This article is written by Erin C. Houlihan, Program Director – Democratic Governance, National Democratic Institute (NDI).

  • The problem: Local governments tend to consider their work to be “gender neutral”, but this often ends up reinforcing existing power imbalances and may negatively impact different groups of women and girls, gender-diverse individuals and other marginalised communities.
  • Why it matters: Women’s meaningful inclusion in local governance is linked to better outcomes for democracy, stronger governance stability, more equitable legal frameworks, more inclusive social and political reforms and, in conflict-affected societies, more durable peace.
  • The solution: Local governments must adopt a gender intentional approach to transform the business of governance by seeking to identify and understand gender inequalities, gender-based constraints, and inequitable norms and dynamics operating within the community, and then take steps to address them in an inclusive and consultative way.

At the Women Deliver 2023 conference in Kigali, Rwanda, the National Democratic Institute (NDI) hosted a conversation among women leaders from government and civil society about the importance of gender intentional local governance, the successes and challenges women face in working to transform their communities and NDI’s new Local Government Gender Assessment and Action Planning guide.

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Speaking to an audience of feminists, youth, government officials, donors, civil society leaders, researchers and others, NDI’s panel underscored the importance of local governments as key entry points for advancing gender equality and deepening democracy, particularly in contexts of democratic backsliding and gender backlash. 

Speakers included Stacey Abrams, NDI Board Member and Political and Non-Profit Leader; Constance Nalishebo Muleabai, Mayor of Livingstone, Zambia; Aracely Carbajal Morales, Workers’ Rights Coordinator at Tequio Juridico, A.C. in Oaxaca, Mexico; and Pranvera Lipovica, NDI Program Director in Kosovo. The discussion was moderated by Sandra Pepera, NDI Senior Associate and Director for Gender, Women and Democracy. 

Local governments are the closest and most visible to the people.

Following the discussion, Erin Houlihan, NDI Program Director for Democratic Governance, presented NDI’s new Local Government Gender Assessment and Action Planning (LGGAAP) guide. The guide helps local governments, working in partnership with civil society and community members, to undertake a participatory gender assessment and action planning process to improve the daily business of governance. It was developed in collaboration with the Open Government Partnership (OGP) and is available in English, French, Spanish, Albanian and Georgian.

Women Deliver 2023From left to right: Sandra Pepera, Constance Nalishebo Muleabai, Aracely Carbajal Morales, Pranvera Lipovica and Stacey Abrams

The context

Local governments are the closest and most visible to the people. They often have substantial responsibility to provide vital services that directly affect residents’ quality of life. By being closer to the people, they can make more responsive policy decisions, allocate resources more effectively and be held more accountable by residents. Local governments also present more opportunities for women and other marginalised groups to engage in public life because there are more public office and civil service positions available, and because barriers to entry are often lower at the local level (though socio-cultural barriers often persist). 

Local governments often consider their work to be ‘gender neutral’ or ‘gender blind’ based on the mistaken assumption that public policies and services will benefit men and women equally.

Yet around the world, women’s parity gains are slipping and gender intentional governance is backsliding. According to UN Women, women’s representation in local deliberative bodies averages 35.5%, but country values range from 67% to just 1%. At the executive level, women constitute just 5% of mayors worldwide. Overall, gender parity has advanced just 4.1 percentage points since 2006 and the pace of change is slowing significantly. At the current rate of progress, it will take 169 years to reach economic parity and 162 years for political parity. 

The imperative

Lack of gender intentional governance holds significant consequences for communities and states alike. Evidence shows that women’s meaningful inclusion is linked to better outcomes for democracy, more sustainable peace and stronger governance stability. In part, this is because women govern differently. Their inclusion contributes to more equitable legal frameworks, more inclusive social and political reforms and, in conflict-affected societies, more durable political settlements and long-term peace. Lack of gender equality, on the other hand, lays the foundations of authoritarianism and is associated with higher levels of insecurity, including civil war and interstate conflict (see Houlihan 2021, p. 60-62).

Yet local governments often consider their work to be ‘gender neutral’ or ‘gender blind’ based on the mistaken assumption that public policies and services will benefit men and women equally. However, since gender inequalities are embedded in all societies across the globe, laws and policies that do not take into account the different roles and diverse needs of women and men, and the diverse gender experiences within a society, end up maintaining the status quo and reinforcing existing power imbalances. Further, even where laws and policies treat everyone equally, they are often not equitably administered and may negatively impact different groups of women and girls, gender-diverse individuals and other marginalised communities. 

