UCLG calls for locally elected women to #BeCounted on International Women’s Day 2017

UCLG, with the support of UN Women, is calling for a global indicator to track gender equality in local government and drive the achievement of SDG 5.

On International Women’s Day 2017, UCLG wishes to underline the vital importance of increasing the proportion of women in locally elected office as part of the global commitment to Sustainable Development Goal 5 on gender equality and women’s empowerment.

UCLG estimates that around 20% of councilors and just 5% of mayors globally are women. However, there currently is a lack of comparable global data on the number of women in local councils. The lack of a reliable indicator on women’s representation in local government makes it very difficult to track progress on the achievement of SDG5 across the world.

For this reason, on the 13th of March, in the Framework of the 61st session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, Mayor of Paris and UCLG Co-President, Anne Hidalgo, will lead a delegation of women mayors to call on the UN Statistical Commission to develop proposed SDG indicator 5.5.1 on the representation of women in local government.

At the same time, we call on national governments and multilateral organizations to continue to support regional and international networks of local governments to facilitate knowledge exchange between their members on the promotion of female participation and the mainstreaming of gender equality policies.

UCLG and our members reaffirm our commitment to the Paris Local and Regional Government Global Agenda for Equality of Women and Men in Local Life, signed by hundreds of local elected women and men in 2013, and to putting the goal of gender equality at the centre of our agenda.

If you agree that we need to count locally elected women to achieve gender equality in local government, support the campaign on social media using the hashtags: #BeCounted, #WomensDay and #IWD2017.

United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG).