Conclusions and Recommendations from the seminar:
”Women in Politics: A Space for Social Changes”
December, 14th -15th, 2008
Alexandria, Egypt
Background
The Swedish Institute in Alexandria, an independent body of the Swedish Foreign
Service and The Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation gathered on Dec 14th -15th, 2008, at the
Swedish Institute in Alexandria, Egypt over 35 women; members of parliaments,
politicians from local governments and activists from civil society organizations from 10
countries from The Middle East, European Union, The Balkans and Caucasus for the
seminar “Women in Politics: A Space for Social Changes” (Annex I Seminar
Programme). Women’s rights activists, feminists and politicians explored together
meanings of politics from a gender perspective in order to articulate women’s interests
and needs and discuss alternatives and tools based on women’s human rights.
The Swedish Institute and The Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation continually organize
different seminars and gatherings addressing women from the local communities,
activists from women’s organizations and women participating in political processes and
parties, providing a safe space where women from the different spheres of the society can
meet, debate and exchange experiences, ideas and knowledge. At this seminar The
Swedish Institute in Alexandria and The Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation enlarged the
space for exchange and included experiences of women in politics and civil organizing
from countries and regions of peace and democracy, regions of post conflict
reconstruction and regions of conflicts.
An introductory overview of the Political Participation of Women in the Arab Region
was given by Rima Habasch, UNDP (Annex II).
The objectives of the seminar were:
1
a) To provide a safe space for empowerment discussions on the opportunities and
obstacles for women in politics through exchange of experiences and knowledge
regionally and internationally.
b) To visualize strategies for strengthening of women’s capacities and self
confidence to be candidates in the up coming parliamentary and local elections in the
region.
c) To strengthen the cooperation between female politicians on both local and
national level and women’s rights activists from the civil society.
The seminar achieved these objectives through presentations and dynamic interactive
exchange of ideas, focusing on articulating women’s politics through voicing women’s
needs and interests as societal ones and on the importance of building strategies through
mutual solidarity support and empowerment. The participants stressed the diversity of
their historical, social and political contexts that frame the different engagement and
organizing in both political and civil spheres.
Common Constraints
Despite the diversity of the contexts the participants articulated common constraints that
go through these differences.
a) Political constraints: Politics is considered generally a male domain.
Decisions are taken by men and therefore are serving predominantly the male interests in
the society. Both political parties and tribal formations are masculine and male dominated
and this is reflected in their structures and political agendas. The participants stressed that
women’s interests and needs, policies to address them and a legislation to safeguard them
are extremely limited and down on the political agenda, if not absent. Political space is
far from safe for women. Women’s representation in the Middle East is below any
numbers that can have any political impact in terms of influencing politics, legislative
changes and policies. While women’s representation in Sweden or Europe is higher, male
violence against women is still a problem that hasn’t been address properly in terms of
binding policies, for example. And improved gender equality structures and somewhat
improved legislation in Georgia hasn’t opened the doors for women for more equal
political participation. These changes have not addressed the patriarchal system itself.
Political will is missing to genuinely engage in promoting equality between women and
men in socio-political sphere. Women involved in political parties are limited by the
party ideology and are torn between the loyalty to the party and their commitment to the
needs of women.
b) Legal Constraints:
There is discrimination in legislation, as for example in regards to honor crimes,
custodianship, early marriages, polygamy, violence against women etc. Legal framework
regulate the relations between men and women in the personal status legislation that keep
women in subordinate position to men and give them the status of second class citizens.
2
The participants underlined that women are largely underrepresented in decision making
which poses difficulties to change legislation. Where legislation exists as in Europe, or is
being improved, as on the Balkans or Caucasus, its implementation is often absent.
c) Socio-cultural constraints: The social tolerance towards the tradition and the
customary laws are often stronger than the civil legislation. The culture and the
patriarchal system sustain the stereotypical division of gender roles which in return
perpetuate the system. These roles confine women in the private sphere and this creates
more problems for women to combine work life and family life. Growing religious
fundamentalist movements is another factor that is impeding women and civil organizing
for increasing women’s opportunities to enter to politics and public life. The participants
recognized that this is equally true for all religious fundamentalist movements and in both
the Middle East and Europe as well as on the Balkans and Caucasus. They concluded that
the obstacles and problems are not individual, but there are social structures and
stereotypes that are forming our lives from early age and that perpetuate the second class
citizen status for women. The participants agreed that media but also language play an
increasing role in reproducing these structures and stereotypical roles of men and women.
d) Economical constraints: Women generally lack financial independence to
engage in the public and political life on their own. But women are also lacking financial
support to design, launch and carry out campaigns for entering political sphere.
