CALD Strategizes on Selling Women

The CALD Women’s Caucus held a workshop on marketing and messaging strategies for women candidates on 11-14 August 2011. Hosted by Wanita, the women’s wing of Parti Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia (PGRM), this took place in the heritage city of Malacca, Malaysia.

The workshop served as an avenue for women leaders and campaign staff members of CALD member parties and their women’s wings to share their recent campaign experiences and apply lessons learned in the elections to come. As the idea that women can garner more space in the Asian political arena is reaffirmed, the workshop aimed to open more avenues for women to assume greater leadership roles.

“We hope that this workshop would be a productive sharing of experiences—guided by the knowledge that while we may have different contexts, there are still best practices that we can cull from each other’s marketing and messaging strategies in promoting women candidates,” said Hon. Mu Sochua, MP, Chair of the CALD Women’s Caucus. She also gave participants a background on the Caucus and its recent activities.

Workshop activities began with a context setting on the situation of women in politics in various CALD member countries. A discussion on issues that women leaders face in different parts of the world, including Europe and Asia, was led by Ms. Christine de Saint Genois, Vice President of the International Network of Liberal Women.

Ms. Jayanthi Balaguru, Secretary General of PGRM Wanita, made a presentation on messaging strategies for women candidates. She discussed the types of political and personal questions that candidates must address and how message content must take into account what will move voters to vote for a candidate, why voters would vote against their opponent and issues that a candidate would not be willing to compromise on.

As messages are not useful unless backed by strong marketing, Ms. Chia Ting Ting, head of the women youth bureau of PGRM, discussed “Bringing the Brand to the People”. This included the brand of the party and that of the individual candidate. She talked about how political marketing products include politicians and their manifestos and discussed strategies to engage voters both online and offline. There are also ways of integrating both online and offline approaches.

Ms. Jaslyn Go of the Singapore Democratic Party added to the discussion by sharing her party’s recent electoral campaign, which centered on the production of creative videos that have received rave reviews and spreading these through Facebook.

The second workshop day began with a presentation of the role of the women’s wings of political parties in driving the electoral campaigns of individual candidates. “It’s important for women to have a platform because men do not know how to advance women’s issues,” Balaguru said. At present, women already have the ability to be elected to the party’s central committee and no longer need to rely on just appointments.

Building a movement and preparing women candidates for elections were then discussed by the Sam Rainsy Party (SRP). “For Cambodian women, we build a movement by concentrating on the issue of justice,” according to Mu, also President of the party’s women’s wing. “In encouraging women to enter politics, we must begin with issues of women, not start with party concerns.”

The SRP’s women’s wing currently has 20,000 members and is pushing for the inclusion of 550 women as candidates in next year’s general elections. These candidates are being trained by Mrs. Kim Natsim, one of the party’s seasoned master trainers. The training program illuminates the meaning and significance of political participation and civic engagement, improves leadership and communication skills, and equips women candidates to inspire significant change in their communities.

The workshop ended with presentations of sample campaign messages and strategies by each member party present. Participants also attended a consultative meeting in order to evaluate the workshop and propose future programs for the CALD Women’s Caucus.

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This post was written by CALD