Parliaments & Representatives

Highlighted Resources

What is a gender-sensitive parliament?

What are the criteria that make a parliament gender-sensitive? Which parliaments are more gender-sensitive than others? How can your parliament become more gender-sensitive? Answers in this short video.Click here to access the video.

Esperance Nyirasafari (Rwanda), Ivan Flores (Chile)/ IPU

IPU Member Parliaments commit to accelerating gender equality

Parliamentarians from around the world have adopted the Kigali Declaration Gender equality and gender-sensitive parliaments as drivers of change for a more resilient and peaceful world at the end of the 145th IPU Assembly in Kigali, Rwanda. The Declaration...

World female parliamentarians vow to empower girls

KIGALI, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- Female Members of Parliament under the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) vowed to prioritize the empowerment of girls in societies."We have a responsibility to ensure that the empowerment of girls is a top priority and that their basic rights are protected and fulfilled to...

The IPU Forum of Women MPs at the 144th IPU Assembly in Indonesia (IPU)

Five ways women parliamentarians can get ahead in politics

As Liz Truss becomes the UK’s next PM, here’s how women parliamentarians can gain ground in politics.Succeeding in politics is tough – succeeding as a woman is even harder. Millions of women around the world face discrimination, sexism and violence, with women parliamentarians being no exception....

How to mitigate these five threats to democracy

Democratization is under pressure across the globe. Here are five major threats to democracy, and how to mitigate them.Democracy is as precarious as it is precious. Some 25 years after the IPU issued its Universal Declaration on Democracy, its principles continue to be challenged and eroded by...

14th Summit of women speakers of parliament (Video)

The 14th Summit of Women Speakers of Parliament (14SWSP), convened by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), in close cooperation with the Oliy Majlis (Supreme Assembly) of Uzbekistan, took place in-person, in Tashkent (Uzbekistan), from 8 to 9 September 2022.The Summit provided women in the highest...

All-Women Shortlists: Myths and Realities

Gender quotas have emerged globally as a key solution for improving women's political representation. Yet in Britain—where they take the form of all-women shortlists (AWS)—they remain contentious, both within and outside political parties. In this article, Mary K. Nugent and Mona Lena Krook...

Report: Why Are Women Still Not Running for Public Office?

Extensive research shows that when women run for office, they perform just as well as men. Yet women remain severely under-represented in our political institutions. In this report, we argue that the fundamental reason for women’s under-representation is that they do not run for office. There is a...

Report on Gender Mainstreaming in the work of the European Parliament

Gender mainstreaming has been embraced internationally as a strategy towards realizing gender equality. Gender mainstreaming has a double dimension: it requires both integrating a gender perspective to the content of the different policies, and addressing the issue of representation of women and...

Project on a Mechanism to Address Laws that Discriminate Against Women

The aim of the project was to examine the advisability of creating a new mechanism to address laws that discriminate against women. The terms of reference specified two key objectives. The first was to overview existing UN mechanisms to ascertain the extent to which they addressed the issue of...

The outcome document of the IPU Global Conference of Young Parliamentarians 2016

Co-organized by the Inter-parliamentary Union (IPU) and the National Assembly of Zambia, and building on the theme “Agenda 2030: Youth leading the way, leaving no one behind”, the third edition of the IPU’s Global Conference of Young Parliamentarians was held on 16 and 17 March 2016 in Lusaka,...

Women in Parliaments in 2015: The year in review

The number of women Speakers of Parliament reached an all-time high by the end of 2015 at 49 (or 17.9% of the total number of Speakers), reports the Inter-parliamentary Union (IPU) in “Women in Parliaments in 2015: The year in review”. That is up from 43 at the beginning of the year. Elections in...