To counter this, governments at all levels, and particularly local governments, must adopt a gender intentional approach to transform the business of governance. NDI defines gender intentional local governance as the deliberate and consistent application of a gender lens to everything that a government does. Gender intentional governments seek to identify and understand gender inequalities, gender-based constraints and inequitable norms and dynamics operating within the community and the government, and then take steps to address them in a systematic, inclusive and consultative way. This is why NDI developed the LGGAAP guide.

Lessons to learn

Local governments are crucial, but not well understood by central authorities

Speaking from her experience as the first-ever woman mayor of Livingstone, Zambia, Constance Muleabai pointed out that “most everything you can think of starts with local government.” Yet, as both panellists and an audience member from Uganda pointed out, central governments do not necessarily understand the importance of local governments, how they work, or the reality of their funding and capacity support needs. Further, there is often limited data to demonstrate and quantify needs into evidence-based budgetary demands. Evidence shows that poor-quality and inadequate service provision, as well as weak infrastructure, disproportionately impacts women and girls.

Stacey Abrams noted that “I was a state legislator, and I ran for office for the state because I had worked at the city and realised no one in higher office remembered how cities work, how local governments work.” 

A key lesson is that local governments need to advocate for themselves and their constituents; they need to go to the capital and describe what they are doing to highlight their accomplishments and demonstrate their needs. NDI’s LGGAAP process can be a useful tool in this endeavour, in part by helping a local government to gather data and improve its performance from a gender perspective, and then use this information in dialogues with central authorities.

Men, the media and political parties must be allies in changing exclusionary norms

In a majority of contexts, politics is still not seen as a space for women. As Pranvera Lipovica shared about the Kosovo experience, even as women’s representation at the local level and national levels has increased, the environment remains exclusionary. Part of the challenge lies with political parties. Globally, party leadership remains dominated by men and women candidates receive less financial, logistical and technical support and attention. In majoritarian districts, women are not necessarily placed in “winnable” races.

Party self-assessments, such as those that comprise NDI’s Win with Women approach, cross-party networking among women local leaders and support systems both inside and outside political parties can begin to disrupt power imbalances within parties. 

Additionally, men both inside and outside political parties must be engaged as partners to strengthen gender international local governance. Younger men and boys should be engaged as well through reformed education curriculum and more inclusive and gender-sensitive cultural practices and events.

A third channel is the media. Media portrayals of women in the public sphere can affect voter behaviour and socio-cultural barriers to women’s participation in and influence over politics. Violence Against Women in Politics (VAW-P) is on the rise. It discourages many women from entering politics in the first place, and prompts some who have entered to leave. Mayor Constance Muleabai and Stacey Abrams both noted experiencing negative media attention that focused on them as women rather than on their campaign platforms or political activities; they have also both experienced online harassment and threats. Pranvera Lipovica called on journalists to improve their portrayals of women and to report cases of VAW-P for what it is – gender-based violence – that has no place in a democratic society.

Data, data, data

Several panellists and audience members noted concerns about the availability and quality of data as a key barrier to advancing gender intentional local governance. Challenges include a lack of gender and sex-disaggregated data at the local level, bias in data collection, a lack of diversity and representation among data collectors, limitations in data accessibility and reuse, and a host of other gaps. 

Aracely Carbajal Morales noted that data is of vital importance for her work with Indigenous women in Oaxaca, Mexico, where community members use local community assemblies to validate data being presented by civil society regarding human rights issues and government policies and processes. 

In Oaxaca, the socio-cultural and institutional realms are closely intertwined since local government comprises traditional leadership structures. This makes participation in community assemblies particularly critical for women to assert themselves as authoritative sources of community (and governance) information, and to advocate for enhanced data links to national databases (for example, on land registries).

Another key lesson is to look to academia for help. Stacey Abrams shared her experience engaging with local scholars and urged activists and women political leaders to reach out to young scholars and graduate students who could make a contribution, and to emphasise the importance of accurate and gender-sensitive data collection.

A way forward

NDI will continue to support gender intentional local governance by working with and learning from local governments and civil society partners around the world. In the current context, we must be innovative and willing to take risks. 

For donors, this means renewing and sustaining commitments to funding experimental, locally-driven programmes on gender intentional governance that will contribute to global learning. For the democracy assistance community, it means deepening investments in local partners and local institutions, and building and supporting programmes rooted in local needs and local and national contexts. It also means more systematic engagement with and learning from traditional and informal governance systems because, in a majority of places, these are the systems that are the most relevant in the lives of women and girls. For local governments and communities, it means making the decision to deliberately and consistently apply a gender lens to the business of governance. 

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