gender

On International Women’s Day (the 8^th of March) the ICLD hosted a panel discussion which brought together world-known feminist mayors as a part of their Local Democracy Talks series. The panelists shared many inspiring stories about their experiences of using a feminist lens to address the complex challenges their cities faced. Furthermore, ICLD announced the launch of its Network for Gender Equality during the event.

The panelists included:

Women are powerful agents for change and great contributors towards the decent life of human beings, but unfortunately, especially in the global south, they are vastly underrepresented in decision-making forums for instance in politics, business, administration, judiciary, and in households. The work done with women councillors in Pakistan exposed that they are not encouraged and provided sufficient opportunities by their men peers to meaningfully contribute in council meetings.

The Regional Gender Budget Watchdog Network (GBWN) of CSOs from Western Balkans and Moldova has been focusing on capacity building geared towards the use of gender responsive budgeting tools in policy work , as well as making sure governments are kept accountable on how they use public money for the needs of women and men. 

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) has launched the Run, Win Lead: Toward Parity in Municipal Politics Framework. 

Despite constituting more than 50% of the population, women still account for less than 30% of elected positions in local government across Canada. Social, structural, and economic factors can all hinder a woman’s ability to run for politics office and to thrive while serving. Women of intersectional identities will often face compounding effects of these impacts.

Partnerships are key to the realisation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). ICLD works with several partners in promoting local democracy and sustainable development in line with the Agenda 2030. For example, in Zimbabwe, ICLD partners with Gender Links to strengthen local governments reach several goals, through ICLD’s Zimbabwe Leadership Training Programme.

ICLD interviewed Gender Links Zimbabwe, Country Manager Priscilla Maposa, and this is what she shared about the partnership with ICLD.

How do ICLD and Gender Links complement each other?  

A new generation of women leaders is emerging in Tunisia. Following the adoption in 2016 of an amendment to the Tunisian electoral law that included a provision supporting gender parity among municipal councils, 47% of representatives elected in the 2018 local elections were women. However, discrimination against women is ongoing and often undermines their involvement in local politics.

On the 4^th of November the CIB working group organised a webinar on using data to advance gender equality in international programming. Experts from Bosnia, the UK and from United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) provided useful insights on how data and solid monitoring and evaluation can help improve gender equality at local level. Pascal Lavoie, director of programs at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, was present as the moderator of the webinar.

Gender equality: a crucial topic on the CIB agenda

UN Women published an interesting brief which highlights emerging evidence of the impact of the recent global pandemic of COVID-19 on violence against women and girls. It provides recommendations to be considered by all sectors of society, including cities and local governments, in order to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls. The document showcases astonishing figures on the increase of domestic violence, the increase of calls to helplines and demands for emergency shelters.

Recommendations include:

Below an overview of the open courses offered by the Hague Academy for Local Governance from this month up to February 2019.