Continuing Leadership to Empower Women
Handover of Chair of Standing Committee for Women in Local Government, from Ms. IlizaSaadudinDjamal, Mayor of Banda Aceh toDato’ Maimunah, President of MALA and Mayor of SeberangPerai, Malaysia and Ms. Stephany Uy-Tan, Mayor of Catbalogan, the Philippines as Chair and Co-Chair, respectively.
You were appointed as Chair of the Standing Commitee Women in Local Governments at the recently held Executive Bureau Meeting. Can you please explain your vision and mission in chairing this Standing Committee? Firstly, I would like to thankUCLG-ASPAC for appointing me as a Co-President of UCLG ASPAC representing Women in Local Government and Chair of the Standing Committee on Women in Local Government. I am grateful to be given the trust and confidence to chair the Women Standing Committee to continue the vision to bring the women challenges and gender mainstreaming to a greater height. As a Chairof the Women Standing Committee, my Vision is to enhance and increase the number of women’s participation in the decision making and to
strengthen women equity and leadership in local governments in line with SDG 5 and New Urban Agenda 2030. My Mission is to influence the decision makers and uphold in practice the principles of substantive equality among women and men, good governance and social justice. This mission seeks to mainstream gender into key policies, programmes and practices in public sector, and to transform necessary structures and culture through advocacy, capacity development and strategic partnerships with different sectors of society in local governments. There are three main areas, which are, strengthening social justice through people’s participation in budgeting processes under gender responsive and participatory budgeting (GRPB), Women’s Empowerment and Leadership and Women’s Economic Empowerment. Women’s Empowerment and Leadership is to promote awareness of gender equality and enhance women’s participation, leadership and capacity development in the political decision making and socio-economic life. Women’s Economic Empowerment is formed to provide inclusive support to women in economics. Based on my experience as Mayor of SeberangPerai since 2011, in order to achieve the vision and mission, we need collaboration with women’s organization around the world and highlight the importance of women representatives in local governments in order to ensure the voice of the people can be realized. It is a tall order but I believe that with the cooperation of UCLG and UCLG ASPAC members, we can move forward successfully. Opportunities for women are now more open in the field of public affairs, although there are still factors that hinder them in using the authority. In your opinion, what factors do women leaders need to note to address this? I agree that there are a lot of opportunities for women but there are several factors that hinder women in using the authority. These factors are in term of internal and external barriers which include among others: 1.1 Cultural Barriers – there is still an association that leadership and managerial roles as a “man’s domain” is due important factors improving women’s access to public leadership qualities such as specific skills, passion, strength and others. So, it needs a leadership development and
mentoring opportunities to enable women’s access to top management positions. 1.2 Structural/Regulatory Barriers – it comes from limited flexible working arrangements, lack of work life balance and lack of support and development networks. Nowadays, women face a lot of challenges to consider in regulatory and voluntary in political or leaders posts. So, organisation needs to promote gender sensitive working policy to mainstream work life balance and family friendly work practices. 1.3 Lack of Gender Disaggregated Evidence and Accountability Mechanisms – there is a strong need to establish robust accountability mechanisms in order to encourage compliance with gender equality policies, pinpoint differences in order to address the remaining inequalities. We need big data and research on gender issues in workforce which can be used to monitor the effectiveness of policy and it can increase the number of women in workforce and politics. By enhancing the mechanisms, it can help to keep gender issues to be considered before any decision being made. 1.4 Self-Imposed Barriers – these internal barriers may arise from gender differences in behaviour, limited self-promotion and lack of confidence. It is mainly due to gender stereotypes and gender social roles. It needs awareness programmes to empower and transform women to be the potential leaders. This program should groupall women in all ages so that no one will be left behind. Any message you would like to share to all local leaders in Asia-Pacific regarding to gender equality implementation? Sustainable Development Goal No. 5 is about ending violence and discrimination against women and girls and making sure they have equal opportunities to all walks of life. I believe that many action plans can be done as a model for gender equality and women empowerment in local government through nondiscriminatory services provided to citizen and fair employment practices. In SeberangPerai, we practice Gender Responsive and Participatory Budgeting (GRPB) methodology in preparing our annual city budget. We implement Gender
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Responsive and Participatory Planning (GRPP) in determining, planning and implementation of public projects. My message to all local leaders in Asia Pacific is that local governments are the “RIGHT PLATFORM� to implement gender mainstreaming through urban and rural planning and implementation of local policies, guidelines and in providing community facilities and services to women. Many women should be given opportunity to be in elected or appointed office and to lead local governments. My wish to all local leaders in Asia Pacific is to embed a political commitment at the highest level to promote gender equality in public life by developing a comprehensive framework to encourage balanced representation of women and men in public decision making. The wide-ranging framework on gender may include: (i)
Comprehensive regulatory or voluntary measures and environment to promote gender diversity in parliamentary and executive bodies.
(ii)
Introducing measures to enable equal access to opportunities in public services.
(iii)
Mainstreaming work life balance and family friendly work and environment.
(iv)
Strengthening the capacity building and leadership development and opportunities in local governments.
(v)
Monitoring mechanism in public administration which is to strengthen monitoring and accountability mechanism help to keep gender issues in the spotlight and ensuring policy effectiveness.
Last but not least, achieving gender balance and SDG 5 in public leadership of local governments, requires a deep cultural change and paradigm shift at both societal and organizational levels. So that no one will be left behind.