Parliaments & Representatives
The event featured insightful discussions on gender equality and the importance of diverse representation in parliaments.
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Opening Remarks: Ulrike Bahr and Petra Grimm-Benne emphasized the global landscape of gender and democracy, highlighting the need for diverse voices in representation and law-making to hold governments accountable.
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The INTER PARES Handbook, "Beyond Numbers: Stories of Gender Equality in and through Parliaments," was launched to explore the landscape of gender-sensitive parliaments. It highlights real stories of change, emphasizing that small actions can lead to broader impacts. Key contributors include Leena Rikkila Tamang from International IDEA, Silvia Erzeel, and Petra Ahrens
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Panel 1: Putting Gender on the Agenda: This panel focused on the role of critical actors in driving change and ensuring that gender issues are included in political debates. Speakers included Ulrike Bahr, Keiba Jacob Mottley, and Mihail Onea, who shared inspiring stories of advocating for women's interests and public engagement.
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Panel 2: Revealing Invisible Gender Inequalities: Panelists discussed how data and gender-sensitive scrutiny can uncover hidden inequalities. Fuziah Salleh, Mariadele Cucinotta, and Phuntshok Chhoden highlighted the necessity of using rules and procedures to advance gender equality.
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Panel 3: Diversity and Inclusion - Towards Impactful Youth Participation: This session explored how parliaments can better incorporate young people's views and ideas. Speakers Cristina Leston-Bandeira, Nicole Tepasse, Elaf AI-Najdafi, and Utaara Mootu discussed creating pathways for meaningful youth participation.
Overall, the event highlighted the vital role of gender-sensitive approaches in fostering inclusive and representative governance, demonstrating that small changes can lead to significant impacts over time.
Read here more about the event on 10 October 2024 by the Inter Pares Parliaments In Partnerships.
Women are voluntarily leaving politics not because of sexism, double standards or work-life balance, but because they feel under-utilised, according to a new study.
Historian Alexandre Dumas was commissioned to conduct the study titled “Why do women leave politics?” by the women's committee of the Cercle des ex-parlementaires de l'Assemblée Nationale after a wave of departures in 2022.
According to his interviews with 21 former elected women, they had the impression of playing the “office plant”, he explained in parliament, borrowing the famous expression of former CAQ MNA turned Conservative Claire Samson.
At her last press briefing in June 2022, Samson shocked many by declaring that MNAs were treated "like plants" in the Salon bleu and that she had personally toiled harder as a 17-year-old at Da Giovanni.
According to Dumas, Samson — who was outraged at having to ask pre-scripted questions in parliamentary committee — “perfectly illustrates the frustration provoked by the feeling of playing a ceremonial role.”
“Women who leave politics ... feel that their skills are not recognised and that they have no other use than to be present in the House to ensure a quorum, ... in other words, to play the role of 'office plant'”, Dumas wrote.
Read here the full article published by CTV News on 11 October 2024.
Image credits: CTV News
A groundbreaking handbook titled Beyond Numbers: Stories of Gender Equality in and through Parliaments was released on 10 October 2024, focusing on the vital role of gender representation in legislative bodies worldwide. Developed by INTER PARES within the EU’s Women and Youth in Democracy (WYDE) initiative, this publication delves into the transformative impact women have had in parliamentary processes globally. It features real-life accounts of how parliaments have embraced gender-sensitive reforms and empowered female legislators to drive change.
The handbook highlights the progress made in gender representation, noting a significant rise in the presence of women in parliaments—from 12 percent in 1995 to nearly 27 percent today. Despite this progress, only a small number of parliaments have reached or surpassed the 30 percent target set by the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). These statistics underline that, while strides have been made, the journey toward equal representation is far from complete, with diverse regions exhibiting different levels of progress.
Read here the full handbook published by Inter Pares on 10 October 2024.
Women in politics receive twice as many sexist comments on social media as their male colleagues, writes Het Laatste Nieuws on Tuesday. This also applies to local councillors and politicians with an immigrant background.
Research by the Institute for Gender Equality, ULB and UGent, which analysed 44,000 reactions to politicians' posts on Facebook, Instagram and X, shows that every four out of 10 comments are negative.
Women receive many more negative comments, especially sexist ones. For female politicians, four per cent of all comments are sexist, compared to two per cent for men.
Women with a migration background receive twice as many negative comments as women without a migration background. Groen co-president Nadia Naji told Het Laatste Nieuws: "My colleague Jeremie Vaneeckhout gets comments about what he says. With me it's about my hair".
Read here the full article published by the Belga News Agency on 8 October 2024.
Image by the Belga News Agency
A record number of women are expected to run in the next general election but insults and misogyny make the job of parties more difficult to encourage women to enter politics.
South Dublin county councillor Teresa Costello was sitting at home on a Saturday afternoon last month when she received a phone call from an unknown number. The 47-year-old had just returned from a clinic, where she listens to and attempts to assist locals from her electoral ward of Tallaght Central.
“I answered the phone and it was a man. He asked me: ‘Are you Teresa Costello?’ and said: ‘You look like a porn star, how could you be capable of doing anything for your community?’” the Fianna Fáil representative recalls. “He said: ‘With your dyed blonde hair, your fake face and teeth.’
“He was saying, how could anybody take you seriously with how you look, and told me to let my hair grow out and not have any blonde any more.”
Costello has been a councillor since 2019 and in recent months was announced as a general election candidate for Fianna Fáil in Dublin South West, alongside the party’s sitting TD John Lahart. While she loves her role as a local representative and describes herself as a “strong-willed person”, she asks rhetorically: “Would a man get that call?”
Read here the full article published by The Irish Times on 5 October 2024.
