Next year is 2010 - fifteen years after Beijing and 35 years after the first conference on women was held in Mexico; yet another milestone. The conferences on women have had the merit of giving political visibility to women’s rights worldwide. Thirty-five years on, can we be satisfied with the pace of change?
Today, women account for 18.6 per cent of members of parliament. This is progress, but not enough. Eighteen per cent falls short of the 30 per cent target set at the Fourth World Conference on Women. It is, however, a fair number compared to other decision-making positions. Only 9 per cent of the world’s mayors, 16 per cent of its government ministers (in 2008) and 4.5 per cent of its Heads of State (also in 2008) are women.
So is parliament actually more open to women than other areas of decision-making? More importantly, is parliament not the obvious place to require and benefit from a balanced participation by men and women?
Meeting in Geneva for their fourth annual conference, some 80 members of parliamentary committees dealing with gender issues and women’s rights from 35 countries attempted to provide an answer to an apparently simple question: is parliament open to women?
A first way to consider the question was to focus on percentages and figures. In this light, it is fair to say today that yes, parliament is open to women. Only nine parliaments are exclusively composed of men, although 41 have less than 10 per cent women. Parliaments are no longer an exclusively male domain but they are far from being gender balanced. Women’s political participation remains hindered by multiple factors (for instance, balancing private and public responsibilities, funding, political party support). The participants discussed various mechanisms for promoting women’s participation in politics and called on parliaments and political parties to be more proactive.
A second way of responding required going beyond the numbers and assessing to what degree women have real, as opposed to symbolic, opportunities to contribute to the work of parliament. The participants recalled that women have historically been sidelined from the structures of governance that determine political and legislative priorities. Here again, challenges remain. To make women’s voices heard in parliament requires challenging existing practices, changing rules and building a space for women.
A third dimension was to look at the institution of parliament itself. How gender-sensitive are parliaments? How do men promote gender equality? Is there a common platform for gender equality in parliament? Do mechanisms exist that facilitate the mainstreaming of gender issues in parliament?
The participants also discussed parliaments as workplaces, acknowledging that places of power such as parliaments contain inherent male biases, which have to be identified, challenged and reconstructed. Parliaments themselves have to implement family-friendly and gender-sensitive measures. The level of gender sensitivity should also be made a measure of good institutional performance.
The results of the meeting will feed into preparations for the Beijing+15 review to be held in March 2010.
