FAO's new corporate Policy on Gender Equality was officially adopted on International Women's Day, 8 March 2012, to promote gender equality and women's empowerment as a key to eradicate hunger and poverty worldwide. Formulated after an extensive consultation process, the policy provides a framework to guide and assess FAO's work in this area. It specifies roles and responsibilities for the implementation of policy directives, and delineates a number of objectives and minimum standards for the achievement of an overall goal. The purpose of this policy document is to provide FAO with a framework for guiding its efforts to achieve gender equality in all its technical work, and for assessing results; it calls on the whole Organization to contribute to these efforts. The policy specifies FAO's goal and objectives related to gender equality and delineates an accountability structure for ensuring policy oversight and achievement of results.