Democratic citizenship and human rights education

More Women in European Politics – More women in 2014

The Project “More Women in European Politics – More women in 2014” aimed at increasing the participation and representation of women in European politics. The project was based on the recognition that previous attempts to promote gender equality in politics had largely failed in that they had not involved political parties. In contrast, in order to advance gender equality we need to ensure the participation of political parties in the promotion of women in politics. The power to recruit, select and nominate candidates is in the hands of political parties, whatever the electoral system.

This project brought together National /regional NGO’s who had a well-established track record in promoting gender equality alongside a range of national political parties who wished to address the issue of gender equality.

Objectives:

  1. Increase in the numbers of women voting in the European Parliament elections;
  2. Have at least 150 more women standing as candidates;
  3. Create 13 benchmark reports;
  4. Reach and engage over 170,000 women;
  5. Record positive actions in 13 national political parties;
  6. Develop a campaign handbook/toolkit.

Main activities:

Each of the 13 partners set up a Women in Politics Group, made up of representative from women associations and/or from political parties. The WPG was responsible for the production of a baseline study to create a profile of women’s participation in politics.

Drawing up on evidence arising from the base line study, partners launched a campaign to:

  • Undertake a series of actions to engage the target group (workshops; seminars; debates, online events);
  • Attract a group of women who had an interest in becoming candidates;
  • Providing a programme of support and capacity-building to this group;
  • Undertake national dissemination;
  • Alongside the local activities implemented by each partner, a transnational exchange programme was implemented, consisting of:
    • two transnational workshops: the first enabling an exchange of experiences and the co-production of a common marketing logo; the second enabling partners to share their local campaigns strategies and thus provide an opportunity for peer learning;
    • an online platform;
    • a transnational dissemination event;
    • a series of three events targeted at member States not involved in the partnership.

More details about the project can be found at: http://www.ludenet.org/projects/wiep

The movies of the project can be found here: