third Assembly
Breaking Barriers to Women’s Political Participation: Creating an Action Agenda to Advance Women’s Leadership

Organizers:
National Democratic Institute for International Affairs – USA
Center for Asia Pacific Women in Politics – Philippines
Forum for Women and Democracy – Uganda

Moderator:
Pat Keefer – USA

Rapporteur:
Kristin Haffert – USA

Presenters:
Loudres Flores Nano – Peru
Supatra Masdit – Thailand
Ann Linde – Sweden
Winnei Byanyima – Uganda

This workshop provided a forum to engage political parties in dialogue on advancing women’s political participation. Political parties and NGO leaders and activists provided a comparative view of tools and experiences that have helped women to succeed within their parties.

Ann Linde of the Swedish Social Democratic Party opened the workshop by addressing the “hidden barriers” to women’s participation, which include making women feel invisible; making women look ridiculous; withholding information from women; burdening women with guilt and shame and the “double burden” they face when they have to choose between family and work.

The workshop also examined the “Global Action Plan” created at the “Win with Women: Strengthen Political Parties Global Forum” in December 2003. The workshop participants unanimously endorsed the Action Plan as a tool that can be used by political parties to reform, renew, and modernize themselves by expanding leadership opportunities for women. Based on the presentations, the general discussion, and a group session, participants built on the action items in the Action Plan by developing additional recommendations that NGOs, political party activists, and leaders can actively promote.

Challenges:

Participants discussed a series of barriers to women’s participation including:

• heir lack of education and confidence;
• Illiteracy and poverty;
• Rivalry among women;
• Economic constraints;
• Misrepresentation of religion; and
• Other social and traditional constraints.

Participants highlighted the critical need for support from political parties, which is the gateway to political office and a necessary mechanism to promote women’s leadership.

Recommendations:

• Place women in winnable positions on party lists, and consider internal party measures to increase women’s participation at all levels of the party. This includes addressing gender equality in party manifestos.
• Support public financing of political parties in an effort to increase internal party democracy.
• Encourage women to work across party lines to advocate for political participation and create networks that will increase leadership opportunities.
• Create strategic plans to actively recruit, train, and support women candidates beginning well in advance of elections.
• Encourage NGOs to take responsibility for cooperating with political parties and for applying pressure, lobbying, training, and monitoring.
• Encourage women to participate in “transformative” leadership training that focuses on political change and builds their long-term capacity and strategy for change. Women should carry a message that will empower them to become strong political leaders rather than be viewed as new entrants to the political process who can easily become co-opted and exploited by parties as a result of their lack of experience.
• Encourage political will at the top levels of political parties.
• Conduct gender awareness training for men and women political party members; encourage political parties to become more inclusive organizations which take advantage of women’s participation to gain a competitive edge.
• Identify men within political parties who support women and reward them with increased media attention on the issue of partnership with women.
• Employ mechanisms to follow up on programs within parties or government that address gender equality.
• Encourage women to use social and private networks in more strategic ways to promote and support women’s participation in politics.
• Support women’s access to media.
• Address the issue of domestic violence as a deterrent to women’s participation in the public arena.
• Encourage successful women politicians to provide mentorship.
• Promote exchanges among male and female political leaders and activists from countries that share a common religion but have different political cultures, to demonstrate how women have overcome religious barriers to participation.
• Address the negative portrayal of women in the media by training media representatives in gender sensitization.