A panel on Gender and Public Policies in Asia Pacific was also held on 28 February 2008 by the Asia Pacific Women Watch in New York. Presenters reported a review of public policies in their country and suggested more advocacies for policy-making that addresses women's concerns. The panel was moderated by Pawadee Tonguthai of Thai WomenWatch. Pam Rajput from Women’s Resources and Advocacy Centre based Chandigarh reported how the Indian government fails to implement gender policies. She cited as an example the electoral system providing 32% reservation for women in political parties but there is no critical mass of women in the Indian government. She criticised how government policies dealing with critical issues such as trade and finance as not having any gender perspective or women-specific policies. The national policies for the empowerment of women passed in 2001 have not been implemented at all. She added that there is hardly any policy on the health sector and only one percent of India's GDP is spent on health as opposed to the much larger budget for the military.

Patricia Alexander, regional gender coordinator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP)-Asia Pacific, stressed how gender equality is a critical component of development and why it is necessary to invest in women’s development and growth. She presented a study on investments in women’s education and how this has influenced economic growth in many countries. The study also showed that women's participation in the labour force contributes to higher growth rate of export manufacturing and trade.

Shuwen He of the All -China Women's Federation (ACWF) highlighted the public policies in China that are directed at women. She criticised policies that are seemingly gender neutral and policies that discriminates against women. She cited, as an example, the initiative of having a policy for periodic forced leave given to women to care for their of their children. The ACWF lobbied successfully against the enforcement of this policy.

Hiroko Hara of Japan Women's Watch focused on the need for greater women's participation in governance. She noted the scarce number of women in the Ministry of Finance, which she believes affects the distribution policies of government budgets for gender projects. She also noted that there are no political advocates in favour of increasing gender and development budgets and that less than one percent is spent on gender concerns.

Young Hai Park from the Korean Women's NGO Network reported that a gender responsive budgeting resolution was passed in Korea in 2000. Implementation was supposed to begin in 2003 but this policy has not been fully implemented. She said that there has to be critical monitoring on its implementation and that this should be done by women's groups.

Nurgul Djanaeva, from the Forum for Women's NGOs of Kyrgyzstan, cited the lack of resources for women's NGOs in her country. Her organisation did a study on the resources for women's NGOs working on the issues of Beijing Platform for Action in Kyrgyzstan. They found that many of the women's programmes are under-resourced and are dependent on bilateral and multilateral aid which is also difficult to access.

As a synthesis, Vanessa Griffen from the Association for Women's Rights in Development noted that there is a need to reflect on how women can influence public policy in the context of the realities and experiences shared in the forum.