European Forum

NDP Panel Discussion on Enhancing Women’s Political Participation, 2 November 2009, Geneva, Switzerland

The CEE Gender Network recently participated in a UNDP regional panel discussion on the participation of women in decision-making. Below is a UNDP report of the event.

Recognizing that structural and non-structural discrimination prevents women from fully and equally participating in decision-making, the Beijing Platform for Action addresses women in power and decision-making as one of the critical areas of concern. It also stipulates that the composition of a society should be as accurately as possible reflected in democratic - transparent and accountable - decision-making institutions. The Europe and CIS region, which underwent significant political, economic and social changes, experienced uneven progress in enhancing women's political participation. Whereas the average number of women members of national parliaments in the ECIS region has reached just above 15%, close to that of the global average, there is a considerable regional variation behind this figure.

 It is in this context that UNDP has organised a regional panel discussion to build on the measures undertaken in the region which contributed to enhanced participation of women in decision-making with a view to arrive at a regional consensus on how to take the achievements made beyond the reiteration of the Beijing commitments.The UNDP Panel Discussion on Enhancing Women’s Political Participation was held as a side event to the Europe and CIS Beijing +15 Regional Review Meeting that feeds into the global Beijing+15 Review to take place in March 2010.

The objectives of the Panel Discussion on Enhancing Women’s Political Participation were to:

Demonstrate successful measures implemented at the country level for possible scaling-up in the region.
Mobilize political interests to build upon the region’s successful measures.
The panel consisted of the following speakers:

Ms. Tetyana Kondratyuk, Deputy Minister, Ministry for Family, Youth and Sports, Ukraine, who demonstrated how women’s participation in public life is being promoted in Ukraine. (presentation & speech available in Russian and English)

Ms. Jasminka Dzumhur, State Ombudsperson for Human Rights, Bosnia and Herzegovina, has focused on how women’s political participation promotes equal opportunities for men and women.

Ms. Sonia Lokar, CEE Network for Gender Issues and Coordinator for the SEE Chair of the Gender Task Force, has addressed how women’s groups and grassroots organizations have played a pivotal role in promoting women’s political participation (presentation)

The Panel Discussion was moderated by Ms. Ulrika Richardson-Golinski, UN Resident Representative a.i., UNDP Turkey.

Some of the measures that have been supported include the following:
Quotas have proven an effective tool to curb women's political participation, in particular where combined with adequate electoral systems and measures to raise the awareness of the overall public on the relevance and importance of quota for achieiving gender equity. Political Parties remain crucial for the promotion of women's political participation. Further measures are required to enhance women's status within political structures, including the empowerment of women to take on more active roles within political parties.

The current economic and financial crisis should be taken as an opportunity to strenghten women's role to engage in transformative politics.

The so-called "sandwich strategy" has proven a major success factor to promote gender equality in some parts of the region; with coalitions of civil society organisations and international organisations advocating for change, taking both a "bottom-up" as well as "top-down" approach to promote gender equality. In particular, the importance of civil society participation for promoting women's political participation has been highlighted.

Visibility remains a crucial factor. Cooperation with the media can enhance visibility and thus create "demand' for the issue of women's political participation.

The Regional Panel Discussion also took forward UNDP’s upcoming Policy Note for the promotion of women’s political participation in the Europe and CIS region which is to be published in 2010. The Policy Note will bring together knowledge and experiences from a number of countries in the region and present an analysis of lessons learned with a comprehensive set of practical policy and programme recommendations.

Source: UNDP