ISLAMABAD (APP) - A three day roundtable on "Gender Mainstreaming through Legal Reforms" will be held by Planning and Development Division here on July 21. Speaker National Assembly Dr Fehmida Mirza will inaugurate the national conference whereas Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani is likely to be the chief guest at concluding session of the conference on July 23. Federal Ministers, parliamentarians and the members of civil society will participate in the event. Minister for Information and Broadcasting Sherry Rehman and Deputy Chairman Planning Commission M Salman Faruqui will deliver speeches on the first day of the conference. Syeda Viqar-un-Nisa Hashmi, Specialist Women Empowerment and Gender Rights, Planning Commission told this news agency that the objective of this workshop was to discuss inheritance, protection from harassment, social security and welfare legislation to enhance the women status in labour laws. The workshop would also focus on non-extension of welfare legislation to the workers in informal sector particularly to the home-based workers, unpaid female family workers, and lack of holistic approach in bringing reforms in the legal framework. Women were enjoying status in social and political fields, she said while stressing the need to raise their participation at administrative level. Previously there was no mechanism to control the harassment faced by the women in their daily routine. In this roundtable, positive strategies would be formulated through discussion, Viquar-un-Nisa added. The Planning Commission, she said, was striving to strengthen legislation framework to empower the women folk with the help of all stakeholders from civil society.   She said major challenges including gender disparities at the levels of decision making would be addressed and recommendations would be made for the new government to bring necessary reforms in the legal framework. The main focus of the conference, Viquar-un-Nisa said, will be on devising a model for effective and proactive participation of women in the national affairs. The recommendation of the roundtable will act as policy guideline for future plan of action in the national context. Gender mainstreaming is a strategy for making the concerns and experiences of women as well as of men an integral part of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of laws relating politics, economic and societal spheres, so that women and men benefit equally, and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal of mainstreaming is to achieve gender equality. The concept of gender mainstreaming is inherent in constitutions of Pakistan promulgated in the year 1956, 1962 and 1973. It ensures gender mainstreaming through inclusion of explicit gender equality component into all fields of life.