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Topic Discussion III
Participation in
Democratic Decision-Making:
The Vital Voices of Women, Civil Society and
Pluralism
Room 2
(21 of 21 pages)
Marina Ottaway: Thank you. I will try to keep my comments to a minimum
because I have just been told that we all have to be in the lobby already to go at 4:30. So that gives us very
little time. I just limit my comments to two points. One is that in the discussion, it has become quite clear that
the issue of women participation is an integral part of the issue of democracy. That we cannot talk about democracy
without women participation. I sense still quite a bit of disagreement, and I'm of two minds myself on the issue
of whether quarters are a legitimate way to promote that participation, but there is no doubt that there is a lot
that needs to be done.
The other point that was raised by two of the speakers and I wish we had spent more time on that frankly, is that
equality of participation for women is not sufficient because if in most countries, including the emerging democracies,
women participated at the same levels of men, we still would not have democracy. Because there is not enough participation
on the part of anybody. And some of the points that were brought up about the importance of extending participation
between elections, about the importance of opening up the meetings of parliaments, the meetings of local councils,
to the general public, the importance of the media in the schools participating in civic education are crucial
issues that need to be taken up. And I was particularly interested in this idea of the importance for countries
of elaborating a charter or rights and duties of citizens, and whether that might help focus a national debate
on the issue of participation. So let me stop here and thank you all for your participation. I want to apologize
in particular to the Spanish speakers in the group, because we had somebody a problem through the translation,
and I don't think we heard you quite as clearly as we should have. So it goes. Thank you.
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