Women's Leadership
Dr. Patricia McFadden is a sociologist, writer, educator, and publisher from Swaziland. She has worked in the African and global women’s movements as well.
“The film conveys how tough it is to break the remaining glass ceilings. May it motivate future generations of women to keep at it!”
— Helen Clark, 2017
By any measure, Helen Clark is an exceptional woman. Her journey from one of four children on a remote New Zealand farm to becoming New Zealand’s first elected female Prime Minister forms an outstanding and inspirational life story. In 2016, she added an even more ambitious chapter, as she attempted to become the United Nations’ first ever female Secretary-General.
MY YEAR WITH HELEN gives a closely observed view of Helen’s bid for the top job, as the UN turns itself inside out in an effort to deliver unprecedented transparency in an historic year.
Gaylene Preston’s cameras follow Helen Clark campaigning for Secretary-General while also carrying out her work as Administrator of UNDP, filming Clark in Botswana, Britain, Spain and Ukraine as well as the UN’s New York headquarters.
Click here to learn more.
WATCH THE TRAILER
We recently teamed up with International Gender Champions in organizing an e-Discussion on the role of Male Champions in helping advance women's leadership and political participation. Watch this video for some great advice from UN Geneva, GCERF and ITU leaders!
To learn more, click here to read the summary of the e-Discussion.
Women account for nearly half of the global population, but only one in four of the world's current politicians are female. That number goes down to less than 7% when it applies to heads of government. In an effort to understand the structural, legal and social barriers women face when entering public life, the Thomson Reuters Foundation followed women who went against the grain to become politicians in the documentary When Women Rule.
Click here to learn more.
1. How do you explain the low representation of women in top leadership positions in intergovernmental organizations?
This is a complex, systemic problem, and the contributing factors are many. It may be true that there is generally a smaller pool of female applicants for leadership positions, which in turn lowers the possibility of a woman being promoted or appointed, but I think it is important to recognize that the problem starts much earlier. What we need to do is address root causes.
We need to invest more in coaching and awareness to support women to apply and succeed in assessment processes. Many leadership positions in our organizations involve hardship locations or extensive travel, so we also need to do more to support and enable the use of flexible working arrangements, and provide opportunities for all staff to better balance private life and professional obligations.
2. How can men as leaders take meaningful action to foster an increase in women’s representation in decision-making bodies?
Men in leadership positions should take an executive responsibility to ensure that the organizational culture is conducive to the advancement of women. This could include reviewing formal and informal “systems” and organizational cultures that have had the end effect of favouring men when it comes to representation in decision-making bodies.
At the UN Office at Vienna and UNODC we are currently developing a Gender Equality Strategy and Action Plan to make sure that our senior management undertakes such reviews and follows commitment with action.
3. What strategies and approaches have been successful in engaging male champions in shifting the gender disparity of women in decision-making bodies?
Initiatives such as the International Gender Champions initiative have been instrumental in mobilizing heads of international organizations, Permanent Missions and civil society to pledge to break down gender barriers. In Vienna, we joined the International Gender Champions with a well-publicized ceremony in June. In addition to our concrete commitments to advance gender equality, it is also important to use such initiatives to raise awareness.
4. What potential challenges do male champions face in being active and vocal supporters of women’s empowerment?
An important challenge we all must address is perhaps a lack of understanding of what women’s empowerment or gender mainstreaming means. That is why raising awareness is so important.
Being a meaningful advocate for women’s empowerment also requires achieving a better understanding of the challenges women face. Collecting disaggregated data and gender statistics is therefore essential if we want to understand conditions, needs, and contributions of women and men and address inequalities.
5. What can be done to catalyze and encourage more male champions of women’s empowerment?
Male champions can use their position and their voices to call for change, and to take and communicate concrete steps within our organizations to address inequality where found. For example, as part of our commitment as International Gender Champions, we signed the Panel Parity Pledge to ensure gender balance on conference panels.
For my personal commitments, I chose to highlight the importance of advancing gender equality both within our organization and in our work. I pledged to raise awareness of programmes promoting women’s empowerment on country visits, and to encourage flexible working arrangements at the UN Office at Vienna and UNODC to further promote an inclusive organizational culture.
These concrete and measurable commitments can help to show how we can all do our part to advance gender equality, and in this way encourage more male champions to step up.
Note: This interview was included as a contribution to iKNOW Politics and International Gender Champions’ e-Discussion on Engaging Male Champions to Support Women’s Political Participation.
Dr Khalid Koser, Executive Director of the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF) and International Gender Champion, gives us insight on how to engage men to work side by side with women on closing the gender gap in top leadership positions.
Note: This interview was included as a contribution to iKNOW Politics and International Gender Champions’ e-Discussion on Engaging Male Champions to Support Women’s Political Participation.
VVEngage is a Vital Voices signature fellowship supporting outstanding women political leaders making and influencing policy across the globe. Through this fully-funded fellowship, we aim to increase the capacity, decision-making power and effectiveness of women leaders in politics and government, shifting culture around women’s public leadership and moving towards equality in public representation globally. We also aim to work towards a more inclusive and equitable world by advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through policy.
Through this fellowship, Vital Voices advances women’s political leadership and the SDGs by conducting online and in-person* trainings with experts such as women leaders from the Vital Voices Global Network and professors from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. The fellowship also connects participants to a global network of peers and mentors, such as current and former female heads of state with the Council of Women World Leaders, with whom they can brainstorm and share challenges and best practices.
Click here to learn more and to access application details.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has developed a 10-Point Action Agenda for Advancing Gender Equality in Crisis Settings (10PAA), a roadmap to guide its development programming towards results that will help transform and advance gender equality in crisis contexts and achieve the Women, Peace and Security agenda. The 10PAA is central to UNDP’s new Crisis Offer, as well as its new Gender Equality Strategy 2022-2025. It represents a strong corporate commitment to addressing the most stubborn roots of gender inequalities.
