How to incorporate the gender perspective into municipal plans and programmes? How to make culture in the city more egalitarian? How to include women and their views in urban planning? They are just a few of the questions answered in the Feminist Methodology Booklets, a collection offering proposals and tools for the feminist transformation of local policies.
Feminist Methodological Notebooks, FMN, present methodologies and tools developed by Barcelona City Council in the framework of promoting gender mainstreaming in its internal running and public policies. It is all concerns, then, tools and proposals already put into practice and used for incorporating the gender perspective into areas as important as budgets and taxation, awards and distinctions, urban planning, culture and strategic planning.
FMNs aim to present these feminist transformation proposals in local policies to the people responsible for getting public authorities to incorporate the gender perspective into their actions. They are also useful for the specialist staff in these authorities working on and engaging in activism for gender equality in each of the areas that are dealt with. Finally, FMNs may be of use for academic researchers.
A total of 5 FMNs have already been published:
- FMN 1: Urban planning and gender: daily-life audits
Cities are not neutral towards gender. Urban spaces have a strong gender bias both in their uses and in the rights and freedoms associated with them. That is why the methodology shown in the FMN aims to contribute towards meeting the feminist transformation needs of urban spaces. - FMN 2: Count on us! Good practices for egalitarian cultural programming
Gender stereotypes, the unequal distribution of roles assigning women with unremunerated household and care work, the pay gap and unequal opportunities all slow down and limit women’s participation in cultural creation. This guide is a practical, proactive tool for raising awareness, detecting problems and pooling proposals for egalitarian cultural programming. - FMN 3: Economic policy gender impact assessment: municipal budget and taxation
Financial-resource distribution between men and women is one of the basic criteria that tells us up to what point a society is or is not egalitarian in gender. That is why the purpose to assessing budgets and tax systems from a gender perspective is to bring about a feminist transformation of our cities. The notebook is intended to set out the methodology for assessing the gender impact of municipal budgets and taxation. - FMN 4: Awards, distinctions and gender: good practices
Distinctions are mechanisms for expressing public gratitude, appreciation and awareness of the merit and prestige of the city’s individuals and organisations. That is why the FMN offers proposals for incorporating gender criteria into all processes involved in prize and distinction regulations, application calls, assessments, deliberations and awards. - FMN 5: Incorporating the gender perspective into plans and programmes
Methodology for facilitating the systematic incorporation of the gender perspective into all municipal planning in a succinct, accessible and schematic way. The aim is to thereby contribute towards the launching of quality public policies which include and meet every citizen’s needs and interests, leading to an institutional change towards good governance in gender fairness.FMNs are a growing collection, so the issues that the next ones are to focus on will be public policy assessment with the gender perspective, participation in gender mainstreaming, gender clauses in public procurement and so on.You will gradually find them all from this link.