Image by The Irish Times
New Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Tuesday named two women ministers to his Cabinet, down from five in the outgoing administration.
Women are poorly represented in politics and business in Japan, and the world's fourth-largest economy has never had a woman prime minister.
Japan ranked 118 among 146 nations in the 2024 World Economic Forum's gender equity rankings, up from 125th but still the lowest among Group of Seven nations.
The two women in Ishiba's 20-strong Cabinet have been given relatively minor positions, with Junko Mihara responsible for policies on children and Toshiko Abe in charge of education.
The government and businesses have regularly missed a range of self-imposed targets and plans to increase the number of women in leadership positions.
Read here the full article published by The Japan Times on 2 October 2024.
Image by The Japan Times
This collection of essays addresses the glaring gap between policy commitments and actual investments in gender equality, ranging across sectors and focusing on development aid, peace-building and climate funds. Casting a spotlight on the application of gender-responsive budgeting in public budgetary policies, systems and processes, the contributions to this volume explore the chequered trajectories of these efforts in Africa, the Asia-Pacific, Latin America and Andalucía. Critiquing systems of finance, from adherence to neo-liberal macroeconomic fundamentals which prioritise fiscal austerity, the book makes a compelling case for reframing and re-prioritizing budgets to comply with human rights standards, with a particular view to realizing women’s rights. The authors highlight the paltry funding for women’s rights organizations and movements and examine the prospects for making financing gender responsive. The specific policy, strategy and technical recommendations and the connections across silos which articulate the authors’ suggested operational levers will appeal to researchers, practitioners, students, policymakers, gender equality and human rights activists alike.
Click here to access the book.
A unique visual tool to capture women’s participation in executive government and in parliament on a given date – 1st January 2017. The map of Women in Politics not only provides a country ranking for both ministerial and parliamentary representation, but also statistics on women in political leadership positions – Heads of State or government, women Speakers of Parliament, as well as ministerial portfolios held by women throughout the world. Borders are depicted and used on the map in order to present data. They are not the expression of any opinion concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area, or concerning the delimitation of frontiers or boundaries.
Click here to download the map in English.
The annual brochure provides an overview and analysis of progress made and setbacks encountered by women in parliament further to elections and renewals held over a year. Produced every year on the occasion of International Women's Day (8 March), it presents data on women in national parliaments, regional and world trends, information on women presiding officers and women candidates. It also analyses mechanisms aimed at supporting women's access to parliament. The brochure is short and easy to read, providing a snapshot on the situation of women in parliaments worldwide.
Click here to access the brochure.
Gender quotas have emerged globally as a key solution for improving women's political representation. Yet in Britain—where they take the form of all-women shortlists (AWS)—they remain contentious, both within and outside political parties.
In this article, Mary K. Nugent and Mona Lena Krook identify and evaluate nine common criticisms of AWS in the British context, which—similar to predictions made in other cases—focus on dynamics of candidate recruitment and selection, party and voter support and the effectiveness of ‘quota women’ as politicians. The authors do not address purely principled objections (i.e., ‘quotas are unfair’), but rather focus on claims—including some principled arguments—referencing assumed realities that can be assessed using empirical data (i.e., ‘quotas are unfair because they undermine merit’). The nine claims emerged as common themes across extensive interviews and comprehensive searches of news coverage around AWS. The data used to evaluate these claims come from various sources, including qualitative interviews conducted in 2012 and 2013 with men and women from the three main parties; as yet unpublished data on candidate selection collected by the Labour Party; original quantitative datasets constructed from publicly-available sources; and existing quantitative studies by other scholars. The authors also include evidence from international studies, whenever possible, to situate these findings in relation to the conclusions reached in other contexts.
The authors find, in short, that criticisms against these measures do not hold when subjected to rigorous empirical analysis. AWS, much like gender quotas elsewhere, do not facilitate the entry of unqualified women, jeopardise a party's electoral fortunes or lead to the election of sub-par MPs. Rather, they reduce barriers for well-prepared women to stand as candidates, have neutral or positive effects on party vote shares and produce diligent and active MPs.
Click here to access the article.
This Issues Brief aims to clearly delineate the issues at stake by analysing the results of a first study specifically devoted to the subject of sexism, harassment and violence against women in parliament. It seeks to clarify what this phenomenon consists of, where, why and in what forms it occurs, who are the perpetrators and what is its prevalence.
Click here to access the brief.
Gender equality is fundamental to responsive and accountable democratic societies. Women’s representation in elected institutions in equal proportion to men is key to the credibility and legitimacy of parliaments, national assemblies and local governments. Yet, globally, just over a fifth of members of parliament are women.
To combat discriminatory legislation and policies and improve gender equality outcomes in policymaking, elected representatives in countries in the region have established structures and strategic plans to improve women’s political participation and gender equality. UNDP has facilitated the creation of such structures in many countries, recognizing the important role they play in empowering women as parliamentary representatives, supporting the emergence of gender-sensitive parliaments, and adopting gender-sensitive policy and legislative frameworks. The UNDP Gender Equality Strategy 2014-2017 highlights the critical importance of gender equality and women’s participation in decision-making to sustainable development, and calls for the empowerment of women as voters, political actors and decision-makers.
This paper examines UNDP’s parliamentary assistance programming and support to existing gender equality initiatives in political participation, in particular, the role and impact of parliamentary structures for gender equality in the ECIS region. It illuminates existing and planned UNDP parliamentary assistance initiatives, highlights good practice and identifies entry points for replication or scaling up. Its findings are intended to assist members of parliament and parliamentary institutions as well as civil society organizations and international organizations in advancing gender equality in parliamentary practices. Click here for more information.