Commonwealth Women in Local Government network

CLGF is committed to supporting women to play a full and active role in public life, particularly with regard to equal representation in local governance. This is in line with SDG 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. We collate and publish a ranking of the proportion of councillors that are women by latest known year with additional data by in our biennial Commonwealth Local Government Handbook.

To progress this objective in a practical way, CLGF has launched the Commonwealth Women in Local Government Network (ComWLG).  Working towards achieving this SDG and Commonwealth target over the period 2015-2030, ComWLG will focus on four areas: 

• Working with existing elected women - to build the capacity of existing women leaders and help them overcome barriers within local government systems to be more effective as leaders, representatives and decision-makers.

• Working with prospective elected women - to engage at community level to increase understanding of the roles and responsibilities of local elected people and encourage women (with a focus on young women) to run for council. 

• Working with political parties and LGAs - to remove barriers to women within political systems; work with CLGF members to increase the awareness and ability of elected leaders to include gender perspective in all aspects of their work (legislation, oversight and representation); and improve gender sensitivity in local governments and LGAs

• Working at the Commonwealth and International level - to gather best practice and share and replicates successes; advocate towards Commonwealth bodies to increase women’s representation and strengthen systems of inclusion and gender mainstreaming; monitor levels of elected women across the commonwealth; and feed into the SDG 5.5.1 monitoring process, ensuring CLGF meets its commitments on gender and inclusion  

CLGF has a number of specific initiatives running under the ComWLG network these include: 

Celebracting the 30th anniversary of CLGF through profiling insperation women leaders from accross the Commonwealth. Find out more about CLGF's 30@30 case study campaign

A compendium of Digital Tools designed to support prospective and existing women to enter and advance in local government. Find out more about Digital Tools to enhance women's participation in local government

Supporting mentoring as a key modality to increase the number and retention of women in local government. Find out about CLGF's work on Mentoring 

Supporting gender mainstreeming in local goverment in South Asia, the ComWLG network worked closely with CLGF's South Asia membership to develop a Local and Regional Governments Charter for Gender Equality in South Asia