Box 2: The Women’s Parliamentary Caucus in Pakistan This is where organisations like the Commonwealth provide a crucial service. Many of the cultural and systemic problems faced in one country will be replicated in others. Solutions found in one country can therefore be adapted and implemented in others. I have seen this sharing in action in recent months through the CPA-UK. For example, I was recently involved in a conference in the UK parliament which brought together female parliamentarians from Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. These three countries have different levels of development, face different internal pressures and politics and, indeed, at a national level there are serious political frictions between them. However, despite this, women parliamentarians are able to come together to share problems that they have in common and the solutions that are being implemented. This information sharing is part of the process of helping communities to discover what they want and how they might achieve it for themselves. What I have outlined so far you might call bottom-up support: the international community working with local communities to create the conditions for political empowerment. What is also needed is encouragement from those who are already politically involved. For development work to gain enough momentum to result in political empowerment, it must be pushed from the grass roots and pulled by the existing political elite. And this is what is happening in Pakistan – the Women’s Parliamentary Caucus encouraging micro-financing to help women in the community, while at the same time providing them with role models and examples of what can be done. Ga i n i n g mome n t um t h r o u g h wome n ’s p o l i t i c a l l e a d e r s h i p I have so far addressed the issue of achieving women’s political empowerment in the developing world. But while this is central to the problems of development, it is not just a development issue. In the developed world we still struggle with achieving political equality. Women in developed countries have educational equality, economic emancipation and equality of political representation, and yet still do not have full political participation. This can be seen in the membership figures of both houses of the UK parliament. Despite 85 years of women having the franchise, only 22 per cent of MPs and peers are women! So I think a modicum of modesty is called for when we preach the message of political emancipation in the developing world. Finally, let me end with an apposite quote: ‘Of all the evils for which man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading, so shocking or so brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity: the female sex.’ And that was said by Mahatma Gandhi. Commonwealth Governance Handbook 2013/14 39 Baroness Frances D’Souza studied anthropology at University College London and took her doctorate at the University of Oxford. She taught anthropology at the London School of Economics (1973–80) and Oxford Brookes University (1977–80). She entered the House of Lords in 2004 and became Lord Speaker in September 2011, the second to be elected to the post. Baroness D'Souza has previously directed independent research into famine and emergency aid, and has a special interest in human rights. She has worked with a range of organisations including the REDRESS Trust (as director 2003–04, consultant 2004–06) and Article 19 (executive director, 1989–98). While visiting Pakistan recently as part of a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA-UK) delegation we met with the Women’s Parliamentary Caucus for almost three days of intensive discussion. This significant group of women parliamentarians from both the National Assembly and the Senate have been successful not only in forcing through gender balanced legislation but also in striking out discriminatory statutes. At the same time there has been substantial investment in developing the Millennium Development Goals and, in particular, microfinance schemes. At the risk of too great a simplification I would suggest that there are several ingredients in the Pakistan example that bear further scrutiny. First, there are approximately 100 female parliamentarians who are members of the Women’s Parliamentary Caucus; they are from all parties and have been successful in persuading male parliamentarians to support their efforts resulting in sympathetic legislation. There is political will based on a strong lead from the female Speaker of the National Assembly. One area they have concentrated on is promoting microfinance services to women. There are a number of indigenous organisations involved, ranging from the National Commission on the Status of Women, foundations and think tanks to grass-roots skills training programmes. A large amount of money is available for microfinance schemes, which appear to achieve a 98 per cent success rate in terms of successful payback. One example we came across was the Kashf Foundation. This is a home-grown organisation with the goal of alleviating poverty, especially amongst women. It has the explicit aim of enhancing their economic role and decision-making capacity. The foundation is supported by third parties but within eight years of its creation it became financially sustainable.
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