IPU-UNDAW MEETING

on

The Role of Parliaments in Enforcing Gender Equality and Women’s Rights: 15 years after Beijing

- New York, 2 March 2010 -

 TALKING POINTS

                                    Senator Mihaela POPA

                                 ROMANIA

Session 1: Women in parliament: The first step for progress

Thank you for the opportunity to take the floor. Let me begin by congratulating the organizers for convening this meeting, and the speakers, for their very interesting contributions.    

As a women parliamentarian and vice-chairperson of the Committee on Equal Opportunities of the Senate of Romania, I am following closely throughout my parliamentary work Romania’s results in implementing the Beijing commitments and, more important, the remaining challenges.

And I have to say that in our case one of these challenges is the under-representation of women in the political life, including in Parliament, and generally in decision-making processes.

This is a serious obstacle in achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women, a democratic deficit on which Parliament itself must focus in a more resolute way.

In Romania, following the last legislative elections of November 2008, the overall percentage of women parliamentarians - which was already low – decreased even more. While in the Chamber of Deputies this percentage remained more or less unchanged – around 10.5%, in the Senate it dropped from 9.5% to 5.8%.

This negative trend took place in the context of an enabling legislative framework, having at its core the Constitution, which guarantees equal opportunities for women and men as regards access to public positions, and the Law on equal opportunities between women and men, adopted in 2001, and subsequently amended, which contains clear provisions for the empowerment of women and a balanced gender participation, including in the decision making.

Nevertheless, a new Electoral Law was adopted prior to the elections. As a result, citizens voted not for political party lists, as before, but for individual candidates in single member constituencies.

According to our assessment, this change in the electoral system had a negative impact on the presence of women in Parliament. But the situation is rather mixed, because against the backdrop of a significant gender imbalance, in the current legislature for the first time ever a woman holds the office of President, namely that of President of the Chamber of Deputies.   

In order to try to remedy the persistent gender imbalance in the national decision-making – and I have to say that women are few in the Romanian Government too -, one key priority, as set out in the current Governing Program, is to introduce a minimal representation of women in both Parliament and the highest two Governmental rankings, starting with the next electoral cycle in 2012.

In Parliament our priority is, of course, to identify the legislative changes that are needed to support this affirmative action. And we have also on our agenda a new Strategy on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men, for the period 2010-2012, which among others establishes measures to encourage a balanced participation of women and men at all decisional levels.

In my view, there are several lessons to be learnt.

Within the context of a generally supportive legislative framework, the electoral systems we choose seem to have an influence on gender representation. At the same time, the role of political parties remains key in supporting access of women to parliament and to decision-making parliamentary structures.  

And I take this opportunity to inform you about a very recent initiative of my colleagues women in the party I represent – the Democratic Liberal Party, who put forward amendments to the party statutes so as to ensure that in the future 30% of the party ministers are women, and 40% of the positions in the local administration are occupied by women. As far as Parliament is concerned, we propose that 45% of our candidates in parliamentary elections be women.        

I should add that our initiative is not singular. Women in the second biggest party in Romania – the Social-Democratic Party – came up with similar amendments to the Statutes, namely a 40% representation quota for women in all decisional structures of the party.  

I will conclude by saying that even if we have a good legislation and the necessary political will, we still need – at least in Romania – a profound change of mentality and effective measures to overcome gender stereotypes. In this respect, we have to address should give priority to the education of young generations, starting with pre-school children, boys and girls.    

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Finally, and from a rather different perspective, I would like to take advantage of the presence of the distinguished UN representatives to invite them – if possible – to give us some information on the newly proposed UN composite entity for gender equality and the empowerment of women.

As a member of parliament, I am particularly interested about the expected impact of this institutional change on our national efforts at country-level for enhancing the status of women.

Thank you !