Donors mainly engage in the following types of activities to promote women‘s participation in electoral politics:
- Training women already in or aspiring towards leadership roles
- Strengthening the capacity of women‘s groups to monitor government commitments on gender equality and women’s empowerment
- Using the media to disseminate information and change attitudes
- Supporting networks of women parliamentarians and cross-party women‘s groups
- Supporting parliamentary quotas.
Specific lessons learned and recommendations from the available evaluations include:
- Ensure the inclusion of organisations that represent women facing multiple forms of exclusion
- Training should be sustained, continuous and aimed at both women who are already in political office and women who have the potential to be future political leaders
- Programmes need to be flexible enough to benefit from unexpected opportunities
- Increased representation of women in terms of numbers does not guarantee a substantive impact on the reduction of structural and gender inequalities.
- It is good practice to involve men in projects to support women‘s political participation.
- Certain activities are under-supported in post-conflict environments.
