The Board of Appeals deals with complaints against the Ombud’s recommendations. The Board of Appeals can confirm or change the recommendations. The Board’s rulings are legally binding. If a ruling is not complied with within a certain time limit set by the Board, the Board can give the discriminating party a daily fine until the ruling is obeyed. There is no upper limit to the fine.

The Ombud is an independent agency with the task of promoting equality and combatting discrimination on the basis of gender, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability and age. The Equality and Anti-discrimination Ombud shall also actively promote equality for all discriminated groups under within the scope of its mandate and develop new knowledge through documentation and monitoring. The Ombud enforces the various Norwegian equality and anti-discrimination acts. It is also a control body for ensuring compliance with Norwegian gender equality law, and it monitors Norwegian implementation of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

In the government the Minister for Children and Equality has the special responsibility of being the ministry responsible for gender equality issues. The work of the Ministry centres on efforts to ensure genuine equal opportunities for men and women. The ministry promotes the work of mainstreaming a gender perspective in the national budget.

The Prime Minister and the Office of the Prime Minister are responsible for coordinating and leading the work of the government, including the work for gender equality. The Government (2005-2009) announced its policy for gender equality in the political declaration of Soria Moria.

Gender equality is also to be mainstreamed in the all the work of the state’s central administration. The ministries have the responsibility of promoting gender equality in all their areas of activity. Some ministries and public officies have gender equality as a separate theme:

• Ministry of Education and Research
• The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad)
  
  

There are 19 counties in Norway. The county governors submit annual reports to their principal, the Ministry of Government Administration and Reform, on the tasks assigned to them. One of these tasks is to fulfil their obligation of actively promoting gender equality as laid down in the Gender Equality Act. With a view to strengthening these efforts, the Ministry of Children and Equality has given the Northern Feminist University funds for a training programme for county governors’ offices on fulfilling their obligation of active gender equality advancement in their role as advisors to municipalities. This training is offered to staff at both leadership and executive officer level and takes place at the various offices.

Many municipalities have gender equality focal points - some have gender equality units, some have gender equality consultants, and some gender equality committees. Other municipalities have decided to mainstream gender equality without focal points.

Women in science is a resource bank for those who work for an improved gender balance in the university and college sector, and those who are interested in issues on gender equality in science. Women in science is primarily a collection of Norwegian resources, but also points to relevant resources outside of Norway.

There are 50 crisis centres in Norway. There are crisis centres in every county, and the number of centres in each county varies from one to eight. The size, organisation and ownership of the centres vary from one centre to another. Six crisis centres are run by municipalities, while the other 44 are privately run. Some crisis centres are also centres for victims of incest. The centres provide advice, support and counselling for persons who have been subjected to mistreatment, violence or abuse at home. They also provide temporary shelter for victims and their children. In addition to crisis centres there are two DIXI resource centres for rape victims, which provide assistance for victims of rape and their next-of-kin.

Pro Sentret (the Pro Centre) is a Norwegian national resource centre on all matters related to prostitution. As a social service centre for men and women in prostitution the Pro Centre's main aims are to provide help, support and advice to women and men in prostitution.

According to Norway's 7th report to CEDAW, the resource centre for studies on violence and traumatic stress (NKVTS) shall help to increase general knowledge of and professional expertise on domestic violence.

The Norwegian Centre for Minority Health Research (NAKMI) is a governmental unit initiated by the Ministry of Health. The aim of NAKMI is to become a meeting point for minority health issues in Norway, especially for competence concerning somatic and mental health care of immigrants and refugees.

Norad’s mandate is to promote effective management of funds for development assistance and ensure that Norwegian development cooperation is quality assured and evaluated. Norad has two main roles in Norwegian development cooperation:  It acts as technical advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Norwegian embassies and it administers assistance for civil society. In the past few years Norwegian development cooperation has reflected an attempt to reorient activities related to women and gender equality.

Full participation and equality for disabled people is a political objective across party lines in Norway. The National Centre for Documentation on Disability will promote the implementation of these objectives. A gender perspective will be a central consideration for the Documentation Centre in all their work related to the collection and documentation of research results. Do women and men with disabilities have equal opportunities? Documentation shows that women with disabilities are more often subject to violence and assault than women without disabilities.

In the Norwegian parliament, the Storting, there is a Committee that has gender equality as one of their matters of business. The Storting, passes new laws and amend or repeal the exisiting ones, adopts the Fiscal Budget, i.e. to fix the annual revenues (taxes, charges, etc.) and expenditures of the State, and authorizes plans and guidelines for the activities of the State through discussions of political issues of more general character (such as gender equality), to take a stand on plans for reform, to approve major projects and so forth.

The Minister of Justice together with the Minister for Children and Equality, and the Minister of Health and Care are establishing a separate committee on rape. The committee will identify factors that contribute to rapes not being reported, propose measures and strategies to increase the rate of reported rape, assess how alternative conflict resolution strategies can be applied in rape cases and assess the situation of rape victims, both female and male, with various disabilities, minority backgrounds, and experience of prostitution.

A committee appointed by The Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs will look into the organisation of agencies, institutions and instruments in the film area. The committee shall among other things, look into measures to promote gender equality in the film industry.

The Commission shall work to attain the gender equality goal that women and men shall receive equal pay, irrespective of their gender. It shall describe pay differences between women and men, provide an overview over gaps in knowledge, analyse the grounds for pay differences, and consider and appraise measures that can contribute to correcting the gendered imbalance in pay. The Commission shall also study fulltime vs. part-time work as an aspect when considering the gendered inequality in pay. The Commission shall deliver its report by the 1st of March 2008.

The Government (2001-2005) has established a committee to work for the integration of gender equality measures in universities and colleges 2004-2007. The Committee shall support measures, and give recommendations that can be useful for universities and colleges, the Research Council of Norway as well as the Ministries. 

The Norwegian Centre for Human Rights - NCHR - is an independent national human rights institution, a centre for national and international research on human rights, a centre which promotes rights-based development and a centre for human rights education. The NCHR is a centre within the University of Oslo, Norway.