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ISSUE N°19
NOVEMBER 2005

C O N T E N T S
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white cube Editorial
white cube Interview with Pascal Lamy
white cube The 2nd Conference of Speakers of Parliaments
white cube Women in parliament
white cube Cooperation with the UN
white cube Israel - Palestine
white cube Human rights
white cube Technical cooperation update
white cube Parliamentary developments
white cube Read in the press
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The World of Parliaments
Women in parliament

PARLIAMENTS AND THE UNITED NATIONS: COOPERATION FOR THE PROMOTION OF GENDER EQUALITY

Mrs Ingrida Udre
Mrs Ingrida Udre

At the initiative of Ms. Ingrida Udre, Speaker of the Latvian Saeima and Rapporteur for the Declaration of the Second World Conference of Speakers of Parliaments, a meeting of women Speakers was convened, with the assistance of the IPU, on 9 September 2005.

Ms. Udre highlighted the importance of this opportunity for women Speakers to meet and discuss the ways and means by which the parliamentary community could best contribute to achieving the Millennium Development Goals, including through a strengthened partnership with the United Nations. She also referred to the forthcoming fiftieth session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) that would address the issue of women's participation in decision-making and the preparations under way at the IPU and the United Nations to convene a new meeting of parliamentarians on that occasion to discuss the question of women's participation in political life.

he Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ms. Louise Fréchette, was invited to attend the meeting. She presented an evaluation of how gender equality and the empowerment of women were promoted through the work of the United Nations, emphasizing their central role in the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. Ms. Fréchette also addressed the question of women's representation in parliament, identifying some of the measures that led to concrete results, including quota systems, voluntary agreements, training programmes for women's leadership and the elimination of laws and practices preventing or restricting women's participation in the political process. Lastly, the Deputy Secretary-General commended the IPU - and particularly the IPU Coordinating Committee of Women Parliamentarians - for its work on gender equality and the empowerment of women, and called for greater cooperation between the IPU and the United Nations in the future.

"We must encourage our sisters to run for office and to prepare to serve"

Mrs Thérèse Meyer
Mrs Thérèse Meyer
The Speaker of the Swiss National Council, Mrs. Thérèse Meyer, who served as one of the Vice- Presidents of the Conference, said that the main message of the meeting was that women Speakers all shared the same objective: "to increase the wellbeing of our citizens through our work as women, by being complementary in our work to men". Women Speakers "believe in their strength, and we know that we must also encourage our sisters to run for office and to prepare to serve. It is by being complementary that we can do great things for our citizens".

Speaker Meyer believes that parliaments are gendersensitive, "but they respond differently. Some believe binding laws should ensure parity, or at least a mandatory percentage of women in their parliaments; others believe that this should be done through democracy, i.e., that women must be elected using the same means as men".

Are quotas a necessary evil? "In my country, according to the voting system, there is no electoral list; the people vote for a person. Elections through quotas are more problematic, because a candidate may be elected while receiving fewer votes than an unelected contender. We should encourage parties to at least ensure that there are mandatory quotas for electoral lists. The rest is a matter of work at the grass roots, but also of spirit and conviction; this work must be done so that women enter politics and run for office. Above all, they must have confidence. They have every ability to do this work."

As of 31 August 2005, in the world's 186 national parliaments, only 26 presiding officers' posts were occupied by women. Women thus accounted for just over 10 per cent of the 257 posts of Speakers of parliaments or parliamentary chambers.

THE IMAGE OF PARLIAMENTS

Mrs Maleka Bbete
Mrs Maleka Bbete
Mrs. Maleka Mbete, the Speaker of the National Assembly of South Africa, was also present at the meeting. She also moderated a panel on democracy. In her view, it is important that parliaments restore their image. "Parliaments have negative images, partly because the way they are seen by societies is in competition with governments. Parliaments, even though they do a lot of good work, cannot make that work known, because the media tends to focus on government action."

It is up to legislators to change the way parliaments are perceived. "Parliaments should work more and more together with civil society, and bodies of the different sectors of society, and even interact directly with them" said Mrs. Mbete. She quoted the case of "the women's parliament which we have started in South Africa. We bring together ordinary women, we do workshops and we engage directly with them. They tell us their experiences. We get information directly from them instead of waiting for a committee to reach out to them with public hearings and that sort of thing. We can change things by the way we work as parliaments, vis-à-vis our people".

 
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