Women Enhancing Democracy: Best Practices
On 30 June 2011 Lithuania will host a high level women’s leadership conference "Women Enhancing Democracy: Best Practices". The conference is to be opened by President of Lithuania Dalia Grybauskaite, President of Finland Tarja Halonen and the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Among the panelists will be Myria Vassiliadou, EU Anti Trafficking Coordinator and a former Secretary General of EWL.
The event is organised by Lithuania’s Presidency of the Community of Democracies in cooperation with the Council of Women World Leaders, Vilnius-based European Institute for Gender Equality, the U.S. Department of State, European and U.S. non-governmental organizations.
The roundtable sessions aim to reflect specific strategies or tools that can be used to increase women’s public participation. For the EWL, this under-representation of women in decision-making constitutes a serious democratic deficit, which undermines the legitimacy of the contemporary democratic ideal.
For more information please visit: www.vilnius2011.mfa.lt
Strategies to increase women's public participation
There are several strategies that can be used to increase women participation.
The most important thing is by increasing capacity of women to participate in the policy process. This could range from public speaking ability that would help women to build their self confidence to speak their opinion and critics even when they have to face others like politicians, or public officials.
Other than that, there should be enough access of information for women to ensure that they are aware of the issues that they want to raise. In this case, NGOs and other relevant actors, such as individual community leaders, MPs, public officials, women leaders, etc In this case, education, formal and/or informal is very important for women experience and familiarity to their engagement in the policy process.
Barrier of gender bias, private and public areas of tasks between men and women must be torn down as it creates glass ceiling for women participation in the policy process. For example, women are required to prove that they can make sure that the household is going to be okay even if they are participating in the public spheres.
On the other hand, men haven't faced similar condition and further ideally those kinds of tasks should be taken as both women and men's responsibility. This should also apply in field like political participation of women with equal opportunity with men.
Women political participation should also be encouraged with various accesses both informal and formal, in which women can feel comfy in involving themselves in the process. Ranging from informal community meetings, or women meetings, to something more complex and sophisticated like public hearings and public discussions.Even if it needs to have separate forum for women to speak up or to apply affirmative action for women to catch up in the political affairs, such as elections.
Women should also be able to deal with challenges, such as from cultural, social, economics, politics, and religious obstacles which can make their participation difficult. On the other hand, these local contexts' obstacles should be dealt with sensible approaches which understand those contexts and have the ability to tackle those obstacles in proper ways.
For example, by informing their families to get the husbands' approval before they can come to a community meeting such as through sending two invitations, one for the husband and one to the wife; to invite women in advanced notification and in proper, if not too late time; to make women aware that policy issues that affect them are not only about education and health, but also other issues, such as infrastructures, etc.
Last but not least, it takes more that sufficient and supporting rules and regulations to facilitate women in the policy process. It also takes leaders whom are aware of the importance of women participation as informed citizens in the policy process. They should also be able to take initiatives and have good will to accommodate women participation indvidually or in groups in the policy process.
Strategies to increase women's public participation
There are several strategies that can be used to increase women participation.
The most important thing is by increasing capacity of women to participate in the policy process. This could range from public speaking ability that would help women to build their self confidence to speak their opinion and critics even when they have to face others like politicians, or public officials.
Other than that, there should be enough access of information for women to ensure that they are aware of the issues that they want to raise. In this case, NGOs and other relevant actors, such as individual community leaders, MPs, public officials, women leaders, etc In this case, education, formal and/or informal is very important for women experience and familiarity to their engagement in the policy process.
Barrier of gender bias, private and public areas of tasks between men and women must be torn down as it creates glass ceiling for women participation in the policy process. For example, women are required to prove that they can make sure that the household is going to be okay even if they are participating in the public spheres.
On the other hand, men haven't faced similar condition and further ideally those kinds of tasks should be taken as both women and men's responsibility. This should also apply in field like political participation of women with equal opportunity with men.
Women political participation should also be encouraged with various accesses both informal and formal, in which women can feel comfy in involving themselves in the process. Ranging from informal community meetings, or women meetings, to something more complex and sophisticated like public hearings and public discussions.Even if it needs to have separate forum for women to speak up or to apply affirmative action for women to catch up in the political affairs, such as elections.
Women should also be able to deal with challenges, such as from cultural, social, economics, politics, and religious obstacles which can make their participation difficult. On the other hand, these local contexts' obstacles should be dealt with sensible approaches which understand those contexts and have the ability to tackle those obstacles in proper ways.
For example, by informing their families to get the husbands' approval before they can come to a community meeting such as through sending two invitations, one for the husband and one to the wife; to invite women in advanced notification and in proper, if not too late time; to make women aware that policy issues that affect them are not only about education and health, but also other issues, such as infrastructures, etc.
Last but not least, it takes more that sufficient and supporting rules and regulations to facilitate women in the policy process. It also takes leaders whom are aware of the importance of women participation as informed citizens in the policy process. They should also be able to take initiatives and have good will to accommodate women participation indvidually or in groups in the policy process.