women parliamentarians

Women MPs have urged political parties to commit to gender equality as an inherent political objective and assume their role as key entry points to women’s political participation at an IPU-organized event during the Women in Parliaments Global Forum (WIP) in Brussels on 27-29 November. Entitled “Gender-sensitive Parliaments: Are political parties allies or foes?” the event examined the significant impact political parties have on gender-sensitive policy-making, including women’s access to political participation.

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.