governments can also promote transparency and access to information to unveil barriers to equality and enable women to act based on the knowledge of their rights they can stem or prevent corrupt practices that constrain womens access to public senices and introduce accountability mechanisms to engage women and girls in decisions that affect their lives the array of instruments that governments have used to foster gender equality is vast and ranges from constitutional and legal approaches to regulatory frameworks to reform within organizations to the use of instruments such as genderresponsive planning and budgeting to broader attempts at shifting social norms it documents various institutional mechanisms tools and instruments used by countries to this end