Gender Equality Action Plan 2012-2014

The Gender Equality Action Plan is a national cross-sectoral action plan of Latvia for the period 2012-2014. Its main objectives include minimisation of the gender specific roles and stereotypes; promotion of healthy and environmentally friendly lifestyle of women and men; and promotion of economic independence and equal opportunities of men and women at the labour market.
The Action Plan aims to make environment more sustainable. To this end, it is planning to promote healthy and environmentally friendly lifestyle of women and men. According to the Action Plan, habits of lifestyle especially characteristic for women and men and impact upon the environment will be identified, and the people’s understanding of their impact upon the health and environment will improve. In the result positive changes in trends of habits of the lifestyle of women and men, attitude towards the health, environmentally friendly model of life can be expected. Knowledge of environment experts concerning integration of gender aspects in promoting environmentally friendly lifestyle will improve and in the result more purposeful public education campaigns on impact upon the environment will be created and the gender aspect will be integrated in the environment protection and climate change policy.
Further, for reducing poverty, the document targets to promote economic independence and equal opportunities of men and women at the labour market. According to the document, if involvement of women in entrepreneurship is encouraged faster recovery of people facing the risk of poverty (for example, children, young people, women) can be expected after last social economic crisis of Latvia, thus encouraging the economic growth and welfare in the country in general.
In order to increase the resilience of livelihoods to disasters, as noted, the Action Plan aims to integrate the gender aspect in the environment protection and climate change policy.
The system of monitoring and evaluation of the gender equality policy system will be improved and will permit to analyse efficiency of the policy, to identify tasks to be carried out in future for implementation of the gender equality, thus encouraging purposeful utilisation of resources (time, money, information, human). Also understanding of experts of the essence of the gender equality and possibilities and importance of application of the integrated approach in branch policies will improve. By application of the integrated approach of the gender equality in branch policies analysis of a higher quality will be available concerning the situation in the particular branch from the gender perspective. Ministry of Welfare of Latvia is going to submit to the Cabinet of Ministers of Latvia an informative report about the implementation of the Action Plan until July 1, 2015.