Women and Political Participation

A/RES/58/142No PDF available

Who created this mandate?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 110Advancement of women, published in 2004.

What other versions does this mandate have?

2 versions · 2004–2012

This is an older version — the most recent is A/RES/66/130

2012A/RES/66/130Women and political participationLatestCompare with previous version
2004A/RES/58/142Women and political participation

Versions are identified automatically by matching titles within the same organ (~97% accuracy on a manual audit).

What does this mandate say?

33 operative paragraphs

Urges States:

To promote and protect the right of women to associate freely, express their views publicly, openly debate political policy and petition and participate in their Government at all levels, including in the formulation and implementation of government policy, on equal terms with men;

To eliminate laws, regulations and practices that, in a discriminatory manner, prevent or restrict women’s participation in the political process and to implement positive measures that would accelerate the achievement of equality between men and women;

To ensure equal access to education, property rights and inheritance rights and to promote equal access to information technology and business and economic opportunities, including in international trade, in order to provide women with the tools that enable them to take part fully and equally in decision-making processes at all levels;

To counter, as appropriate, negative societal attitudes about women’s capacity to participate equally in the political process that contribute to the low proportion of women among political decision makers at the local, national and international levels;

To promote the goal of gender balance in all public positions and to take all appropriate measures to encourage political parties to ensure that women have a fair and equal opportunity to compete for all elective and non-elective public positions;

To review the differential impact of their electoral systems on the political representation of women in elected bodies and to adjust or reform those systems where appropriate;

To institute educational programmes, as appropriate, in the school curriculum that sensitize young people about the equal rights of women, teach civic responsibilities, promote confidence-building and counter negative societal attitudes that discourage women’s political participation;

To monitor progress in the representation of women through the regular collection, analysis and dissemination of data on the political participation of women and men at all levels and the progress of political parties in providing equal and fair opportunities for women to participate;

To identify and propose more women candidates for senior and decision-making positions in the United Nations system and for appointment or election to intergovernmental expert and treaty bodies, and to encourage more women to apply for those positions;

To promote gender balance for their delegations to United Nations and other international meetings and conferences;

To encourage greater involvement of indigenous and other marginalized women in decision-making at all levels and to address and counter the barriers faced by marginalized women in accessing and participating in politics and decision-making;

To ensure that measures to reconcile family and professional life apply equally to women and men, bearing in mind that the sharing of family responsibilities between women and men creates an enabling environment for women’s political participation;

Invites Governments, as well as the private sector, non-governmental organizations and other actors of civil society:

To develop mechanisms and training programmes that encourage women to participate in the electoral process and improve women’s capacity to cast informed votes in free and fair elections;

To encourage political parties to remove all barriers that directly or indirectly discriminate against the participation of women, in order to ensure that women have the right to participate fully at all levels of decision-making in all internal policy-making structures and nominating processes and in the leadership of political parties on equal terms with men;

To encourage political parties to actively seek qualified women candidates, to provide training in conducting campaigns, public speaking, fund-raising and parliamentary procedure and to include qualified women and men on their party lists for elective office, where such lists exist;

To strive to ensure that information about candidates, political party platforms, voting procedures, including voter registration, and electoral law is available to women on an equal basis with men;

To support initiatives, including public-private partnerships and exchange programmes, to expand women’s political skills, which include imparting or enhancing skills on how to vote, advocate, manage and govern, run for public office and serve as elected and appointed officials;

To promote the participation of young people, especially women, in civil society organizations to enable them to acquire experience, skills and capacities that are transferable to the field of political participation;

To encourage the establishment of and the support of existing non-governmental organizations that provide training in leadership, decision-making, public-speaking skills, use of information and communication technologies, confidence-building and political campaigning;

To intensify efforts to increase the number of women in public bodies, including through research into barriers to women’s access to high-level public appointments;

To promote recruitment and career-development programmes that provide women equal access to managerial, entrepreneurial, technical and leadership training, in order to better enable them to assume legislative, judicial and executive positions in government;

To continue to study links between poverty eradication, the empowerment of women, in particular with regard to women’s political participation, and to compile and widely disseminate good practices and lessons learned;

To promote equal opportunities for women to gain appointment to advisory and decision-making bodies and promotion to senior positions by, inter alia, reviewing the criteria for recruitment, appointment and promotion, to ensure that such criteria are relevant to and do not discriminate against women;

To develop programmes to educate and train women and girls in using the media and information and communication technologies in order to obtain and impart information, be informed voters, network, communicate with potential voters and raise campaign funds;

To encourage the media to recognize the importance of women’s participation in the political process, provide fair and balanced coverage of male and female candidates, cover participation in women’s political organizations and ensure coverage of issues that have a particular impact on women;

Urges States and the United Nations system to increase the participation of women at all levels of decision-making in conflict resolution and peace processes;

Invites non-governmental organizations and other actors of civil society:

To advocate at all levels to enable women to influence political, economic and social decisions, processes and systems, including by building and strengthening networks among women;

To establish, consistent with data-protection legislation, databases on women and their qualifications for use in appointing women to senior decision-making and advisory positions, for dissemination to Governments, regional and international organizations and private enterprise, political parties and other relevant bodies;

To increase coordination and cooperation in supporting women and to continue to present women’s concerns and experiences to Governments;

Requests the Secretary-General, in his report to the Commission on the Status of Women at its fiftieth session, to include information on the participation of women in politics at all levels, bearing in mind that in 2006 the Commission will consider the item entitled “Equal participation of women and men in decision-making processes at all levels”, and encourages Governments to cooperate with the Secretary-General by providing precise data on the political participation of women at all levels.

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Women and Political Participation

Who created this mandate?

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What does this mandate say?

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