Gender mainstreaming within the Revised Basque Country’s Regional Plan (DOT, Directrices de Ordenación Territorial) is a pioneering experience in Spain and Europe, on how to develop a broad program for gender mainstreaming within a longterm planning policy addressing regional level spatial planning and local planning decisions of municipalities. The Basque Government asked in 2016 the UNESCO Chair on Gender to produce a set of recommendations for action addressing gender issues to be integrated within the DOT.
The Basque Country is a region of 7.200 sq km in Northern Spain with a population of 2.155.000, distributed in four cities over 10.000 inhabitants including the metropolitan area of Bilbao with 350.000, and a substantial landscape of rural villages and hamlets. The DOT establish a series of regulations covering a wide scope of aspects including natural and agricultural space, areas to be developed through Partial Territorial Plans, areas to be set aside for great infrastructures and facilities, the quantification of residential space, the global estimate of historic preservation of architectural heritage, guidelines for municipal plans.
The DOT address gender issues specifically and as a cross-cutting issue. The proposal for mainstreaming gender in the DOT opted to make a sufficient, strategic and prioritised selection of measures, intentionally ruling out the option to systematically cover all fields of action in the DOT, for the purposes of effectiveness. Of the eight subject areas into which the DOT Baseline Document is structured, action is proposed in four, where the main aspects from a gender perspective are especially relevant: (1) Urban environment and land-use planning; (2) Sustainable mobility; (3) Governance; (4) Rural environment.
Read less –