Making Regulatory Impact Assessment Gender Sensitive: The Case of the Czech Republic and Slovakia

Abstract

Gender Impact Assessment (GIA) has been institutionalized in different ways in Czech and Slovak Republics: Czech Republic introduced GIA independently of regulatory impact assessment (RIA) process relatively early on while Slovakia did so only during the modernization of RIA processes in the early 2010s. Based on the analysis of 671 RIAs from 2007 to 2015 the study finds that with a few exceptions largely coming from the Ministries of Social Affairs where gender equality units were originally anchored in both countries, the GIA responses are relatively formal and ‘blind’. This is despite the obligations and RIA modernization processes in both countries which introduced also standardization and supervision of RIA processes by independent bodies. Both countries witness persistent invisibility of gender, despite different GIA trajectories which can be attributed to the dominance of economists in both RIA processes.

Keywords: Gender Impact Assessment, Regulatory Impact Assessment, Gender Mainstreaming, Gender Equality, Gender Analysis, Czech Republic, Slovakia