CEN and CENELEC Signed UNECE's declaration on Gender Responsive Standards and Standard Development

The Declaration is the result of the work on the Gender Responsive Standards Initiative that was launched in 2016 by UNECE, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, through its Working Party on Regulatory Cooperation and Standardization Policies (WP6). It aims to assist national standards bodies and standards developing organizations in identifying actions to support the creation of gender responsive standards. These include improving the gender balance of participants in standards development; ensuring that the content of standards takes into account gender specific sensitivities; and monitoring standards implementation to achieve gender balance.

By signing the Declaration, the CEN and CENELEC community is proud to join other national and international standardization bodies in making the standard development process more gender-responsive, and help achieve Goal 5 of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals for 2030, ‘Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls’. CEN and CENELECs’ commitments include affirming the Declaration, creating and proactively implementing a gender action plan and tracking progress by collecting and sharing data, success stories and best practices.

“CEN and CENELEC recognise the influential role of standards in our society and believe that it is essential to adopt a gender lens in the standards development process on equal competences and profiles”, Elena Santiago Cid, CEN and CENELEC’s Director General, commented. “To enable better market acceptance, we should work together for gender responsive standards”.

A collective commitment for gender equality

Together with CEN and CENELEC, further 19 National Standardization Organizations, members of CEN and CENELEC, individually signed the Declaration, pledging their own commitments. The list of co-signers includes: ASI (Austria), CYS (Cyprus), DIN (Germany), IST (Iceland), NSAI (Ireland), CEI and UNI (Italy), LST (Lithuania), ILNAS (Luxembourg), MCCAA (Malta), NEC and NEN (The Netherlands), SN (Norway), IPQ (Portugal), ISRSM (North Macedonia), ISS (Serbia), UNE (Spain), SIS (Sweden), and BSI (United Kingdom). Signatures to the Declaration will remain open, in order to allow all willing national, regional and international standard development bodies to join. Additional national standardization organizations are invited to join by making their commitments, thus increasing the UNECE Declaration impact and the reach of gender responsive standards.

The Declaration was launched at the Opening Ceremony which took place at the Palais des Nations in Geneva today, 14th May, in the presence of Olga Alvayerova, the United Nations’ Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of UNECE. Elena Santiago Cid represented CEN and CENELEC during a high-level panel discussion dedicated to the role of women in standards development. The full programme of the Opening Ceremony can be found here.

For more information, please contact Deborah WAUTIER

• Read the full text of the Declaration
• Watch Elena Santiago Cid announce CEN and CENELEC’s signature