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A Practical Guide to Constitution Building

A Practical Guide to Constitution Building provides an essential foundation for understanding constitutions and constitution building. Full of world examples of ground-breaking agreements and innovative provisions adopted during processes of constitutional change, the Guide offers a wide range of examples of how constitutions develop and how their development can establish and entrench democratic values. Beyond comparative examples, the Guide contains in-depth analysis of key components of constitutions and the forces of change that shape them.

Chapter 2 includes a section on "Principles related to gender" and Chapter 3 includes a section on "The rights of women".

Empowering Women for Stronger Political Parties

How women participate in political parties – and how those parties encourage and nurture women’s involvement and incorporate gender-equality issues – are key determinants of women’s political empowerment. They are also key to ensuring gender-equality issues are addressed in the wider society. If strategies to promote women’s involvement in the political process are to be effective, they should be linked to steps parties can take across the specific phases of the electoral cycle – the preelectoral, electoral and post-electoral phases – and to the organization and financing of the parties themselves.

The most effective strategies to increase women’s participation in political parties combine reforms to political institutions with targeted support to women party activists within and outside party structures, women candidates and elected officials. These strategies require the cooperation of a variety of actors and political parties from across the political spectrum.

The Guide identifies targeted interventions that political parties can take to empower women. It is structured according to four phases, following an electoral cycle approach.

Religious Fundamentalisms and Their Gendered Impacts in Asia

Amidst growing uncertainties in a globalised world, fundamentalist convictions have been gaining ground in many religions.

Reinforced by the threat from international terrorism, this renaissance of religious fundamentalisms has created ideological conditions for polarisation between ‘us’ and ‘them’, from community to transnational level. At national level, it has affected both politics and society, leading tosomething of a ‘retraditionalisation’ of gender roles. The understanding of fundamentalism is often one-dimensional, however, and dominatedby the fi gure of the male Muslim. In fact, fundamentalism is multifaceted and rooted in different religious and cultural contexts. However, among the vast diversity of religions, cultures and peoples in Asia, a number of common features can be discerned with regard to religious fundamentalisms and gender.

[The above is an excerpt from the preface of: Claudia Derichs & Andrea Fleschenberg, eds.,Religious Fundamentalisms and Their Gendered Impacts in Asia, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung: Berlin 2010.]

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Handbook on Gender in Parliament

Becoming a member of parliament is a great honor, but it also entails great responsibility. Certainly, the House Members are expected to not only listen to the people, but also represent them and respond to their needs in a timely and effective manner. The UNDP Parliamentary Support Programme gives its full support to the Secretariat of both Houses and all the House Members in the representation of their constituents.

Indonesia has a strong commitment towards gender mainstreaming, as committed in the Human Development Goals and Beijing Declaration. It enables the Indonesian Parliament to have more women representatives in the various House bodies. This book illustrates the meaning of a gender perspective and the reason why it is important. Furthermore, the book also explains the importance of having a gender responsive legislation and budgeting process, which will better represent the needs of women. Other issues important to gender mainstreaming are also discussed in the book, such as women roles in the working committees, women caucuses, and DPD groups.

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Gender Equality Laws: Global Good Practice and A Review of Five Southeast Asian Countries

The publication of Gender Equality Laws: Global Good Practice and A Review of Five Southeast Asian Countries, in part a response to the call from States parties for a resource establishing good practice guiding principles, is therefore a timely and important resource to assist actors, public and private, government and non government, in both the development of new gender equality laws as well as the implementation of existing gender equality laws. This publication examines and analyses gender equality laws from around the world, identifying those provisions that represent good practice from a CEDAW informed perpective - practices that are recognised for having worked in their respective contexts but are not intended however to be held as prescriptive measures for other countries. Rather, they serve as guiding principles for similar initiatives. This publication also provides a detailed analysis of five draft and enacted GEL in Southeast Asia, a region where governments and civil society are working together to ensure that a State party's ratification of CEDAW leads to actual reform of law and policy in all the areas of women's lives where discrimination is experienced.

