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SOCIAL WELFARE

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development and advancement of women in Hong Kong. The Women's Commission takes a strategic overview on women's issues, advises the Government on policies and initiatives that are of concern to women and seeks to ensure that women's perspectives are factored in (or mainstreamed) during policy formulation.

The establishment of the Women's Commission is a milestone in efforts to promote the advancement of women in Hong Kong. Chaired by a non-official member of the Legislative Council, and comprising another 21 members, the commission has laid down as its mission 'To enable women in Hong Kong to fully realise their due status, rights and opportunities in all aspects of life.' It has identified three priority areas of action: gender mainstreaming, empowerment of women and public education. Special task forces have been set up to take forward work in these areas.

In respect of gender mainstreaming, the aim is to integrate women's needs and perspectives in formulation and implementation of public policies, programmes and legislation. In 2002, the commission developed a gender mainstreaming checklist as an analytical tool to facilitate gender sensitive analysis. The checklist will be rolled out to selected policy areas on an incremental basis.

To facilitate the taking into account of women's perspectives in the policy-making process, the commission has been supporting organisation of gender-related training for civil servants to enhance their sensitivity towards gender issues and women's concerns. Workshops have been organised for staff of the Social Welfare Department, Education Department and the Hong Kong Police Force, as well as for newly recruited Administrative Officers. About 300 civil servants attended such training in 2002.

As regards empowerment of women, the Women's Commission aims to better equip women for life's challenges and to create a more congenial environment for women to develop themselves. The commission has reviewed and suggested improvements to a number of services for women to ensure the appropriateness, adequacy and quality of the services. It promotes development of new service models (e.g. setting up mutual child-care service using a membership model and organising women cooperatives) and an exercise is being conducted to promulgate good women empowerment practices. To enhance women's participation in the Government's advisory and statutory bodies, the commission has recommended government bureaux and departments to make more proactive efforts to reach out, identify and cultivate women who are able and willing to contribute to the work of these advisory and statutory bodies.

A public education and publicity campaign has been launched to enhance public knowledge of the commission's work and to reduce gender prejudices and sterectyping as well as to raise public awareness of women-related issues. Results have been positive. In this connection, the commission held a major conference on May 10-11 with the theme of Women for a Better Tomorrow to generate discussion on the commission's work, and facilitate exchanges of views and experience on gender issues. The conference was opened by the Chief Executive and attended by over 500 participants, including senior government officials and renowned overseas speakers. The commission will embark on another round of a public education campaign in 2003.

To have a better understanding of the situation of women in Hong Kong, the Women's Commission initiated and completed several studies in 2002, including a telephone survey on the extent of satisfaction of women in Hong Kong in respect of their current state of affairs, a questionnaire survey on the extent and levels of