Political participation of women and women’s leadership in the EECIS region / Roundtable session in Turkey

Within the context of the Global Gender Equality Strategy and the recently approved Regional Gender Equality Strategy, the UNDP Bratislava Regional Service Center in collaboration with UNDP Turkey, are organizing an intense half day Roundtable event to discuss about the issue and trends of women's participation in politics and decision making.

The Roundtables will bring together academics, gender experts in government institutions, parliamentarians, women in political parties, trade unions, NGOs, media and social movements with the aim of:

1. assemble evidence based research at both the local and national level on women’s political participation highlighting:
• the trends in the democratic processes and procedures for women’s participation in the region’s transition process;
• the strategies (best practices) that have worked that relate to gender equality in the region; the ways in which women are shaping the political agenda;
• the role of the international donor community in the region; the challenges/obstacles (economic, social, cultural) for women to participate in political processes;
• the specific gender related pressures (GBV, fundamentalism, work precariousness, care economy pressures, security issues etc.) for women (and men).

2. build a broad Gender Community of Practice consisting of policy makers, academics, NGO activists and UNDP GFPs involved in the process of data gathering and analyzing.

3. create an enabling environment at the national and sub-regional levels needed to move empowerment of women in the area of political participation and leadership from abstract theoretical concepts to concrete, result-oriented practices.

The Roundtable will produce a report that will analyze the democratic process in the country from a gender process highlighting the successes and the challenges of women participating in political processes, examining how women/governments have shaped the political agenda and providing analysis on changes in gender equality in the region including the accountability mechanisms which are in place, and how they are functioning and the external factors that have supported women’s political participation in the transition processes, the type of power brokering and if women feel their voices are heard in decision making political spaces.