Regional Cooperation for Gender Equality

Gender Equality is an inalienable part of social justice and social democracy. In most Asian countries, there are laws for women’s advancement and gender justice. Unfortunately, these often face difficulties in implementation. In daily life, patriarchal power relations continue to be firmly entrenched. A closer look into many countries shows an array of discrimination, disadvantage and violence against women and girls. Traditional societal norms are strong. They govern private and public life as well as all societal institutions from the family to the security forces.

The good news is that every year spells progress in terms of formal equality. Legislations including women’s quotas in national parliaments and in local governance structures in South and South-East Asia have created a better foundation for committed women leaders. However, they cannot automatically guarantee comprehensive and equitable policies for women as well as gender equality and equity in all spheres of society. What they certainly did, accomplish was the enlargement the political sphere of influence for women.

FES provides a platform for using the new spheres of influence, developing new ideas on how to achieve gender equality and women’s advancement, and for discussing these ideas with political decision-makers. Together with our partner organizations, our aim is to develop gender-sensitive consultancy modules. Every FES-country office has an individual strategy on how to integrate a gender-sensitive and gender-specific approach to their national work in their country as well as how to promote women’s empowerment through impacting on national policies. At the same time, there is a perceived need to strengthen the efforts to achieve these goals through a regional agenda. Thus, through its Gender Equality Project Asia, FES strives to support Asia-wide political processes of regional integration, political campaigning, awareness-raising and best practice exchange on different gender-related topics. The Gender Equality Project Asia is based in New Delhi, India.