Our statement on women ́s political participation ahead of CSW65

Read our statement submitted to the Secretary General which gives input to CSW65’s theme “Women’s full and effective participation and decision-making in public life, as well as the elimination of violence, for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls”. As well as it’s review theme on “Women’s empowerment and the link to sustainable development (agreed conclusions of the sixtieth session)”

Based on the outcome of the Women2030 regional and global reports on gender equality around the world we recommend:

  • to expand the involvement of civil society by providing spaces and supporting an enabling environment for women’s rights and feminist civil society organisations to take part in policy processes. This can be political and financial support at the national and regional levels, for instance by supporting the UNECE Regional Civil Society Mechanism (UNECE- RCEM) on 2030 Agenda, which enables cross-constituency coordination for regional policy processes. This will further strengthen women’s forums and increase their influence.
  • to introduce legislation on gender quotas for national parliaments as well as local government bodies. This recommendation has been stressed by partners from several countries (Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Serbia, Armenia) within the Regional Report of the Women2030 programme and requires quotas ranging from 30 to 40% of women in institutions. Some countries, such as Kyrgyzstan, already have quotas on governmental level but none at regional level.
  • to ensure the implementation of a respective legislation on quotas by monitoring and holding institutions accountable. Hence, there could be a sanction of deregistering candidates who do not respect this provision.
  • to inform about women’s rights is essential and should go hand in hand with monitoring the implementation of existing laws.
  • to start communication campaigns inciting women to engage in decision-making on all levels and capacity-building and mentoring to provide them with the tools to make it happen are needed.
    to promote people-centred and locally rooted approaches, such as small-scale and community based gender-just energy cooperatives: they are an inclusive method to boost women’s empowerment and the sustainable energy sector. Within cooperatives women can become members, managers, investors, producers, consumers and beneficiaries. Gender-just energy cooperatives are a way to guarantee women and men an equal voise in the development of energy production (in particular renewable energy).
  • to ensure that paid labour (in both the formal and informal sector) and unpaid (care) work is equally shared between genders; the value of unpaid care work needs to be taken into account when calculating national GDPs. Social protection systems should include the informal sector, including micro-entrepreneurs and self-employed people, especially the most precarious in domestic, care and services work, including sex workers, to ensure that all people have access to a universal basic income, paid leave, food, and caregiving services.

Gender equality on the ground

Feminist findings and recommendations for achieving Agenda2030. A global shadow report by the Women2030 collective. Over the past five years (2016-2020) Women2030 country partners have produced 38 shadow reports to government’s Voluntary National Reviews on the state of the implementation of the SDGs. The reports are based on desk research, multi-stakeholders’ consultations and participatory gender assessments involving 2,414 people across 20 countries, based on a bottom-up methodology captured in the Women2030 gender impact assessment and monitoring tool.

Read report