Advocacy & Lobbying

Advocacy and lobbying are activities that represent and promote the needs of specific groups in political and social arenas. One such group is women, who can collectively pressure their leaders for legislative reforms to protect and promote women’s rights and concerns. It is the goal of advocacy groups and lobbyists to ensure that both the public and politicians understand and support their cause, so that it gains strength and credibility. Securing rights and gains for women requires coalition-building, funding, civic education, awareness-raising and individuals willing to lead the way.

While the goals of advocacy and lobbying are similar, the processes are distinctly different. Advocacy involves gaining and exercising power to influence a political action. Employing methods such as demonstrations, public campaigns and civic education, advocacy can be the primary mission of international agencies and civil society organizations seeking to influence global and national decision makers. Women worldwide frequently organize themselves for advocacy purposes, drawing on their collective power to affect legislation, official policies and governmental programs. Lobbying, however, refers to influencing the government and its leaders. Lobbyists attempt to sway policy makers and legislators to address specific issues, often by introducing or revising legislation and policy. Lobbying activities may include private meetings with decision makers, public campaigns and demonstrations.

Sub-topics:

From the Library:

Agreed Conclusions of the Commission on the Status of Women on the Critical Areas of Concern of the Beijing Platform for Action

This resource highlights action-oriented agreed conclusions on a number of issues, including women in power and decision-making, and institutional mechanism for the advancement of women.

Tags:

Progress of the World's Women 2008/2009: Who Answers to Women?

This report analyzes how gender-responsive changes to accountability systems are enhancing women’s influence in politics and their access to public services. It also highlights women's access to economic opportunities,to justice, and to international assistance for development and security.

Tags:

Mapping Aid Effectiveness and Gender Equality in Asia Pacific: Regional Issues and Trends

This report provides an overview of the issues and trends that emerged from mapping studies on aid effectiveness, gender equality and women’s empowerment in Indonesia, Nepal and Papua New Guinea. The studies sought to provide data on the extent to which national priorities for achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment are reflected in national development strategies, donor country specific strategies and programmes as well as the various modalities for development assistance, including sector-wide approaches, general budget support and multi-donor trust funds.

Tags:

UNIFEM Annual Report 2007–2008

This report highlights UNIFEM's work to empower women in economic and public spheres, including achieving gender equality in democratic governance. Among the highlights during the year 2007–2008 were initiatives in empowering women in politics, advancing legislation on women’s rights, putting sexual violence on the security agenda, and engaging men against gender-based violence, among others.

Tags:

WikiGender

Wikigender.org is an online platform to find and exchange information related to gender equality. WikiGender Users are invited to comment on or improve existing articles, and to create or upload new documents.

Tags:

CEDAW Message Posters

These posters were developed to raise public awareness in Cambodia on the CEDAW principles regarding equal access to education and women's participation in all work areas.

Tags:

Women in Politics: Opinion Research Paper

This research paper aims to determine how the Turkish society perceives the participation of women in politics. Among other issues, the research was conducted to analyze people's attitude towards women's participation in political decision-making process, gender quotas in political parties, and the role of political parties in the advancement of women in politics.

Tags:
123456789…next ›last »