The central task of legal policy is to secure and continue to develop the state under the rule of law. This includes legislation, i.e. the preparation, amendment and repeal of laws, court decisions including all the various codes of procedure and the implementation of legal regulations right through to sanctions in the form of imprisonment or community work.

The whole area of the judicial system is undergoing partially comprehensive reforms. In this situation, it is especially important to find out whether these reforms are contributing to transparency, legal certainty and justice, and thereby also to more gender democracy. So, within the framework of the strategy of Gender Mainstreaming, the goal of gender equality should be systematically, with working aids, integrated into all projected legislation. Working aids exist for the area of legislation; this includes tips on impact assessment.

GM also raises questions of content. The whole area of law, whether civil law, criminal law or administrative law, can be reviewed to check whether the apparent neutrality of the law does not in fact reveal any (indirect) discriminatory consequences.

There are numerous gender aspects, policy fields and Gender Mainstreaming tools [German link] which are important in legal policy.