Promoting gender equality in politics: the liberal way

The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party consists of 60 member parties and individual members from 37 countries across Europe. The ALDE Party upholds and promotes liberal democratic values in Europe such as gender equality, non-discrimination and equal opportunity for all; and for this reason, the ALDE Party has a Gender Equality Network. The idea to create a network of European liberal women was launched at a Council meeting in December 1999 to serve as a platform for discussion on gender equality and act as a support network for women. Today, this network has evolved into the ALDE Party Gender Equality Network (ALDE GEN) which continues to support its member parties women’s networks and the actions taken by ALDE Party member parties across Europe on gender equality. ALDE GEN campaigns for gender equality and the promotion of women’s rights in all spheres of public and private life.

Gender equality in politics
Whilst half of Europe’s population is women, our politics does not reflect this – the majority of MEPs (63.1%) and MPs (75%) are men. Women are underrepresented in decision making processes at all levels. This occurs despite their proven abilities as leaders and drivers of change, and their right to participate equally in democracy. Women still face barriers to participating in political life such as discriminatory laws, traditional gender roles and stereotypes, inequitable support within households, and much more. Equitable participation of women in politics and government is essential to building and sustaining democracy and leads to laws and decision making processes which are more likely to address women’s issues and change gender dynamics.

Empowering women through political parties
Political parties are key vehicles for promoting and nurturing women’s participation in politics as political parties recruit and select candidates for elections, determine national policy agendas and form a link between voters and elected officials. ALDE GEN’s role is to empower and train women to become active members of liberal political parties across Europe and to show men how they can support these women. ALDE GEN acts as a support network and a platform in which women and men can connect to discuss gender issues, to exchange personal experiences and to provide political mentoring and training. ALDE GEN aims to enable women to acquire the necessary political skills and competences and to help women and men develop gender equality networks within their own national political parties.

In order to do this, ALDE GEN holds several trainings, meetings and seminars each year bringing together women and men from liberal political parties across Europe which include:

• Last November in Vienna, ALDE GEN held a joint seminar with Austrian liberal party NEOS on raising awareness on gender equality across Europe. This seminar brought together several liberal parties from the UK to Denmark to Kosovo, MEPs, European Commissioners, political leaders, academics and journalists to discuss how to encourage more women to participate in politics and political parties.
• ALDE GEN held trainings with liberal parties in Berlin in order to teach them how to implement women mentoring programmes at national level.
• A training was held in Belgrade with the Youth Leadership Academy teaching young women the political skills needed to be a councillor.

ALDE GEN’s next project will be a joint seminar with Catalan liberal party CDC on 6 & 7 March in Barcelona to discuss women entrepreneurship and how to mentor and empower women.

http://www.aldeparty.eu/en/gender-equality-network

https://www.facebook.com/groups/GenderEqualityNetwork/