Objective 2

In 2019, in partnership with the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, we called for greater collective commitment and efforts to reach 50/50 parity in political leadership by 2030. More and more countries have moved towards this objective in part thanks to our efforts; the number of parliaments¹ where women hold at least 40 per cent of the seats rose from 15 in 2018 to 22 in 2019. And six countries had a woman Speaker of parliament for the first time in 2019.

Through our flagship publications and data, we continue to build knowledge and raise awareness of the importance of women’s participation in parliament. Our data on women in parliament is cited as the reference in top-tier media outlets such as The Economist or The Washington Post or influential reports from international organizations such as the World Economic Forum.

Practising what we preach, in 2019 we strengthened our internal measures to promote gender equality by amending our Statutes and Rules to impose stiffer or more stringent sanctions on single-sex delegations attending IPU Assemblies. Such practices set an example for other organizations and were showcased at the UN Human Rights Council as good gender mainstreaming practice.

_{1 Unicameral parliaments or lower chambers of bicameral parliaments}

• In Turkey, we saw a constructive shift in the debate on gender electoral quotas. MPs from different political affiliations, gathered at an IPU workshop to promote women’s political participation, agreed that temporary special measures were needed to overcome the obstacles to election faced by women.
• In Mali, we helped women and men MPs identify and address loopholes in a new law which stipulates a quota of 30 per cent women in all decision-making positions. We helped MPs analyse the impact of constitutional amendments on the implementation of the 30 per cent quota for women.
• Our support to the National Assembly of Benin paid off in 2019 when the Parliament unanimously adopted a new constitutional provision allowing the introduction of legislation to promote women’s representation in decision-making.
• In the Pacific region, where women’s participation in parliament is the lowest in the world, we helped open a space for dialogue among men and women MPs from across the region who agreed on common strategies, including adopting laws on equitable access for women to leadership positions and calling on political parties to amend their internal rules to recruit more women candidates.
   

We also focused on supporting women parliamentarians to boost their leadership and influence. We are proud to have provided support to the Parliament of Djibouti to establish its first-ever caucus of women parliamentarians, which is now up and running. We helped women’s parliamentary caucuses strengthen their convening power in Namibia, set up peer-to-peer mentoring in Tanzania and put gender sensitivity on the agenda of the Parliament in Serbia.

Our pioneering studies on violence against women in parliament were showcased at more than 20 international conferences and meetings, including at the United Nations and in the US Congress.

During the year, seven countries requested our help in addressing violence against women in parliament or political parties (Iceland, Ireland, Germany, Kenya, the Republic of Korea, Switzerland and the United Kingdom).
 

Our Plan of Action for Gender-sensitive Parliaments continued to guide parliamentary transformation.

Following IPU-supported gender assessments in recent years, parliamentary structures were created or overhauled in 2019 to further parliamentary work on gender equality.

In Kenya, a gender caucus was set up to bring together men and women from across the political spectrum to step up legal reform for gender equality. In Namibia, two caucuses of women parliamentarians merged to form a super-structure to better coordinate and scale up their action across the two houses of parliament.

In 2019, we supported gender assessments by the Parliaments of Colombia and Serbia. The parliamentary authorities in Colombia took immediate action to improve the working environment for women in parliament including a campaign called Congreso En Igualdad to sensitize MPs as well as the general public on the need to enhance gender equality in representation, the workforce and policy-making.

"The 2019 self-assessment of Parliament’s gender sensitivity provided the opportunity to discuss issues that are not regularly addressed in parliament and was a learning experience to be repeated for the MPs of the next legislature."

Milorad Mijatović, Chair of the SDG Focus Group, National Assembly of Serbia

And in Serbia, as a result of the assessment in which the caucus of women parliamentarians and the leadership of Parliament played prominent roles, the Parliament has amended the electoral laws to introduce a minimum quota of 40 per cent of female candidates on electoral lists for parliamentary and local elections.

We celebrated CEDAW’s 40th anniversary by mobilizing and empowering parliamentarians to translate the Convention into legal and policy action for gender equality.

Thanks to sustained efforts by the IPU and the CEDAW Committee over the years, parliamentarians are now increasingly involved in CEDAW review and implementation processes. For instance, 28.5 per cent of the parliaments we surveyed in 2019 expected to be involved in parliamentary follow-up on CEDAW reviews – a jump from 12.5 per cent in 2018. Of the 21 States Parties reviewed by the CEDAW Committee in 2019, 3 (14.2%) included a member of parliament in their official delegation, up from only 1 in 2018.

In New Zealand, the women’s parliamentary caucus followed up on the CEDAW Committee review by calling on the relevant minister to implement the recommendation to amend legislation on equal pay for work of equal value. In Qatar, the Speaker announced that Parliament would debate the next report to the CEDAW Committee and review what action had been taken to implement past recommendations made by the Committee.

We also helped the Parliament of Djibouti educate MPs about harmful practices and different forms of violence against women and girls, with particular emphasis on the culture of silence and the social burdens that discourage survivors from filing complaints. As a result, parliamentarians planned awareness-raising and advocacy initiatives for 2020 using outreach caravans across the country. Equipped and mobilized, the MPs expressed readiness to consider legislation on violence against women and girls and strengthen comprehensive care for survivors.