VIENNA, 24 January 2023 - Today, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights launched the Participatory Gender Audits of Parliaments, a Step-by-Step Guidance Document at a joint Web Dialogue on “Institutionalizing Gender Mainstreaming in Parliament: Participatory Gender Audits and Gender Action Plans.” The event brought together a diverse group of parliamentarians, diplomats, and civil society from the OSCE region to discuss the application of gender audits and gender action plans in parliaments.
The guidance document was published in late 2022, complementing Realizing Gender Equality in Parliament: A Guide for Parliaments in the OSCE Region of 2021, offering comprehensive tools and detailed steps on how parliaments can fully capitalize on their potential to implement a gender-sensitive and intersectional approach to legislative processes.
“Parliaments across the OSCE region must prioritize efforts to address gender inequality and increase gender responsiveness,” said OSCE PA Special Representative on Gender Issues Hedy Fry (Canada) in a statement. “All parliamentarians should use this document as a tool to integrate gender perspectives systematically and effectively into their work to achieve positive outcomes for gender equality.”
“Gender-sensitive parliaments (GSP) rarely just happen; they require political leadership, institutional ownership, and resources. A GSP audit is the first formal step a parliament can take, identifying current gender insensitivities,” said Dr. Sarah Childs, Personal Chair of Politics and Gender at the University of Edinburgh. “With a clear sense of what needs to change, a parliament can thereafter develop individual recommendations to redress this, and crucially advance a program of action to institute gender-sensitizing reforms.”
In the discussion following speeches of Božena Jelušić, Chair of the Gender Equality Committee Parliament of Montenegro and Kenneth G. Forslund, First Deputy Speaker of the Swedish Rikstag, Chairperson of the Rikstag’s Working Group on Gender Equality, OSCE PA Members highlighted actions taken in their parliaments for gender parity.
OSCE PA President Margareta Cederfelt (Sweden) and ODIHR Director Matteo Mecacci welcomed the participants, stressing the importance of collective action in achieving gender equality in the OSCE region.
The ODIHR-OSCE PA joint Web Dialogue gathered a diverse pool of actors from the OSCE region, providing a platform for discussion of the application of gender audits and gender action plans in parliaments, as well as of possible collective steps towards gender-sensitive parliaments.
The guidance document is available in English and Russian. For more information about the work of ODIHR on this topic, please click here. To watch today’s event, please visit our YouTube channel.
More information about the work of the OSCE PA Special Representative on Gender Issues can be found here.
