive examples of the field implementation of the UN-Habitat Gender Equality Action Plan of 2008 to 2013.

The projects and programmes compendium brings recognition to UN-Habitat's efforts to advance the internationally agreed agenda for Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women. The compendium serves as a good start towards capturing the successful efforts under way to advance the agenda on equality and empowerment of women. In addition, the compendium serves as a learning and resource tool to UN-Habitat and its partners

The objectives of the evaluation are to assess UN-HABITAT's efforts in mainstreaming gender across its programmes and policies, and the appropriateness of its institutional arrangements and strategic partnerships for the promotion of gender equality in human settlements.

In addition to the accountability objective, the purpose of the evaluation is to generate lessons to inform decisions about how institutional arrangements for gender mainstreaming and related strategic partnerships can be improved.The following Summary sets out the findings of the Evaluation with regard to the achievements and challenges of gender mainstreaming in UN-HABITAT, before presenting a summary of recommendations and next steps.