Unifem

Leadership and Participation

Click here to access our Leadership and Political Participation Factsheet.

Core to UN Women’s work is a belief in the need to promote women’s participation in political processes. continue to show  that increased female representation in government, directly contributes to ensuring women’s issues are given greater priority in policy development.

Increasing the number of women in decision-making positions is key to ensuring better accountability to female constituents and is an important step towards more effectively promoting gender equality in public policy.

The number of women in government increased by 8 percent in the decade from 1998 to 2008, to a current global average of 18.4 percent female representation in government. In spite of this, women remain outnumber by 4 to 1 in legislatures around the world and we are still a long way off reaching the targets set by the Beijing Conference, to see 30 percent female representation in governments worldwide. Within our own East Asia/ Pacific region female representation rates remain the lowest in the world, at a level of only 15 percent female representation in parliament as of 2008.

Globally, female participation in the political process continues to be impeded by laws, a lack of funding for female-led campaigns, cultural barriers and the combination of demands placed on the time of women candidates who tend to have domestic and social responsibilities.
In an effort to achieve the 30 percent targets set at the Beijing Conference – believed to be necessary to ensure that women have a “critical minority” in parliaments – a number of countries have moved to introduce parliamentary gender quotas, mandating parties contain a certain number of female representatives. Rwanda, one of 40 odd countries to have introduced a gender-quota system, currently ranks first in the world for levels of female representation, with 56 percent of seats in their parliament being held by women.

UN Women’s Approach

UN Women works to advance women’s political participation and good governance through the support of projects aimed at catalysing wide-ranging and long-term impacts.

Support is provided to equip women to translate the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), into legal guarantees of gender equality. Working with governments, women’s organisations, the UN system and the private sector UN Women aims to bring more women into government, train women leaders and boost women’s skills as political candidates and voters.
Encouraging women’s political participation is further a part of UN Women’s wider goals to pursue gender justice, and pushing to incorporate gender perspectives into new legislation and legal processes.

In situations of conflict, UN Women focuses on bringing equality into the reconstruction process. As conflicts end, UN Women works to advance gender equality throughout the process of building new governments and institutions, by supporting new legislation and backing women’s leadership.

Women in Science in Australia

More women are studying science at university than men. But they’re not staying in science and the industry is losing them mid-career. The loss of these highly trained smart women is economically and culturally damaging to Australia.