LESSON
Lesson Learned: Women in Democratic Transition in Egypt
Using credible data and statistics, the project made a tangible and significant contribution to advancing women’s democratic rights. The grantee was a leading force in lobbying for constitutional measures to ensure women’s representation – unsuccessful in the case of parliament but successful in the case of local councils. It also took the lead in successfully advocating for the institution of female quotas on political lists for the 2015 parliamentary elections and the adoption of a political parties’ Code of Ethics (formulated by the project, based on a situation analysis and consultations with 20-30 political parties) regarding women’s democratic participation.
Project Name
Project Partner
The Egyptian Center for Women's Rights
Project Description
The project was motivated by women’s low political representation in Egypt. Despite women's active participation as voters and change-makers during the Arab Spring, their representation in Parliament deteriorated following abolition of the quota from around 12% in 2010 to 2% of the 2011/2012 parliament. The project built on the recommendations and results of as previous (2009-11) UNDEF-funded project. A significant proportion of women who received training as part of the project ran for political office, and a significant proportion of these succeeded, demonstrating concrete project impact. While many other factors were at work, based on figures analyzed that training made at least some direct contribution to female success during the 2015 elections. Combining party and individual candidates, the UNDEF project financed the training of 16% of the successful 56 party list candidates and 21% of the 19 successful independent candidates.
Report
Evaluation Date
July 2015
Theme
Country