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]