ACPSP: Gender Equality Network

Women’s leadership in Parliament : Increasing the number and impact of women in the parliamentary process

Videoconference for West Africa
February 15, 2006

The participants have identified the following concrete recommendations for the African Network for the Promotion of Women Parliamentarians (ANPWP):

• Setting up a common action strategy, taking into account each contry’s specific circumstances and helping them develop their own national strategy
• Involving male MPs in the network’s activities and developing a true partnership with men, enabling them to promote and support their female colleagues’ actions. ANPWP members should learn how to negociate with their male colleagues
• Developing linkages with those civil society organisations which are involved in training women MPs and are active in promoting women in politics
• While there is a legislative framework for the promotion of women, implementing it is a challenge, and ANProWiP should concentrate on increasing awareness and overseeing the implementation and enforcement of legislations aimed at protecting and promoting women
• ANPWP should work together with political parties to increase their awareness of, and support to, parity, and insist that their leaders take a stand on the issue of quotas and the role of women in politics
• ANPWP should be instrumental in raising the profile of women MPs through grassroots activities

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