Opening remarks by Roberta Clarke at the regional meeting on Promoting Women’s Leadership and Political Participation in ASEAN

Excellencies, Honorable Members of the Parliament, and Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, Good Morning and a very warm welcome to you all.

On behalf of the UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, it is my pleasure to welcome you to this Regional Meeting on Promoting Women’s Leadership and Political Participation.

This meeting forms one component of the Regional Programme on Improving Women’s Human Rights in Southeast Asia supported by the Government of Canada. We seek to eliminate discrimination against women in Southeast Asia by advancing the understanding and commitment to the implementation of CEDAW in partnership with regional institutions.

I thank AIPA for its partnership and contribution to accelerating the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of women in the ASEAN region.

Back in 2010 when UN Women was formed, Secretary General Ban Ki Moon exhorted “True gender equality  should  be  our  shared  legacy  in  the  21st  Century.”  Our  Executive  Director,  Phumzule Mlambo Ngcuka, asks for a widespread solidarity to end sexism which she correctly notes is a moral imperative for everyone.

My sense of things is that the centrality of gender equality is more and more understood in the spaces where important public decisions are made about the allocation of state resources.

But getting to this larger understanding is dependent on whether the voices and perspectives of the diversity of women are heard and their influence extended into the heart of policy making. For sure women’s equal political participation matters as an end in itself, as a manifestation of equality. It is a representational right. But women’s political participation is also instrumental to good governance, instrumental to the accountable use of public goods and for meeting the differential needs of women, men, girls and boys. Women’s perspectives, thoughts and experiences enrich governance and make that more responsive to the needs of a country’s citizenry.

Over the last 30 years, there has been a slow rise in advancing women’s participation and leadership in political processes. The global average for women in parliaments is 22%. Asia is slightly behind this global average at 18%. Across the ASEAN counties as the papers reveal, there has been small progress ranging from a high of 27% in the Philippines to 5.6% in Myanmar.

Women’s limited participation in decision-making is also apparent in the other sectors of governance and decision making, as in ministerial portfolios, senior positions in the civil service; administrators of justice and the police. Inequality in the distribution of voice, representation and influence in public sector and political processes is a problem. This reality signifies the power and pervasive nature of conscious and unconscious bias against women.

Many factors limit women’s political participation. The studies that ACW is undertaking with UN Women’s support point to the persistence of restrictive gender roles, women’s disadvantageous financial positions, and a lack of access to influential networks for fundraising or building political alliances.

The cultural bias and discrimination against women as leaders in the public sphere is intense and it for these reasons that CEDAW called for temporary special measures to accelerate de facto equality between women and men and to ensure equality of opportunity and treatment. An example of such special measures is quotas and now we know that it is in those countries which have adopted quotas that women’s participation in parliament has increased.

It is worth recalling as we enter the year of the global review, the Beijing Platform for Action called on member states to take measures to ensure women’s equal access to and full participation in power structures and decision-making.

Governments were asked to take measures to encourage political parties to integrate women in elective and non-elective public positions in the same proportion and at the same levels as men; and to review the differential impact of electoral systems on the political representation of women in elected bodies and consider, the adjustment or reform of those systems.

In the assessment of BPFA which is ongoing, there is consensus that the implementation deficit is significant. But the ongoing multi-disciplinary global stocktaking (whether of Beijing, MDGs, and S.C 1325) gives us an opportunity to reaffirm the centrality of gender equality to inclusive and sustainable development, security and peace.

As you may know in July the Open Working Group of the UNGA on Sustainable Development Goals adopted by acclamation its report containing proposal for 17 sustainable development goals. These include a standalone goal on gender equality with a number of targets, including ensuring women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership.

Over the next days, as we listen to each other and attempt to realize national and global commitments, we need to ask ourselves some hard questions:

What are the specific possibilities presented by political arrangements in our countries? We also need to understand better what inputs would be needed to break the power of this unconscious and conscious bias against women in politics  and decision-making. And we need to think carefully about how we engage with men and with political parties in ensuring that the normative becomes the norm.

As Parliamentarians, you hold one of the keys to substantive equality. Apart from your legislative powers, parliamentarians are community leaders. You have reach into public consciousness to transform unequal gender relations. We look to you to educate and inform. Parliamentarians are in a position to spearhead community mobilization to take positive action to end discrimination in the public and private spheres and to advance women’s empowerment.

I look forward to hearing the progress of your national commitments and how we can all work together with courage, conviction and commitment to better women’s full and equal participation, leadership and political participation.

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