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Cote d’Ivoire has launched the first-ever Women’s Caucus in the National Assembly, a forum aimed at advancing women’s rights and mainstreaming gender throughout all parliamentary work. Inspired by IPU’s new guidelines on women’s caucuses, the group, representing all political parties, will work to draft new laws on gender equality and to review discriminatory legislation.

Women Speakers of Parliament have stressed the need to put gender equality at the heart of new development goals that will replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015. At the eighth annual gathering of the world’s most senior women parliamentarians, the IPU Women Speakers of Parliament Meeting agreed that not only should there be a stand-alone goal on gender equality in any new development agenda, but that it should be a comprehensive objective underpinning all other spheres including economic growth, environment, employment, health and education.

How can women contribute to a new model of sustainable development? Should the demands for equal rights and opportunities go beyond the prevailing growth model? These are some of the questions the annual IPU Women Speakers of Parliament meeting will try to answer in New York on 12-13 November.

Ms. Mlambo-Ngcuka met with women leaders in Mali, listening as women asked for action to protect women’s rights and train security officers. Pledging robust support from UN Women, she made a strong call for the voices of women to be heard at all levels, saying that, “Women’s full participation is critical for long-term stability across the region.” - See more at: http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2013/11/ed-visit-to-the-sahel#st…

“Women do not represent women in my country. They represent the voices of the men, the families that surround them, and their political party: but not women. They are not feminists,” according to Basma Soudani, from The League of Tunisian Female Voters in Tunisia, as we sat down for an interview.