Photo: Mujeres y Poder. Creative Commons BY-NC-SA (cropped).
Women’s participation in decision-making is highly beneficial and their role in designing and applying public policies has a positive impact on people’s lives, women leaders and experts from around the world stressed at a high-level meeting in the capital of Chile.
“It is not about men against women, but there is evidence to show through research that when you have more women in public decision-making, you get policies that benefit women, children and families in general,” Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International, told IPS.
“So women tend, when they’re in parliament, for example, to promote women’s rights legislation. When women are in sufficient numbers in parliaments they also promote children’s rights and they tend to speak up more for the interests of communities, local communities, because of their close involvement in community life,” she added.
Byanyima, from Uganda, is one of the more than 60 women leaders and government officials who met Friday 27 Feb and Saturday 28 Feb. at the meeting “Women in power and decision-making: Building a different world”, organised by UN Women and the Chilean government in Santiago.