Documents

Closing statement by Elisabeth Rehn
OSCE ODIHR Human Dimension Seminar on Women's participateion in political and economic life

Your Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen,

I am grateful and privileged for having been invited to address this impressive gathering of diplomats, politicians, activists and experts, which has during three days discussed how women's role in political and economic life can be improved.

I believe that I have been invited to address this gathering first of all as I am a woman, this is still often the prerequisite for speaking about gender equality, even though this should obviously not be the case!
Fortunately, in this Seminar there has also been a large number of men participating, so that this topic, which in fact is about providing equal challenges to one half of the population, has not remained marginalised as being only in the interest of that half.

I think I can say with certainty that I have some first hand experience in participating as a woman in the political and economic life, and I would like to share with you some of my thoughts. I also wish to share with you some experiences from my recent two assignments, one of which is actually also a current assignment. Last autumn, I published, together with the former Liberian minister Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a report on Women, War and Peace. While there are fortunately fewer ongoing conflict situations in the OSCE region today than still some years ago, I would still like to take up a few of my findings that I believe can be relevant here too.

As I am currently working as the Chair of the Working Table I on Democratisation and Human Rights of the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, I wish to share some thoughts that I have about women's role in this region, where gender equality questions are still very much on the agenda; as a matter of fact, they are issues that, I strongly believe, should never even be dropped off the agenda in any country!

Women in a war or conflict

This Seminar has not been about women in war and conflict. As the memories of my travel as an independent UNIFEM expert in several countries in conflict in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and in Europe, are still fresh in my mind, I have to however take this opportunity to remind us all of what kind of impact a war, be it civil, ethnic, or between countries, has on women and girls. It is often said that it is the women who suffer most in wars. Obviously, all civilians are in risk becoming targets of abuse, violence, torture and exploitation by groups who use terror as tactic of war. However, women and girls, more often than men, are targets of gender-based violence. Trafficking, sexual slavery and exploitation are not unheard of in a conflict, and are even used a tactics of war.

Also displacement, which is faced by hundreds of thousands of civilians every year, has specific gender dimensions. Women end up as sole caretakers of children, they have to take responsibility of whole households, they are targets of violence and abuse in camps.

Women's role in the reconstruction after the war

When conflicts or wars end, peace-building and reconstruction starts. Important men get together, sign peace agreements, and start reorganising the country. Women might be busy to try to feed the family and rebuild the life around home. Still today, when we know what kind of special needs women have in the peace-building process and how they can make a major contribution to the reconstruction of the country - at least that 50 per cent contribution, as is their share of the population, and in some post-war societies even higher, it is too often that women are simply forgotten when setting up a provisional government, or when distributing posts in the new state structure. There might maybe one minister post, often that of health or social affairs, given to a particularly qualified woman.

However, we do need to include women in the peace-planning, decision-making, and reconstruction in the very beginning; there are qualified women around who do want to be involved.

Here I am happy to say that things are getting better, slowly but surely. We know that in the Dayton Peace Agreement gender equality was not considered important enough to get a mention in the Agreement, while in Kosovo gender equality was built into the UNMIK transitional governance in the very beginning.

We can now also lean on the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 of 2000 that makes women - and a gender perspective - relevant to negotiating of peace agreements, planning refugee camps and peace-keeping operations and reconstructing war-torn societies.

The International Community has since then been faced also with the reconstruction of Afghanistan, and will to some extent and in some form or other, be taking part in the reconstruction and democratisation of Iraq. In these, and in other situations, we have to ensure that the implementors, whoever they are in each given situation, take note of the Resolution 1325, and take concrete steps to implement it.

Women's role in political and economic life

A number of organisations are doing extremely valuable work in promoting women's participation in both political and economic lives in their countries. We have heard of the OSCE ODIHR's projects in assisting women to activate and take part in decision-making, running in the elections, taking part in governments and in various institutions in their societies. There are many NGOs here who are concretely carrying out training projects for women on leadership, political awareness, coalition building, and similar skills. The Gender Task Force of the Stability Pact, which is under the Working Table lead by myself, is doing extremely valuable work, among other things with women mayors and parliamentarians in the Balkans.

Such projects are important and needed in order to assist the women to acquire the skills they will need in political life. But we have to remember that the only way to really learn or find out that you are capable of doing something is just to jump into the cold water, and see that you really can swim. Of my own experience I have to say that very often politics is not 'rocket science', most often it is not something one needs specific academic degrees or extra-high intelligence. What one needs in politics is courage to go into it and fight for what you think is important. One also needs some skills in organisation, capacity to learn new things and make conclusions of what one has learnt, but above all, in politics, I believe that one needs a sense of responsibility. I think most women do have these skills!

We women have to be careful of not being patronised and made believe that decision-making of our common issues is some higher science which one needs special training for. As you probably know, Finland has recently received a new Prime Minister, who is a woman, and who has previously been Minister of Justice and leader of the main opposition party for some years now. When her party won the elections in March, some persons proposed that she would first 'practice' being a prime minister under the guarding eye of the previous prime minister, who, needless to say, is a man. Luckily, it was quickly pointed out that the new Prime Minister has equal amounts, if not even more, political experience as any of her predecessors, to be able to take up the post all by herself.

The political participation of women has been strongly promoted in many countries in the OSCE region, through for example establishing in some countries a minimum number of female candidates each party has to present when running in elections. The challenge is, as I referred to, to include an equal number of women as men in different levels of government positions too, also at the highest level.

Another challenge, which should have great importance for women, but is not always paid equal attention to is the role of women in economic life. The salaries earned by women in general are still lower than those of men everywhere in world, first of all because the sectors traditionally employed by women - such as education, health and social sector, some services - are not equally valued in the society; thus lower salaries are a fact. How to tackle this problem of values seems to be a mystery to everyone.

In addition, the reality in many countries still is that even for the same jobs women earn lower salaries than men. Also, women are in many places much less likely to start their own businesses or go and work in the financial sector for example.

I think that women do themselves sometimes underestimate the importance of economic participation. Political awareness, activity and participation is important, but it is at least equally important for women to have equal opportunities in taking part in the economy in its different forms, be it business, small and medium-size enterprises, banking, investment, or as an employee and salary-earner. Money makes the world go round, it is said, and even though it maybe unfortunate, money can also bring influence and even power. It can also give independence. Not all of us women want to go into business or take well-paid jobs only for the salary's sake; we might have other values in our lives. We should not however give away our right to make an equal amount in salary as men do, or take part in equal proportion in the economic life. And the hard fact is that no-one will invite us to take a bigger piece of the cake if we ourselves do not demand it, or even just go and take it.
Thus I very much welcome projects that focus on the economic aspects of women's participation; they are very much needed. In many countries women do need support in getting a foothold in economic life. Such assistance is really empowering a half of the population to be in charge of their lives.

Conclusion

I always feel much invigorated when having the chance to meet people who are driven by their vision, as you are in this Seminar. As said, supporting women's participation in politics and economy is really supporting one half of the population in exercising their full rights and having equal opportunities in all parts of life. Such increased rights and opportunities do not mean that they are away from someone else, rather I strongly believe that such equality can only have positive impact on the society as a whole.