Press Conference by Inter-Parliamentary Union

 

on ‘World Map of Women in Politics 2010’

 

Women office-holders were making steady progress in the political arena, but not nearly enough, said Anders B. Johnsson, Secretary-General, Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), at the launch of a poster-sized map entitled “The World Map of Women in Politics 2010”, issued by the IPU today alongside findings from a recent survey on progress and setbacks of women in parliament.

Mr. Johnsson spoke to journalists at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon alongside Assistant Secretary-General Rachel Mayanja, United Nations Special Adviser on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women; Drude Dahlerup from Stockholm University; and Senator Pia Cayetano of the Philippines, President of the IPU Coordinating Committee of Women Parliamentarians.

The 2010 World Map, one in a series produced by the IPU and the United Nations every two years, presented the latest situation facing women politicians as of 1 January, indicating that 18.8 per cent of the world’s current parliamentarians were women.  That number represented steady progress but was still far from the 30 per cent target reaffirmed by the 1995 Beijing Platform, said Mr. Johnsson.

Agreeing, Assistant Secretary-General Mayanja observed that the 30 per cent target had been set by the United Nations Economic and Social Council in 1990, with a view of achieving that target in 1995 and gender parity in 2000. 

But, she said, with the percentage of women parliamentarians only reaching 18.8 per cent in 2010, it seemed that the current democratic process simply did not lend itself to inclusiveness, and there was “something intrinsically wrong” with it.

In the meantime, it was important to collect statistics on women’s participation in politics, she said, because they showed that when more women participated as Members of Parliament or as Government ministers, governance improved.

Mr. Johnsson said the mapping exercise revealed varying progress among different regions of the world.  Since the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women, countries in the Americas had risen to the lead, followed by countries in Europe and Asia.  Arab countries had the longest to travel, but their percentages were rising fast.  According to a press release circulated at the briefing, 44 parliamentary chambers in the world had reached the 30 per cent mark in 38 countries, representing a six-fold increase from 1995.

Interestingly, individual countries with the highest percentages were African or South American, while older democracies tended to do poorly, said Mr. Johnsson. 

According to Ms. Dahlerup, a professor of political science, 52 countries had laws placing quotas on the number of women and men that political parties must nominate for parliament, while political parties in a further 30 to 40 more countries had voluntary quotas.  In Scandinavian countries alone, the use of quotas had led to a historical jump in the number of women in parliament, now at 47 per cent, with similar jumps in Costa Rica, South Africa, Argentina and Rwanda.

But, the use of quotas was not easily applied to political systems with single member constituencies, such as the United States and United Kingdom.  And, as Mr. Johnsson explained, many countries falling below the 10 per cent mark ‑‑ about one quarter of the world’s countries ‑‑ did not have electoral systems amenable to quotas.

Ms. Dahlerup stressed that there was still a long way to go in dismantling the structures of exclusion facing women in politics.  The process for nominating candidates to office was far from transparent and still too informal, and rested very much on the old boy network.

Offering her views on the biggest challenges facing women, Ms. Mayanja said stereotypes were the biggest constraint.  Because women were not popularly cast as heads of government or as politicians, it was harder for them to raise funds to finance political campaigns, she added, laying the onus on political parties to reverse the situation.

Senator Cayetano of the Philippines said she saw her role as that of paving the road for other women.  In her experience, it was common for women elected officials to drop women’s causes off their agenda, as they became caught in the hustle and bustle of daily activities.  For her part, she made a point to study the bills passing through the Philippine Senate, where she found that nearly every bill ‑‑ from those dealing with agriculture to finance ‑‑ had a gender aspect, though not apparent at first glance.  Many such Philippine bills would have had no direct impact on women if they had not been placed under her close scrutiny, because they did not take women’s roles in society-building into account.

She said she was now seeking to make credit more accessible to women, as part of an effort to nationalize a multilateral food security resolution crafted in Geneva last year.  She was also seeking to insert language in the budget to benefit her country’s Magna Carta of Women.

“I also know of a lot of women, both in executive and legislative positions, who have no understanding of gender issues,” she noted, adding, “Women must be aware of the gender dimension and be aware of the role they have to play.”

But, for all the criticism lobbied against women politicians, Ms. Dahlerup said their increased participation in politics had changed the agendas in political assemblies worldwide, raising the profile of issues not previously talked of, such as childcare.  And while several national assemblies had not reached the 30 per cent target, she urged politicians to consider other ways of bolstering their position, such as through coalition building.

Capping the briefing, Ms. Mayanja told journalists, “I would hope that our discourse, as we learn from the mistakes that we have made along the way, would lead us to come up with concrete action that can help us to reach these targets, so that it is no longer necessary to have the quotas.”

* *** *

For information media • not an official record