The 10PAA is the result of a broad consultation process that aimed at finding entry points to strengthen gender-transformational results and women’s leadership and participation in crisis contexts. It is grounded in the understanding that deep-rooted, intersectional discrimination sits at the heart of the multiple challenges humanity faces and reinforces models of dominance that exclude and leave women behind, especially in crisis settings.
Click here to access the publication.
Online violence against women in politics (OVAW-P) poses a deepening challenge to democracy, serving as a key tool of illiberalism and democratic backsliding across the globe. OVAW-P encompasses all forms of aggression, coercion, and intimidation seeking to exclude women from politics simply because they are women. This online behavior seeks to achieve political outcomes: targeting individual women to harm them or drive them out of public life, while also sending a message that women in general should not be involved in politics. This online violence has a chilling effect on the political ambitions and engagement of women and girls, decreasing their presence and agency in politics and public life. Stopping gender-based attacks online is a solvable problem, and it is the fastest and clearest investment toward building an internet that enables everyone to be politically engaged.
This report includes a list of interventions that technology platforms, governments, civil society organizations, and the media can take to make meaningful progress towards ending online violence against women in politics.
Click here to access the report.
The Women in Government Fellowship is a six-month program that is focused on capacity-building, training, and mentorship of women in politics. It seeks to enhance and improve the quality of political participation of women.
The fellows will undergo in-person workshops, intensive virtual learning sessions, and hands-on mentorship by seasoned women politicians. This three-pronged approach will provide an academic grounding of democratic frameworks and policy-making, up-skill them with practical know-hows of electioneering, build the fellows' personal brands through personalised Public Narrative trainings by coaches from Harvard Kennedy School, and learn the ropes of politicking directly from a mentor who is undergoing the realities and tackling the challenges of being a woman in public office.
Application deadline: 30th November 2022
Shortlisted applicants' interviews: 5-15th December 2022
Selected Fellows list: 21st December 2022
Click here to learn more.
A compendium of ideas to reach gender parity in municipal politics
How can we begin to overcome the countless obstacles that are preventing women from fully participating in municipal politics?
The suggestions in this Inventory were compiled following consultations we carried out across Canada, as part of FCM’s Toward Parity Project.
These actions are not official FCM recommendations. They are potential strategies that need to be assessed to determine whether they can be adapted to fit local realities and opportunities.
Click here to access the guide.
To inform our own programming on advancing gender-balanced appointments and to establish a scalable, replicable, transformative model for advancing gender-balanced appointments, RepresentWomen gathered learnings from five similar initiatives around the country.
The following summary reviews these conversations:
- Key ingredients for success
- Stumbling blocks
- What they wish they knew
- Common tactics
Click here to access the guide.
For its inaugural Solutions Summit, RepresentWomen gathered experts in election administration, voting rights, and democracy reform to discuss the viable, scalable, and transformative initiatives that will strengthen our democracy. Over the course of three days, they held sessions on fair elections, fair access, and fair representation, ending each day with ways we could take actions to advance the solutions discussed that day.
They compiled all of those ideas, resources, and guides into one place to create this 2022 Solutions Summit Resource Guide, which provides a plethora of take-action options so you can be a part of the solution.
Click here to download the guide.
The internet is a tool that can simplify and encourage democratic engagement, but the rise of online disinformation challenges even the world’s most robust democracies. While the most recognizable disinformation campaigns are related to national politics, disinformers frequently employ narratives targeting women’s gender and sexuality in order to disrupt democracy. This is often then amplified by media agents and the general population, who may not have the intent to drive disinformation nor the capacity to discern it. NDI’s robust research in this field concludes that gendered disinformation is the use of false information to confuse or mislead by manipulating gender as a social cleavage to attack women and/or to sway political outcomes. It has three primary goals: to keep women out of politics; to change the views of women and men about women’s political participation; and specifically to change party policies or political outcomes. In short, it aims to undermine women’s free and equal participation in politics to the detriment of inclusive, resilient democracy.
Based on research conclusions, this paper outlines recommendations for NDI, its partners and those working globally to mitigate the democratic harms of disinformation, to ensure women’s safe participation and leadership in politics, and to monitor the social media and information environment in elections.
Click here to access the guide.
This guide is designed to increase the understanding of the legal obligations of countries in the West and Central Africa (WCA) region to achieve gender equality in decision-making. It focuses on strengthening efforts to improve the legal framework in the region to ensure that laws are clearly drafted, implementable and effective. Special focus is devoted to the processes by which laws supporting political participation of women are developed, negotiated, drafted, passed and implemented. It aims to strengthen law-making processes that build and secure the legal rights of women who want to run for elections and who are ready to take over leadership positions in their parliaments and governments. Legal instruments are presented that can be used to advance the political participation of women.
The comparative experiences presented in this guide address both examples of good practices and laws that have failed because their regulations are imprecise, unclear and/or lack effective sanctions. The guide presents also various provisions of laws resulting from different constitutional requirements or electoral systems, assessing their advantages and disadvantages.
Click here to download the guide published by UN Women in 2021.
This Handbook has been developed as publication by register of Political Parties with support from the Papua New Guinea Election Commission and the United Nations Development Programme in Papua New Guinea. This is part of UN Women Make the Change programme funded by the Australian Government’s Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Development Programme.
Click here to download the report.
Upcoming Event:
Regional Dialogue on Advancing Transformative Gender Social Norms to Enhance Women and Youth Participation
The main purpose of the Regional Dialogue is to promote transformative gender norms by addressing the root causes of inequality and transforming the underlying social, legal, and economic structures…
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