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Here to Bring A Change

Here to Bring a Change: Reflection of the Experience of the 2004-2009 Women Members of Parliament

In Indonesia, the spirit to implement the affirmative action has been initiated when CEDAW (Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) was ratified through Law No.7/1984 on the Ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Types of discriminatory against Women. The downside is that because there are no severe penalties in place, women's representation in politics remains very low. The CEDAW Commission supervising the implementation of CEDAW at UN headquarters in their concluding comment in 2007 even expresses its grief concern about the limited representation of women in the 2004 parliament. In their concluding comment, the Commission writes that the Commission is so dissapointed with the fact that thepolitical representation of women is very low in Indonesia and that affirmative action has failed to reach the 30% representation for Indonesian women in politics. This study reflects the experience of the 2004-2009 women members in dealing with gender issues and politics. It also depicts their efforts to achieve the minimum quota of women members in the parliament.

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Gender Mainstreaming at the Parliament

Gender Mainstreaming at the Parliament: A Study of the 2004-2009 House of Representatives (DPR) and House of Regional Representatives (DPD)

This study discovered that the biggest challenge to mainstreaming gender at the House of Representatives (DPR) are procedures of political parties, including that of their party groups at the DPR, which give their members no autonomy. Not only do the parliamentary groups at the DPR prevent their men and women members from voicing the aspiration of the people and constituents, they also determine the assignment of their members to the bodies of the house to either leadership or membership posts. Under this kind of structure, it is almost impossible for women to win the leadership or even membership posts at the house bodies, let alone there is a fact that the central management of party often interferes with direct appointments. Not surprisingly, there are very few women members leading the bodies of the 2004-2009 DPR. Lobbying, experience, argumentation, and the position of women in the structure of the party at central level are the biggest problem that women have to face in their aspiration to enter strategic posts.

The House of Regional Representatives (DPD) applies a different approach in filling the chairperson and membership posts of its bodies from that of the DPR. At the DPD, the individual capacity and networks of the candidate play a very decisive role. The absence of intervention from political parties creates a favorable condition for women members of the DPD to run for chairs and membership posts of the house bodies. The role of the bodies of the DPD are less political than those of th DPR, such that its women members also tends to be more collegial. One of the problems preventing women members of the DPD from optimising their role is limited individual and networking capacity when they are in Jakarta.

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Benchmarking National Legislation for Gender Equality: Findings from Five Asian Countries

The publication reviews the legal systems of Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Viet nam and assesses the extent of their legislative compliance with articles of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination agaisnt Women (CEDAW). The convention is an important international reference point for gender equality. The State Parties to CEDAW are legally bound to apply and enforce its articles in their legal systems. In this legislative assessment study only de jure compliance to CEDAW is assessed for the countries. But even for this, the findings reveal a varying level of legislative compliance. Overall, no country has achieved full compliance with CEDAW's articles. The extent of compliance ranges between 45 to 73 per cent, within de jure laws, with Viet Nam coming closest to the CEDAW benchmarks.

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Women's Participation in Politics and Government in Indonesia

Just as Indonesia varies geographically, culturally and socially, so do women across the archipelago. Women’s roles have become increasingly public; women today enjoy many of the same educational opportunities as men and make up a significant proportion of the labour force. Women make up just under half of the civil service, and there are now more women than ever sitting in parliament.

The Government of Indonesia is committed to upholding women’s rights through a number of legal provisions, and is signatory to several commitments and covenants regarding gender equality. While a Presidential Decree issued in 2000 mandates gender mainstreaming as a task to be undertaken by the government, the Ministry of Women’s Empowerment has drafted a new law on gender equality, which they hope to have passed this year, and implemented by 2011. The law would replace the Presidential Decree in order to ensure gender sensitive policies are implemented across all ministries and local governments, and would have the legal jurisdiction to do so.

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