Violence Against Women as Impediment to Political Participation

Violence against women, both online and offline, impacts negatively on women’s participation in politics and elections – and something must be done about it.

This was the motivation behind the workshop organized by the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD) on the sidelines of the Bali Civil Society and Media Forum 2023.  Held on 29-30 November 2023 in Bali, Indonesia, the event took a deep dive on Violence Against Women in Politics (VAWP) to come up with a multi-layered and multi-stakeholder response to this worrying issue.

During the event’s opening plenary, former Thai parliamentarian Pannika Wanich highlighted the need to make gender-based violence a thing of the past when she said, “The next generation need not focus on the same topic again.”  Relatedly, Allison Merchant of Open Government Partnership argued that key to addressing gender-based violence are open data and collaboration among various stakeholders. Finally, UN Women Indonesia Country Representative and Liaison to ASEAN, Jamshed M. Kazi, emphasized the systemic elements of the problem when she said: “We shouldn’t be fixing you (women in general), we should be fixing the system.” 

Apart from the engaging opening plenary, the workshop featured a variety of approaches which included lightning talks, panel discussion, world café and action dialogues.  The action dialogues were facilitated using the so-called three horizons framework, which “connects the present with desired (or espoused) futures, and helps to identify the divergent futures which may emerge as a result of conflict between the embedded present and these imagined futures.” Through this model, the workshop participants were able to come up with recommendations on how to address VAWP, and consequently, to further promote women’s political participation.   

The CALD Women’s Caucus was represented in the workshop by its chairperson, Jaslyn Go. Reflecting on her key take-aways from the event, she said: “In the Asia-Pacific, while progress has been made in recent decades in terms of increasing women’s representation in national parliament, the regional percentage still lags compared to the global average.  This workshop affirms that part of the reason for this is the continuing violence committed against women at various levels and across several platforms.  In this light, we in the CALD Women’s Caucus commit to promote greater awareness among our member political parties regarding this problem, as well as empower our women members to counter such violence whenever it happens. The work is cut out for us, I must say.”