FINANCIAL INCENTIVE CANNOT BOOST WOMEN PARTICIPATION IN POLITICS

We would like to respond to an initiative presented by the political party "Georgian Dream - Democratic Georgia", which was announced by Archil Talakvadze, the Speaker of the Parliament, during the public discussion of the draft constitutional amendments on September 14. According to the amendment, “a political party that presents one woman in every three candidates in the electoral list in the 2020 parliamentary elections shall receive 30 percent more funding.”

Specifically, pursuant to the amendments into the Law On Political Associations of Citizens: “A party receiving funding in accordance with the procedure set forth in this article shall receive a bonus in the amount of 30% of the basic funding under paragraph 3 of this article if one in every three candidates is of different gender on the elections list submitted by a party for the last parliamentary and local self-government."

According to the proposed amendment, if a party complies with the incentive rule in parliamentary and local self-government elections, it may receive a financial bonus. However, it is of note that the above-mentioned initiative will not actually contribute to the increase of women's participation in politics due to the following reasons:

• It is not result-oriented - ensuring the gender balance in the proportional list does not mean an unconditional increase in women's representation and obtaining mandate;
• The financial bonus may not be a sufficient incentive for all political parties - the practice has shown that the ruling and highly-supported parties do not utilize incentives at all;
• The purpose of the financial bonus is not determined - the money received is not spent on women's empowerment and gender equality.

Therefore, we believe that a temporary compulsory mechanism - the quota with relocation- must be introduced in order to boost women's involvement in politics.  

Given the existing reality, the Task Force on Women's Political Participation suggests introducing the mandatory gender quota gradually - at the first stage, for the 2021 local self-government elections (in the proportional system) and then to the parliamentary elections.

Task Force on Women's Political Participation