Gender mainstreaming in Europe & CIS

 

 

 

There were up to 62 participants in Bishkek’s Roundtable, including Parliament deputies, representative from Government Office, President administrative, Parliament office, ministries, comities, agencies, CSOs, public associations and political parties, and last but not least international organization representatives and participants

 

 

Opening speeches were given by Ms. Cholpon Baekova, Deputy Speaker of the Jogroku Kenesh of the Kyrgyz Republic (the parliament), Mr. Neal Walker, UNDP Kyrgyzstan Residence Representative llink talking points  and Ms. Shakirat Toktosunova, UNDP Kyrgyzstan Assistant Residence Representative 

 

Recognizing international and national commitments on gender equality that Kyrgyzstan has adopted, Cholpon Baekova, the Deputy Speaker of Jogroku Kenesh of the Kyrgyz Republic (parliament) emphasized role of Parliament in provision of state guarantees on political rights of women. The deputy speaker also noted that after introducing gender quota into Elections Code, 23 women came to Parliament which makes up 26.6% from the total number of deputies and a separate committee on gender was created. As a result, approach of Parliament to resolving gender issues became more systematic: two Parliament hearings on gender issues were held, women-deputies joined Alliance of Women’s Legislative Initiatives, gender examination of legislation is in the list of compulsory legislative examinations.

 

 

 

Mr. Neal Walker, UNDP Kyrgyzstan Resident representative have spoken of important framework of UNDP effort in regard to promotion gender equality in KR that is CEDAW Committee recommendation of second periodic report. The very important point of Committee’s concern is the under-representation of women in elected and appointed bodies, especially in high-level bodies. Though recognizing the improvement the KR has achieved, the Resident Representative emphasized that quantitative representation should be also accompanied by a qualitative system changes to address ongoing gender rooted problems. These include for example high maternal and infant mortality rate, men's high mortality rate at working age, prevailing violence against women (including bride kidnapping or polygamy), vulnerability of women to HIV/AIDS (e.g. wives of migrant workers and women from rural areas with access to poor health care services), the
the feminization of poverty and gender segregation at the labor market, or energy crisis affecting women's small business development

 

Shakirat Toktosunova, UNDP Kyrgyzstan Assistant Residence Representative talked about corporate approach of UNDP to gender mainstreaming into programmatic activities and its methodology. She also highlighted projects on promoting women in decision making are part of Democratic Governance Programme portfolio as the UNDP considers participation of women in decision making to be the essential part of public administration reforms and fight against corruption.

 

 

 

 

As part of the introductory block the overview reports were presented from the government with description of the general situation on representation of the women at decision making levels, reports from UNDP projects on supporting gender policy in Kyrgyzstan and an a key report from project outlining the main objectives, tasks and expected results. 

 

 

 

The Thematic blocks consisted of 3 main debates Women's political participation in Kyrgyzstan:

 Roza Otunbaeva, Member of Parliament

  

Overview of development in women's political participation from negative outcomes in 90ties to positive changes in very recent years was reflected. While in 2005, after the elections, there was not a single woman in the Parliament since 2007 the situation started to change especially thanks to the adoption of quotas for party lists. At the present moment there are 24 female members of parliament (out of 105) and despite the short term of Parliament, women MPs were able to move a number of social / gender significant initiatives - the law on State Social Order, a new law on State Guarantees of Equal Rights and Equal Opportunities for Men and Women. The first time parliamentary hearings were held on problems of gender violence in Kyrgyzstan.

 

 

However there are critical concerns related to quota system policies as well - quotas do not ensure real political leadership of women; women’s activity in Parliament remains marginal. Women are traditionally remained to be concentrated at the lower levels of decision-making and poor levels of public administration.

 

 

Beside quota concerns, key factors and challenges that hinder the effective participation of women in politics, have been identified – such as limited effectiveness of democratic institutions, as well as of political parties to guarantee an open political environment and real political competition, formal mechanisms for selecting leader, the dominant model of political leadership is traditional - a competitive, masculine, limiting not only women but also men with non-traditional approaches, absence of a functioning institutional mechanism responsible for the implementation of gender policies and lack of adequate financial resources to support it.

 

 

Regarding the participation of the women’s groups and civil society some positives trends as well as challenges were discussed. The first - positive trends - – emphasized the variety of community organizations representation at national level of networking aimed to promote women's political leadership that is able to mobilize women not only women's organization but also a wide number of other public organizations. The later – challenges – included issues such as formal attitude towards networking linked with burden of coordinating imposed on narrow scope of people, weak scope of regional / local networking and lack of systematic information and education campaigning to empower women at regional level.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ms. Niyazova at the beginning overviewed the women’s movement response to challenges of 2005 when there was zero representation of women in the Parliament and main achievements of that effort). The core of the response was Strategy for lobbying of institutional changes, including in legislation.Main achievement included adoption national Action Plan for the achievement of gender equality and several legislative changes including constitution, election code, and equal opportunities law. Lessons learned and future perspectives were identified at the end of her presentation.

 

Ms. Karybaeva presented challenges to participation of women in politics and spoke of establishment of Alliance of Women’s Legislative Initiatives. Alliance includes deputies as well as representatives from governmental structures, NGOs and several other experts. It operates mostly through thematic working groups. It supported involvement of Policy of achievement of gender equality within Country Development strategy for 2009-2011 and got involved in several initiatives related to promotion of gender equality within legislative tools as well as parliamentary hearing on striking gender issues such as violence against women. At the end she overviewed challenging issues of Alliance work in future.

 

Ms. Ibraeva introduced evaluation possibilities of political transformation of gender power hierarchies. She presented key barriers and tools that can introduced to overcome them. She emphasized importance of development of legislation in promotion of gender equality as well as development of supportive procedures and introduction of positive (affirmative) measures.

Main part of her presentation was dedicated to findings from Study of the gender analysis of the political parties of the Kyrgyz Republic. In her perspective, political parties can be and already are a decisive instrument for building up a parity democracy in KR; however further detailed work on integration of gender training in the process of party building up and expansion of practices of gender – focused actions of the State is necessary for changing the gender regime inside parties and values of party leaders.

 

Gender and political leadership in Kyrgyzstan - Anara Moldosheva, gender expert,  local Rapporteur  of the project Development regional report on Women and Governance.

Ms. Moldosheva summarized situation of women and men representation at in public administration bodies and uncovered system of gender asymmetry reproduction in the structures of civil service based on conclusions from recent surveys. She then developed ideas about possibilities of mobilization of women’s political activeness. She spoke of mechanisms for selection of leaders emphasizing gap between the leadership on the level of the “big” policy and local policy level and barrier in form of prevailing gender stereotypes about role of men and women in political arena. At the end she summarized current challenges including concept of traditional women’s political leadership, prevailing traditional concepts about masculinity and femininity and exclusion of opportunity for equal partnership and disallowing for possibility of political competition between a man and a woman.  Last, but not least, preliminary forcast of results of upcoming local councils elections (KENESHES) was presented as well.