Competencies for specialist steering

As well as competence for process steering, competence for specialist steering is also required. This means that the heads of departments and sub-departments require that staff process their specialist tasks in a manner which is oriented to gender equality, i.e. actively stipulating and actively asking for results. A department head, for instance, should make it clear in connection with her responsibility for specialist steering that the task has not been properly completed until the gender aspects required in the specialist context have been integrated.

These functional levels must understand this task to be part of their general management duties at the latest in regular practice. So gender equality should also be bindingly included in their job descriptions. The differentiated competences for process steering and specialist steering must complement each other in a meaningful way and be dovetailed into each other.

It can be useful in the introductory and transitional phases to create certain organizational units to secure the specialist steering of GM. For example, by establishing cross-departmental working groups for certain specialist tasks: training, data and statistics, ministerial research, etc. The Land of Berlin [German], for instance, has set up working groups on, among other things, gender budgeting and data in connection with the implementation of GM. This makes it possible to deal with these specialist subjects in an intensive way.

In the transitional phase to regular practice, it is better to use existing cross-departmental structures at working level, such as a research project group, for specialist steering. Gender equality should be integrated as a specialist task in this context.