This e-Primer looks at information and communications technology (ICT) for development through a gender lens. It provides a gender perspectives to issues of ICT policies; access and control; education, training and skill development; and content development, and introduces a framework to integrate gender in ICT for development and empower women.
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. In 2005, UNDP launched a system-wide initiative to strengthen the organization’s work on gender mainstreaming. This initiative was supported through the Gender Thematic Trust Fund (GTTF), which received a contribution of $5.5 million from the Government of the Netherlands to implement UNDP’s corporate gender strategy and action plan.
Gender equality and women’s empowerment are human rights that lie at the heart of development and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. As the UN development agency, therefore, empowering women is a prerequisite for success, affecting all aspects of our work.
This means changing the way we do business both in terms of programming as well as our internal processes and structures. In order to level the playing field for women and girls, we are supporting stronger knowledge management and communication mechanisms, putting in place far more robust systems of accountability, building the capacity and human resource management approaches needed to ensure results in each of our focus areas, and developing the necessary team and networking competencies to succeed.
The report provides recommendations for MPs, constituents and for Parliament. Primary amongst these are that MPs need to develop a policy for the use of email and strategies for digital media that define the target audience and connect with their offline strategy. Constituents benefit when MPs are online and so citizens are encouraged to promote the internet and provide examples of good practice to break down barriers amongst those MPs who are more resistant. In the digital age democracy can be driven by both sides. Finally, the report recommends a review of the licensing and re-use of content created by Parliament.
This two-pager highlights UNDP's take on parliamentary development, discussing in particular the importance of the gender dimension and the need to get more women in parliaments. The paper provides more information on UNDP's work in this field and offers references and resources for further reading.
The cases presented in this report clearly demonstrate that, where there is a genuine commitment to gender equality, concrete steps can be extremely eff ective in bringing more women into elected offi ce. The Six-Step Action Plan described in this report suggests multiple policy mechanisms to fast-track gender equality. No single approach works in every context, but national stakeholders can select the initiatives most appropriate in each case.
As part of its efforts to strengthen the capacity of parliaments to promote gender equality, the IPU convened a seminar for members of parliamentary bodies that deal with gender matters. The seminar, on The Role of Parliamentary Committees in Mainstreaming Gender and Promoting the Status of Women, was held in Geneva from 4 to 6 December 2006, and brought together over 100 parliamentarians and parliamentary staff from 36 countries.
This report serves not only as a record of the event, but also as a practical tool for parliaments and their members to pursue efforts to mainstream gender equality in their work. Whether it is through specialized parliamentary bodies on gender equality, or through conventional committee structures, parliamentarians are well placed to ensure that legislative outputs address the needs of all sectors of society. We hope that you draw inspiration from this report for your future work.
This publication was prepared after studying the preliminary drafts and reports of the thematic committees of the Constituent Assembly and of the Constitutional Committee to assess whether or not all of the issues to do with women’s rights have been incorporated. Discussions were also held with honourable women parliamentarians and suggestions received from party leaders, women’s rights activists, organisations from across the country and various experts.
Chapter 1 of this publication contains a short overview of the women’s movement in Nepal to illustrate the necessity of ensuring women’s rights. It then presents the main agenda of women in the Constituent Assembly focusing on the issues of women that have been overlooked by the 10 thematic committees of the Constituent Assembly and the Constitutional Committee. Chapter 2 sets out the rights and issues included in the reports of the thematic committees and the Constitutional Committee. Chapter 3 contains the reforms suggested by the Women’s Caucus to protect women’s rights and interests in the new constitution.
Debates on women’s issues and gender relations in the Arab region have been going on for some time now. Such matters are often the most difficult to resolve and, in this age of economic and cultural globalization, they continue to create the same paradoxical situations as they did during the colonial era more than a century ago. To complicate things further, these debates frequently lead to accusations and counteraccusations about cultural authenticity and the degree to which attempts to improve the status of women are indigenous or foreign. Within this environment, Arab women, sometimes assisted by their governments and leaderships, have been trying to pave the way for their political participation.
