Georgia factsheet: SDGs and gender equality

Georgia has made significant progress in terms of improving and harmonizing the legislative framework for the defense of human rights. However, there is still work to be done in terms of its implementation. 

  • According to official data, women represent only 15 % (23 members) of the parliament. Although this is about a 9-percentage point increase since 2008, the total number of women in parliament remains critically low. The situation is even worse at the local level where women hold no governorship, filling only one mayoral post out of 64 and just 13 percent of seats in local councils.
  • The latest legislative initiative to enact gender quotas was supported by more than 37,000 Georgian citizens, but Georgia’s parliament rejected the bill in March 2018, because it did not receive enough support from Members of the Parliament.
  • 1 in 7 women reported having experienced domestic violence in their lifetime (UN Women, 2017). In January 2018, the Human Rights Protection Department at the Ministry of Internal Affairs was established following appeals from civil society. This probably led to an increase of the number of restrictive orders issued during the first half of 2018. This is twice as much as the total orders reported in 2017.
  • Awareness on gender-based violence is critical since as almost one quarter of women (22%) and one third of men (31%) believe that wife-beating is justifiable under certain circumstances (UN Women, 2017)

The recent study indicates that one in five women reported to having experienced sexual harassment in their lifetime. A new bill on sexual harassment was prepared in January 2019 and is now under discussion.

The gender assessment in Georgia was recently undertaken by the organisation “We Research” within the framework of Women2030. The study focused on the division of labour between women and men, in addition to the levels of access, power and control over resources. The data was collected among 300 women and men from urban, peri-urban and rural areas, and the findings are presented in this factsheet.