Asia Pacific Women, Law and Development (APWLD) together with some other organization in Malaysia organized a workshop on Gender and Politics on June 7-10, 2010 in Kualalampur.
It was participated by 18 participants from 10 countries from Asia-pacific as Nepal, India and Pakistan from South Asia, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, east Timor and Cambodia from South Asia, magnolia and Kyrgyztan from central Asia and Solomon Island from pacific. Among them, four were presently working as parliamentarian; almost half are planning for the next election and rest were researcher and academia. It was one of the good programs not only sharing the experiences and clarifying on the issues, but how to make cooperation and coordination among women in the different sectors as well for the shake of enhancing women participation in politics as numerical value and quality as well.
First day was devoted for the getting understanding about the gender, feminism and politics more as refreshment of the last year program on the same topics as first level.
Second day was devoted more on clarifying the idea abut how to analyze the legislation with gender perspective and make it more sensitive.
Third day was devoted on having understanding about how to maximize the international instrument like CEDAW, ILO convention, Beijing Platform of Action, MDGs, UN resolution 1325 and 1820 etc. in the process of making laws, policy and mechanism in favor of gender equality substantive ways within state and political organization.
Forth or last day of the workshop was devoted to talk more about strategies for lobbying, campaigning and networking in national level and beyond.
It was really useful, if we could maximize the issues and information has been discuss in the workshop. When I was in the workshop, I was just thinking and somehow discussing with organizer and resource person on how to maximize this in home country. In the process one of the resource-person from Kirgyztan Dr. Nurgul said that she feels still proud to call herself Soviet Union people, though has already been history. Sharing her experiences she told that they are having worse form of capitalism after collapse of Soviet Union, specially from feminist point of view. Now, she is doing her research, focusing on documenting the past and present reality and but it is very difficult to get the financial support. She has written a book on Plus (+) and Minus (–) of Soviet Union from gender point of view. it is really good experiences and material for the country like Nepal, where still majority of the people support communism. So, we have made an agreement that we will be organizing an interactive program in Nepal inviting all potential women from left parties and just make request for APWLD to make her available as resource person. I hope within this year it would be possible to conduct this program, before finalizing our constitution.
June 15, 2010