Thematic Working Group on Equality and Parity Organizes Workshop on Gender Equality and Parity Aspects of Government Bills on Elections

The Thematic Working Group on Equality and Parity organized on Monday, March 1, 2021, a workshop run by the Chair of the Group Fatima Zahra Nazih. The workshop, organized in cooperation with Westminster Foundation for Democracy, covered gender equality and parity in the Government bills relating to elections.

During the meeting, attended by researchers and the members of the thematic working group, the sociologist Mustapha Yehyaoui gave a presentation on broadening the scope of the provisions that regulate the political representation of women in the different elections at the national, regional, and local levels. He also focused on the potentials and prospects offered by the Governments bills on elections to promote women's representation. According to him, this effort must start by adapting the thematic working group's propositions to the general framework of agreement reached during the consultative meetings between the Government and the political parties and maximizing the possibility of increasing the number of seats allocated to women on the horizon of achieving sustainable women’s representation. The presentation also tackled the evolution of women's political participation through the quota rule from 2002 to 2016 and suggested mechanisms to achieve gender representation on the horizon of attaining the sustainable development goals by 2030.

Following this presentation, the members of the thematic working group on equality and parity launched the discussion where they highlighted the political and structural obstacles that hinder achieving parity. The members also discussed the potentials of broadening the scope of positive discrimination and the procedures of the party-list system, especially alternation lists, and enlarging women’s representation in local constituencies, liable to secure women's rights to obtain political representation on all levels.

The women deputies called for reconstructing political practices by reshaping the prevailing mentalities in some political bodies in order to engage women in the political process and encourage democratic competition with the aim of producing a women’s elite that ensures gender representation.