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Titus (r) trains women leaders in Kyiv.
Dina Titus, former member of the U.S. House and 20-year member and former minority leader of the Nevada State Senate, recently spent a week in Ukraine working to help aspiring and elected women politicians and political party representatives overcome the particular challenges that women face in politics.
Traveling with Gail Tuzzolo, a campaign consultant from Nevada, the two emphasized the importance of addressing underlying issues of discrimination facing women and helping each other — even across party lines — to get more women into positions of power.
“I think they were really hungry to hear what we had to say,” Titus said on her return.
Despite the prominence of former Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko and a few other women in leadership positions, traditional gender roles still prevail in Ukraine. There are no women in the Cabinet of Ministers or among regional-level governors. Women make up only 8 percent of Ukrainian parliamentarians and they tend to vote with their party, rather than joining together to pursue common interests.
Partisanship runs high in Ukraine, but Titus said the women MPs she and Tuzzolo met were receptive to the idea of an informal caucus that might tackle common issues. “We tried to focus on issues that weren’t so partisan,” said Titus. “I used the example of ‘potty parity,’ in Nevada – getting more women’s restrooms in public buildings. No matter what party you belong to, it’s a common problem.” Issues like child care or women’s health care have the potential to bridge a similar divide in Ukraine, she said.
Titus also worked with women outside the capital who are hoping to run for local offices, many of whom are young and haven’t run before. The women were enthusiastic, some having ridden a train all night to attend the training session in Kyiv. Sharing personal stories about the obstacles she faced during campaigns and in office, Titus discussed how to overcome some of the challenges Ukrainian women face, such as receiving less financial support from political parties.
“We tried to tell them how important volunteers are,” Titus said. “Mostly they just hire people to hand out brochures or give out information, and the same people who might work for you today will work for your opponent tomorrow. So the idea of building up a volunteer base was rather an unusual idea.” She also stressed forming personal connections by going door to door as another strategy for winning votes when facing a lack of funds or media attention.
At the end of the seminar, the women exchanged email addresses with the promise to keep in touch. “We kept telling them, ‘You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. If it works in one place, maybe it would work in your community, so you need to be talking to each other, seeing what the others are doing.’”
Titus and Tuzzolo also met with representatives of the government party, the Party of Regions, as well as from two emerging opposition parties, Udar and Front of Change, which are developing women’s departments. These departments provide a way for parties to educate their members on gender issues and to recruit and train women candidates. They also discussed the importance of establishing committees to oversee aspects of the parties’ work with women, including recruitment and communication, the role of women in building a corps of party volunteers, and ways of incorporating women’s input into party platforms.
Titus also met with civil society groups that are working to change the election law and to expand freedom of assembly rights. She discussed how to lobby, ways to get public support, and strategies for forming and maintaining a coalition.
“It was fascinating to learn firsthand about the culture and political history of a country that became independent of the Soviet Union just 20 years ago and is now struggling along the path toward democracy. It became very clear that women are critical change agents in this transformation,” she said.
Related:
- Former Congresswoman emphasized the value of oversight to Russian Duma»
- Ukrainian women win local office against the odds»
- In Kyrgyzstan, women poised to take leadership roles in political parties»
Published Aug. 11, 2011
