Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) has urged member parliaments to eradicate harmful legislative practices and procedures that impede the efforts to advance gender equality.
The assocation said steps must be taken to remove norms, behaviours, barriers and restrictive cultures to the empowerment of womenempowerment of women parliamentarians.
The Vice Chairman of the CPA, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, made the call when he addressed the 145th high-delegation meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) assembly in Kigali last Friday (Oct 14).
The meeting is being held on the theme “Gender equality and gender- sensitive parliaments as drivers of change for a more resilient and peaceful world.”
It has brought together Speakers and legislators from CPA member countries, the diplomatic corps and international observer bodies to, among other, exchange ideas on good practices to make parliaments more gender-sensitive as well as encouraging parliaments to pledge transformative action.
CPA’s commitment
Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, who is also the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, said in line with the theme of the IPU assembly, the CPA was committed to strengthening gender representation and parity in all CPA parliaments and legislatures.
For instance, he said at the association’s recent conference in Halifax, Canada, the CPA amended its constitution to increase women representation on the executive committee as well on delegates to the annual conference.
“This demonstrates the commitment within the CPA family to strengthen gender equality and representation in our parliaments,” he said.
Told the assembly that while there were numerous examples of women changemakers across the Commonwealth and the wider world achieving extraordinary progress in advancing gender equality, the responsibility to re-gender parliaments should not be seen as an additional burden placed on women parliamentarians alone.
Rather, he said gender balance and gender sensitivity could only be achieved when all stakeholders bonded together in addressing and eradicating harmful “practices and procedures, formal and informal rules, norms, behaviours and barriers and restrictive cultures”.
Champion gender equality
Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, who is also the Majority Leader in Ghana’s Parliament, added that it was the association’s CPA’s belief that parliaments must work to become gender-sensitive institutions.
“This means we ought to recognise the detrimental effect of gender suppression and disenfranchisement and must actively champion gender equality,” he said.
To champion gender equality, he said the CPA through the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians (CWP) network continued to advocate and encourage parliamentarians, of all genders, to include a gender perspective in all aspects of their role, from budgeting, legislation, oversight and representation.
Other interventions
Citing three other areas that the CPA had continued to work on to promote gender sensitive parliaments, the Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu the association had developed gender-sensitising parliament guideliens.
Those guidelines were designed in 2020 to encourage parliaments to not only look into priority areas that needed to be strengthened in order to help legislatures to become effective gender sensitive institutions but to also help parliaments create the necessary conditions to deliver on their responsibility to reach the standard of gender sensitivity and also to identify the actors and means through which reforms were implemented, he said.
“The CPA’s Gender Sensitive Guidelines start from the fundamental premise that all parliaments should undertake an audit as soon as possible to establish an initial benchmark against which future efforts and developments can be evaluated.
“As a method to assist parliaments in this process of self-reflection, the guidelines were devised to help parliaments review an institution’s formal and informal rules, practices and procedures that take place within the institution as well as the wider parliamentary culture,” he said.
He added that gender (in)sensitivity was to be measured across equality of participation within parliament, parliamentary infrastructure, parliamentary culture and gender equality policy/women’s substantive representation.
Pull quote
“Gender equality and gender- sensitive parliaments as drivers of change for a more resilient and peaceful world.”
Source: Nana Konadu Agyeman || Daily Graphic, Kigali
Writer’s email: nana.agyeman@graphic.com.gh
Pix: Mr Kyei-Mensah Bonsu addressing the assembly.