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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Thursday, 4 March 2004) . . Page.. 765 ..

CPA executive committee I have had the privilege of working closely with the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians Group, which has representatives from all Commonwealth countries.

Like Mrs Dunne, I am very happy to bring into this discussion the question of women in developing countries. I notice that Mrs Dunne has now left the chamber, so maybe she was not so interested in that. I am really pleased to see that, through the CWP, there is a growing awareness of the need to increase the number of women in our parliaments. The number of women elected to parliaments is a sensitive indicator of the place of women in the world. The UNIFEM 2000 report on the progress of the world’s women found that only Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland had achieved gender equality in secondary education, had reached the 30 per cent target for women in parliament and had a gender balanced workforce.

The Commonwealth’s analysis shows that Commonwealth countries have some way to go. The 2001 Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians database shows that the African region has 15.5 per cent women representatives, Asia 5.8 per cent, Australia 24.7 per cent, the British Isles and Mediterranean 18.6 per cent, the Caribbean, Americas and Atlantic 17.5 per cent, Canada 22 per cent, the Pacific area 8.7 per cent and Southeast Asia 8.5 per cent. That shows that there is quite a way to go.

The Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians Group began with an informal meeting of women in 1989 at a lunchtime meeting during a CPA conference. As is often the case, it started with women at an informal get-together, where there was an opportunity to talk to one other about the common experience of women in parliaments. That relationship gradually grew and a more formal organisation was formed. At the last meeting we had—in Bangladesh—another step was taken: we now have a chair who will be there for more than one year. So there will be more continuity of the work within the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians Group.

That is a good thing in my view because it will enable the organisation to influence the CPA and work more with that organisation to make sure that the projects funded by the CPA do support women, especially in developing countries where they are certainly in need of support. Various workshops are run which assist women to be candidates, teach them how to deal with the media and look at ways of subsidising the work of being a candidate if those women do not have economic independence—which is quite often the case. Other areas covered are how women can stay in office and how to support women once they are in parliament.

The family-friendly aspect is not a minor issue in those places and it is not a minor issue in Australian parliaments either. For women who work in parliament, I know that real crisis situations can develop around family decisions and work. I do not think this has ever been sufficiently recognised in this parliament. This is not just about women; it is also about men who have child-caring responsibilities.

This issue always comes up when you have any kind of conversation around how women can be parliamentarians. Quite often this is trivialised in the debates when people say, “Oh yes—well, you deal with that.” That is where I disagree totally. Whilst I would agree that it is potentially more of an issue in developing countries, where in some situations there is virtually no support at all because women do not have any economic

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