http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/2517078957

Women in Parliament

The international community has made a number of commitments to rectify the under-representation of women in parliament. For example, the equal participation of women and men in public life is one of the cornerstones of the 1979 United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), of which Canada is a signatory. Inequality between men and women in positions of power and decision-making was one of the twelve key areas identified in the landmark 1995 Beijing Platform for Action, the widely recognized minimum benchmark to ensure a critical mass of women parliamentarians has been set at 30%. By the end of 2005, however, the proportion of women in parliaments around the world stood at 16%; the proportion of women holding Cabinet-level office was even lower, at 14.3%.

Open All Close All