Less than 5 percent of cities are led by women and their lack of political participation is hampering progress in meeting international goals on making cities more sustainable and inclusive, a group of female mayors said on Friday.
The first female mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo said more must be done to ensure more women are elected to help build socially inclusive and equal cities.
“Women represent half of humanity and you can’t transform and build humanity if you ignore half of it,” Hidalgo said at the World Summit of Local and Regional Leaders in Bogota. “If we don’t include women it’s difficult to transform the cities we live in.”
Photo: EPA
UN member states last year agreed to end violence and discrimination against women and girls and make sure they have equal opportunities in all areas of life, including politics, as part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
However, with women making up less than 5 percent of the world’s mayors and about 20 percent of local councilors, females remain under-represented in urban government.
While at the national level the percentage of women in parliaments has nearly doubled in the past 20 years, they still make up less than a quarter of all parliamentarians, according to UN Women.
Hidalgo said it was important to work with men to boost women’s participation in politics and gender equality.
“The message isn’t to exclude the participation of men,” Hidalgo said. “We need an alliance, we need to have partnerships with progressive men.”
She said UN studies showed that having women in power, both in local and central government, can help to stem corruption.
“Corruption is an ill and when women have access to power they are less prone to falling into the phenomenon of corruption,” Hidalgo said.
Delegates at a UN conference in Ecuador scheduled to start tomorrow are to set out guidelines for the sustainable development of cities over the next 20 years by adopting a non-binding agreement, known as the New Urban Agenda.
“Inequality among women is felt very differently. They have more restrictions to access the labor market, to pensions,” said Ibon Uribe, mayor of Galdakao, a town in northern Spain. “To get more women elected we have to show the effects of such inequality and how inequality affects men and women differently.”
Uribe added introducing quotas to ensure women get elected into power was one way to increase their political participation.
Fatma Sahin, mayor of Gaziantep, a Turkish city of 2 million people, said one of her priorities was to ensure more girls go to school and have access to health services.
“We have created social policies that have put women and children at the center from the cradle to grave,” said Sahin, a former cabinet minister.
In Latin America, where about 80 percent of its 600 million people live in cities, a higher number than anywhere else, one key challenge is reaching women and children in slums.
“Improving gender equality means how cities can bring basic services to women,” Panama City Deputy Mayor Raisa Banfield said.
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