Women speakers of parliament from around the world have committed to doing more to increase women’s representation in parliament and its formal decision-making bodies.
Concluding a two-day IPU meeting in the Indian capital, New Delhi, focusing on making parliaments more gender sensitive, the group of 13 women speakers adopted the New Delhi Initiative for Gender Sensitive Parliaments.
Amongst other things, it recognized that as speakers of parliament, they played a crucial role in spearheading efforts to make both parliaments and, through legislation, society too, more gender sensitive.
With continuing low levels of women’s representation in parliament, a global average of just 20 per cent, the group of women speakers from African, European and Asian countries have agreed to promote women’s representation in parliament and its structures.
They also committed to efforts to realize the full potential of women’s political participation; place gender equality high on the parliamentary agenda, improve the parliamentary working environment and undertake initiatives to share the responsibility for gender equality with men.
The Initiative highlights several ways to meet these objectives, including putting in place action plans on supporting electoral laws and temporary special measures to increase representation, facilitating greater women’s participation on parliamentary committees, revising internal policies, rules and codes of conduct to meet the gender needs of parliament and ensuring gender equality issues are debated in parliament.
The woman speakers also looked at their role in supporting and mentoring other women, both those who are MPs or who want to be one.
During the meeting that ended on Thursday 5th October, participants also spoke of the challenges of their post as speaker and how they deal with them as women. Sharing and learning from each other’s experiences will feature in future IPU meetings of women speakers.
The New Delhi Initiative comes just a few weeks before a plan of action on gender sensitive parliaments will be adopted at the 127th IPU Assembly in Quebec City, Canada.
Read more at IPU, published 4 October 2012.
Women speakers of parliament from around the world have committed to doing more to increase women’s representation in parliament and its formal decision-making bodies.
Concluding a two-day IPU meeting in the Indian capital, New Delhi, focusing on making parliaments more gender sensitive, the group of 13 women speakers adopted the New Delhi Initiative for Gender Sensitive Parliaments.
Amongst other things, it recognized that as speakers of parliament, they played a crucial role in spearheading efforts to make both parliaments and, through legislation, society too, more gender sensitive.
With continuing low levels of women’s representation in parliament, a global average of just 20 per cent, the group of women speakers from African, European and Asian countries have agreed to promote women’s representation in parliament and its structures.
They also committed to efforts to realize the full potential of women’s political participation; place gender equality high on the parliamentary agenda, improve the parliamentary working environment and undertake initiatives to share the responsibility for gender equality with men.
The Initiative highlights several ways to meet these objectives, including putting in place action plans on supporting electoral laws and temporary special measures to increase representation, facilitating greater women’s participation on parliamentary committees, revising internal policies, rules and codes of conduct to meet the gender needs of parliament and ensuring gender equality issues are debated in parliament.
The woman speakers also looked at their role in supporting and mentoring other women, both those who are MPs or who want to be one.
During the meeting that ended on Thursday 5th October, participants also spoke of the challenges of their post as speaker and how they deal with them as women. Sharing and learning from each other’s experiences will feature in future IPU meetings of women speakers.
The New Delhi Initiative comes just a few weeks before a plan of action on gender sensitive parliaments will be adopted at the 127th IPU Assembly in Quebec City, Canada.
Read more at IPU, published 4 October 2012.