Experts To Discuss Women’s Empowerment

Experts To Discuss Women’s Empowerment For Leadership

[Santo Domingo, 12 November 2009] The experts in UN-INSTRAW’s Gender Training Community of Practice will meet virtually to discuss about the empowerment of women for their leadership and political participation.

The Third Virtual Dialogue aims to gather more information about the current situation of gender training in this area and to offer a platform where gender training specialists and researchers can exchange their experiences and outline the major achievements, challenges and lessons learned. This Virtual Dialogue will be held in both English and Spanish.

In the last decade women’s participation in Latin America has grown in average from 9% to 14% in ministerial positions, from 5% to 13% in senate and from 8% to 15% in lower chambers. At the same time, this increase in political participation has seen a parallel loss of credibility of the traditional political participation systems, a gap that has partly been filled by social movements, including women’s movements. In this new democratic wave, women have flourished as voters with decision making power, political leaders and coordinators of grass roots movements.

However, there are still many challenges to reach gender equality in political participation world-wide. Women still remain underrepresented in decision-making and leadership positions; in the field of economics, finance and in political institutions; and even in civil society organizations.

In different regions, contexts related to authoritarian dictatorships and internal conflicts where both poverty, marginalization and gender equality has seen the growth of women’s participation in public and political arena at national and local level, has gradually changed the social representation of women’s roles.

An assessment developed by UN INSTRAW in 2007, points out needs regarding gender capacity development for the political participation and empowerment of women in the Latin American region. Among recommendations is the use of capacity development as a strategy for women’s empowerment, analyzing the links between information, knowledge and power. Capacity development for political participation of women needs to address the expectations and articulation of the different stakeholders, including women’s machineries, civil society and women’s organizations. The study also concludes that there is a need for access to methods and methodologies for action: programming, evaluation, management, communication, advocacy and networking.

Issues and questions that will be discussed regarding gender capacity development for political participation and leadership of women are:

1. Encouragement of women to participate and apply for leading positions
2. Leadership – still an area of masculinity?
3. Quotas – advantages and disadvantages?
4. Methodologies, resources and experiences for gender capacity development for political participation and leadership of women.

ENDS

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