28 Gender and Security Toolkit Thus it is essential to build the gender capacity of male and female parliamentarians, especially members of defence and security committees, through briefings, training and other awareness-raising initiatives. Indeed, parliaments as a work space can be a critical location “to discuss core gender equality issues including equal pay, equality in advancement, parental leave, ending sexual harassment in the workplace and promoting more flexible work hours to support better work–life balance and more equitable sharing of parenting and care work”.2 If parliamentarians have even a basic understanding of gender analysis, this empowers them to ask important questions and request relevant data. Parliamentarians should also be able to rely upon their staff and research departments to support their integration of a gender perspective. Parliamentary research services can be well suited to providing objective, concise analyses to assist parliamentarians in overseeing complex security-sector-related issues with a gender perspective. In Fiji a parliamentary gender committee was created to ensure that gender considerations are taken into account in the work of all committees and reflected in the respective reports presented to parliament. Furthermore, the Fijian Parliament has adopted a “gender toolkit” to assist committee members in conducting gender impact assessments on all pieces of legislation, including the budget.3 The toolkit emphasizes the importance of collecting sexdisaggregated data. In the words of Jiko Luveni, the Speaker of Parliament, “the Parliament’s Standing Orders require a gender-based analysis to be used by parliamentary committees when scrutinizing legislation or undertaking their oversight functions”.4 Gender training, such as is carried out in Fiji, can be an effective measure to convince male and female parliamentarians of the significance of gender-responsive oversight. A specific form of gender analysis is to conduct a “gender audit”. In parliamentary work, gender audits of all proposed and existing budgets help to reveal the degree to which gender inequality has an impact on security and to determine which priorities of the security of men, women, boys and girls, as well as persons from diverse backgrounds including diverse sexual orientation and gender identity and expression, require funding. When the parliament is discussing the general budget, it should establish gender equality as a priority goal in budget procedures. Such procedures can “ensure that allocations are in line with policy commitments on gender equality, increase transparency, and verify if spending is bringing about the desired impact”.5 A gender audit can ascertain whether the budgets for all security sector actors are gender-responsive. A gender-responsive budget, in turn, strengthens the legitimacy of the parliament’s oversight function. Gender audits should be based on a participatory methodology that: Ê considers whether internal practices and related support systems for gender mainstreaming are effective and reinforce each other Ê monitors and assesses the relative progress made in gender mainstreaming Ê establishes a baseline for the audited unit Ê identifies critical gaps and challenges Ê recommends ways of addressing these gaps and challenges, and suggests new and effective strategies Ê documents good practices aimed at achieving gender equality.6 South Africa was one of the first countries to introduce a gender perspective in its budget process. In 1995, about one year after the country’s first democratic elections, the South African Women’s Budget Initiative came to fruition as a joint effort on the part of parliamentarians and several civil society organizations. The Women’s Budget Initiative