Women’s parliamentary
caucuses gather together women members of parliament from across different
party lines, with the purpose of providing peer support to foster gender
equality legislative and policy agendas. Women’s caucuses can engage in a wide
range of activities, including gathering data, conducting research, creating
partnerships with allies within and outside the parliament, facilitating public
discussions, raising awareness of key issues, promoting civic education, and
learning from experiences in other countries, among others.
Although in some cases
women’s caucuses have had a positive effect on the adoption of gender equality
legislation, the impact of most caucuses in this area remains limited. In a
2011 Joint AGORA and iKNOW Politics Virtual Discussion, analyzing
the factors that could hinder women’s caucuses from fostering gender equality
legislation, participants pointed out three different issues:
1)
The small proportion of women in many parliaments makes the caucus a small
organ, which does not reach the necessary weight to promote legal reform.
2)
The creation of women’s caucuses requires additional efforts in terms of
organization, leadership and workload.
3)
The cross-party nature of women’s caucuses makes it difficult to find common
ground and join forces. Whereas the perception of caucuses as weak organs and
their soft positioning allow parliamentarians to consider them as a “safe venue
for cross-party legislation drafting”, their soft nature sometimes impedes them
from setting gender-sensitive agendas in law-making.[1]
The IPU has made efforts
to support the work of women’s caucuses worldwide. It created and maintains a
database that gathers data on the existence and characteristics of women’s
caucuses around the world. Furthermore, the IPU’s 2013 “Guidelines
for Women’s Caucuses” provide practical tools for women
parliamentarians who wish to create a caucus or to improve an existing one. It
points out a number of strategies to increase the effectiveness of women’s
caucuses, such as focusing clearly on goals and objectives, outreaching and
partnering with like-minded allies within and outside the parliament, ensuring
adequate funding and managing it responsibly, as well as strengthening
communication channels within the caucus and communicating effectively with
other parliamentarians, civil society and the general public. [2]
Example: In Iraq, women in the single chamber of Parliament, the
Council of Representatives (CoR), “first came together to explore the creation
of a women’s caucus in 2005. Since then, with support from NDI, the multi-party
caucus has debated women’s challenges, coordinated legislative agendas, and
received training on negotiation, conflict resolution, campaigning, leadership
and team-building. NDI has also provided them with technical assistance for
drafting legislation on such issues as discriminatory labor and retirement
practices and gender-based violence. In 2010, the caucus demanded on the
parliament floor that the new Iraqi cabinet include more women. Though their
calls weren’t heeded, newly elected female MPs have vowed to continue caucusing
for greater representation in leadership roles.”[3]
Example: In the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the Women’s
Parliamentary Club supported the adoption of a law establishing a 30 percent
parliamentary quota for women. This women’s caucus also contributed to drafting
the Law on Equal Opportunities and supported a new chapter in the Law on
Families to protect victims of domestic violence.[4]
Example: In Rwanda, the Women Parliamentary Forum advocated for
constitutional quotas for women in parliament and other electoral mechanisms,
which allowed a rapid increase in women’s parliamentary representation, going
from 16 percent in the lower house in 1996 to 61.3 percent in 2018.[5]
Example: In 2015, NDI organized a number of workshops for
representatives of women’s caucuses from Somalia, Kenya, South Sudan and
Uganda, where participants discussed policy priorities, challenges and success
stories in their respective parliaments. Parliamentarians taking part in this
initiative created a regional coalition of women’s caucuses in the IGAD region,
known as Women’s Parliamentary Association.[6]
[3] UNDP (2019): “Reference
Guide on Women’s Representation and Political Participation for the Arab
Region”, UNDP Regional Office for Arab States.
[5] AGORA / iKNOW Politics
(2011)