Based on these constraints the participants concluded that besides the strategies that
women in each context create and use, there are common strategies to be used to
strengthen women’s organizing and facilitate women’s entering the political and public
sphere. The participants agreed on the need of having the following perspectives in
women’s work for social change:




Feminist analyses, perspective and critique should mainstream all fields of life.
Women’s organizing needs to focus on different fields and organizations and
networks need to be specialized.
Women need not only representation in the politics but also feminist agendas.
Representation is a matter of democracy while feminist politics is politics of
social transformation.
Gender equality and full citizenship need to be installed as a leading value in our
societies: women and men should be equal before the law as women and men are
of equal value
Recommendations
The following recommendations were given:
3
Women’s civil organizing
1. Women’s organisations and movements addressing all kinds of discriminations need to
build on the achievements of the different countries while strengthening the grassroots
organising on local level, build local initiatives concerning women’s issues, political
participation and share experiences in this regard.
2. Strengthen the work of the different networks through better coordination, joining
resources and providing safe space for interaction and opportunities to extend the
intercommunication, dissemination of information, work on complementarities and
accumulation, encourage initiatives and women’s alliances and mobilize all feminist
efforts in national, regional and international events. Women and feminists need to
cooperate and create international solidarity support.
3. Create coalitions and alliances between civil society organisations and political parties
and actors and gain international support to a broader social movement to achieve
equality and justice.
4. Work to develop cooperation and mutual support between women in the civil society
organisations and women in politics and support women in politics to create programs
with political goals in favour of women.
5. Strengthen the self confidence of women and women’s leadership through different
empowerment programs. Empower and urge women to hold leading positions in
alliances, associations, syndicates, political parties, local councils and parliament.
6. Encourage international support to a strong civil society as a counteraction to
exercising of discriminative politics that concern women.
7. Develop alliances on regional and international level based on the value of women’s
rights as human rights to confront universal patterns of patriarchal domination and fight
destructive feminisation of poverty.
Change of discriminatory legislation as a precondition for social change:
8. Mobilize for imposing civil laws that emphasize the separation of religious institutions
from State institutions and for equality between men and women.
9. Pass legislation that adopts quota system of minimum 30% of the underrepresented sex
as an affirmative measure and an act of democracy but also as a necessary step to ensure
that more just decision are being made and legislation being able to change.
10. Pass legislation that addresses all forms of violence against women as well as all
kinds of discrimination between women and men, especially in the Personal Status Law.
4
11. Work for and support the election of a new rapporteur for discriminatory laws.
12. Disseminate information and raise awareness for all the different levels of society
regarding the international conventions, especially the CEDAW, while focusing on male
and female members of national parliaments.
13. Spread information and raise awareness of the importance of UNCSR 1325 as a tool
to work on equality between men and women.
Lobbying and education:
14. Work to change the stereotypical image presented in school curriculum to encompass
values of equality, non-discrimination, non violence and tolerance.
15. Develop further own knowledge as a first step of mobilizing around more studies,
surveys, research as tools for social change.
16. Raise awareness of media and cooperate with them to create a feminist discourse to
counteract the traditionalist media and to change the stereotype image of women and men
in media.
17. Deepen a feminist discourse on taking a quantum leap regarding women’s issues that
promote real change. Provide space and work to deepen the thought regarding the culture
of networking and intercommunication.
18. Lobby political parties to adopt women’s issues, while maintaining feminist
organisations´ independence. Lobby for women in politics with the slogan that makes our
discourse more powerful and adoptable by both men and women: “No sex should have
less than 30% representation in parliament!”
19. Organize and lobby for the changing of discriminatory legislation but also for the
implementation of existing good legislation when it is a matter of women’s rights.
20. Organize common campaigns, appeals, and discourse with respect to the differences
in the contexts yet focusing on similarities with a long term perspective and goals.
Annexes:
Annex I
Seminar Program
Annex II
Presentation: Political Participation of Women in the Arab Region, An Overview by
Rima Habasch, UNDP
5