Gender Responsive Standards
Gender Responsive Standards (GRS) are developed with the gender-specific needs and experiences of women and men in mind.
They ensure that these needs form an integral part of the design or performance of the product, process or service in the standards.
On 19 May 2019, ISO and IEC, and shortly afterwards Austrian Standards, signed the UNECE Declaration on Gender Responsive Standards and Standards Development, in which the standardisation organisations committed themselves to designing both the standards and the standard development process with gender-specific needs in mind.
Women in standardisation
Austrian Standards is not only the home of standardisation and innovation in Austria, but also Austria's voice in international standardisation – the most important "place" for the standards of the future.
There are many future issues for standards – but what is more important is the future vision that diversity and "Design for all" are put into practice. The needs in our society are very varied and they can only be represented in standards if all the different voices are heard.To overcome the challenges of the next few years, such as digitalisation or the climate crisis, it is unthinkable that we forego the opportunity of viewing matters from different perspectives.
Austrian Standards is particularly keen to invite female experts to get involved with standardisation and share their viewpoints and ideas. The wide range of perspectives, concerns and positions taken by women is a valuable contribution and an essential addition to the "standard data" used to date.
The male perspective often dominates in the development of standards, says Elisabeth Mertl, who is involved in the Medical Products Committee and talks of one recent success, namely the requirements for period products.
For Gerda Ruppi-Lang , the opportunity to comment was key in deciding to get involved and to be able to join in the conversation and help shape outcomes.
Further information
Do you still have questions? Joanna Gajdek, Committee Manager and head of the Gender Action Plan at Austrian Standards, would be happy to provide more information.
Joanna Gajdek
Further links
You can read more in our press release: Press release for International Women's Day (German only)
The May newsletter issued by CEN/CENELEC contained two articles about our activities:
