This Framework outlines key considerations for developing a party’s gender policy, and addresses a variety of thematic areas essential for the advancement of women and promotion of gender equality within political parties, including leadership formation, internal decision making, internal oversight and institutional development, candidate recruitment, party programmes and platform development, outreach to voters, and campaigns.

This Sourcebook was developed to provide readily available and usable gendersensitivematerials and resources to build local government capacity for sustainable, equitable and inclusive human settlements.

The belief that increased numbers of women holding decision-making positions is a sign of empowerment is reflected in the United Nations Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), which tracks the percentages of women in national parliaments, in other legislatures, and as senior officials and managers among professional and technical workers. There is a growing demand for an increasing presence of women in political decision-making. It is argued that women need to be ‘empowered’ in the realm of political decision-making so as to facilitate their ‘real’ empowerment.

Women are beginning to stand for elections and have won seats or held political office at different tiers of government in India and Bangladesh, but the numbers are still very low. These two countries have excelled in mainstreaming women in local governance structures. Following constitutional amendments to reserve one-third of all local government seats for women in India after the 73rd and 74th Amendments to the Constitution in 1992, more than one million women were elected to local government positions. Similarly, institutional reforms to reserve seats for women’s active participation in local governance in Bangladesh in 1997 resulted in many women councillors being elected. Despite various problems faced by women in both India and Bangladesh, reservation of seats for women in local bodies increased women’s visibility in public life and provided them with social legitimacy. Reservation of seats for women in local bodies has shown that women are increasingly playing an important role in social, economic, environmental, dispute resolution, legal and political areas. These in turn have an impact on democracy and development, which is the crux of this research study.

This comparative report draws together a picture of women’s involvement in local government in the Asia and Pacific region. It is based on 13 country reports prepared for ESCAP and LOGOTRI and highlights continuing barriers to women’s involvement in local government, initiatives that have increased women’s participation and the transformative leadership that women provide in local government. It also outlines regional and country-level strategies for increasing women’s involvement in local government