INTRODUCTION TO THE TOOLKIT 0.1 About the Toolkit This toolkit accompanies the APF produced guidelines, Mainstreaming the Human Rights of Women and Girls into Our Everyday Work1 (the Guidelines). Before your NHRI can develop a strategy to mainstream the human rights of women and girls, it needs to take stock of its current situation. You must aim to understand, from multiple viewpoints, to what extent equality for women and girls is built into your NHRI’s existing processes and activities. Therefore, the first step in the planning stage of mainstreaming the human rights of women and girls is doing a Gender Review of your NHRI. This review can be called a Gender Audit, a Gender Impact Assessment, a Gender Analysis or something similar. This toolkit uses the term Gender Audit (GA). It has been developed to provide you with the steps and resources to review how well your NHRI is integrating gender equality measures within its internal and external work. Scope The term ‘gender’ refers to socially constructed roles of, and power relations among, women, men and gender diverse people. However, considering that women and girls have historically experienced discrimination as a result of patriarchal norms and power structures, the APF focuses on advancing gender equality between women and girls/men and boys, including cisgender and transgender. APF also acknowledges that many women and girls face multiple other and intersecting discriminations on the basis of race, disability, age, socio-economic status/class, caste, indigeneity, sexual orientation, sex characteristics, rurality and migrant or refugee status. 0.2 What is a Gender Audit and why do one? A Gender Audit is a tool to find out the extent to which gender equality is understood and acted upon in your NHRI. It will help you understand whether, and how effectively, your NHRI includes gender equality in its internal operations (such as its structure, organisation culture and practice, policies and procedures, funding and resourcing) and its external work (across all its functions and work divisions). 1 A  PF (2019), Mainstreaming the Human Rights of Women and Girls into Our Everyday Work, www.asiapacificforum.net/media/resource_file/APF_NHRI_Guidelines_Mainstreaming_pCkDLRa.pdf 08