Recommendations for strengthening Women’s involvement in politics

Addressed to women organizations, government bodies, political parties, international organizations, media

1. AWARENESS RAISING WITHIN THE POPULATION – in regards to the raising awareness on women’s participation

• The awareness on necessity for women’s involvement in politics should be raised not only in relations to the existing problems, but also on a regular basis
• Education programs to promote gender equality should be in place on different levels
• Media programmes to promote women’s participation in politics through informing society on the women’s experience and its value for communities
• Assessment of the electorate’s attitude to the elections
• Stimulation of the society to actively participate in elections

2. WORK WITH THE WOMEN POPULATION - in regards to the activation as one of the most important actors in the election process

• Enhance the self esteem, determination and belief in the strength
• Conduct education activities
• Develop women’s participation in active civil society
• Develop and support business skills in women as the base for independence
• Strengthen the competence of female politicians among female voters

3. WORK WITH THE POLITICAL PARTIES – Following measures should be taken so that the political parties are able to identify valuable resource in women for political development:

• Include parties in active dialogue with civil society
• Research the political programmes of the parties from the point of gender equality
• Encourage the inter party democracy
• Activate women within parties, enhance their self esteem and political ambitions
• Create opportunity for unification of women from different political party in order to better protect women’s rights
• Stimulate political parties to compile gender balanced election list
• Encourage female experts, introduce the database of female experts in different fields to the political parties so that they could attract them as perspective members
• Form the women’s political elite
• Succeed in system changes within party practice

4. WORK WITH STRUCT URES INVOLVED IN THE DECISION MAKING ON GOVERNMENTAL LEVEL

• Bring the election legislation in compliance to the European standards
• Reach the compromise between the diverse public and state institutes
• Analyze on a regular basis the election practice with the involvement of non-governmental experts
• Reach the gender balance in election administrative bodies, primarily within the Central Election Commission
• Succeed in revision of civil society’s initiatives aimed at strengthening the women’s roles in governance
• Enhance the motivation of the parties regarding inclusion of women in election lists

5. WORK WITH FEMALE CANDIDATES

• Take measures to strengthen the skills of political struggle
• Provide them with the knowledge related to women’s rights and gender equality
• Teach them solidarity of women in protecting their rights
• Enhance self esteem
• Teach them to put together their strong programmes
• Teach to conduct their PR campaigns in a professional manner so that they can be recognizable and familiar to the broad public and make their programmes identifiable for the community.
• Teach them to build relations with media, electorate, opponents
• Conduct professional search of materials for pre-election events for female candidates.
• Strengthen sense of responsibility of the female candidates for their pre-election claims and promises.

6. WORK WITH MEDIA:

• It is essential to carry out strong media campaigns promoting women’s political participation
• Gender modules should be included in the curricular for future journalists of high education institutions
• It is recommended that TV and radio channels air programmes on political participation of women. Similarly news paper columns should be dedicated to female political participation.
• It is strongly recommended to strengthen capacity of those journalists who work in the sphere of women’s rights, including political rights.
• It is desirable to establish newspaper or a magazine describing women’s participation in politics

7. PUBLIC AND NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS promoting women’s political participation:

• It is of utmost importance that programmes on women’s political participation contain media component in order to affect broad public
• Grassroot complex programs to operate on a regular base not only during elections need to be in place
• Deep analysis of the election law and identification of impediments for women is strongly recommended.
• Deep analysis of election practice is strongly recommended
• Active lobbying for bringing changes to the legislation is necessary to promote strengthening the position of women
• Efforts should be made to balance gender ratio in election administration
• Develop the monitoring system before and during elections
• Create the resource database of female experts working in different fields
• Found public councils to encourage women’s participation in political processes
• Form the intra-party council of women from different parties
• Work with women elected in the new Parliament of Georgia in order to make them supporters of women’s active participation in politics and agents to influence women’s movement in the Parliament

Summarized by Galina Petriashvili
8 June, 2008
Photo by Anna Datoshvili

Elections Results

INITIATIVE TO INTRODUCE GENDER QUOTAS

Coalition collects signatures
to amend Elections Code of Georgia

March 22, 2008

It is necessary to collect about 30 thousand signatures to amend the Organic Law “On Political Unions of Citizens,” in order to balance number of women and men in pre-elections party lists. The initiative proposes introduction of a new norm: both genders should be presented in each two of candidates.

On March 19 the session of the parliament’s procedures committee  studied and registered this initiative. For details, please see the Parliament web-site (in Georgian):

http://www.parliament.ge/index.php?sec_id=298&info_id=18561&lang_id=GEO

On Tamar Abramishvili, Maya Kuprava, Nino Javakhishvili, Tsitso Bakuradze and Manana Mebuke are the initiators and signature collection organizaers on behalf of the Coalition. The Coalition is assumed to gather 30 thousand signatures in 45 days.

We call on our colleagues from the women’s movement of Georgia to join this work!

Maya Kuprava: maiakuprava@yahoo.com , 899 57 25 07
Tamar Abramishvili: tamar@caucasus.net , 899 33 75 08

Maya Kuprava:
“On June 24, 2006, Georgian parliament adopted the State Gender Equality Concept, which foresees principles and directions of equality, aimed at improving the legislation and its gender aspect. On September 26, 2007 the Georgian government approved the Action Plan on implementation of activities aimed establishing gender equality in 2007-2009, and one of the Action Plan’s goals is formation of legislative basis and improvement of legislation.”

Tamar Abramishvili:
“We believe that the introduction of amendments to the Elections Code could become a real step forward in implementing international obligations undertaken by Georgia. This could become a basis in forming ethical state policy of our country. This would be liked by not only the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, but also by European structures, that are of strategic importance for today’s Georgia.”