Opening remarks

27 October 2022

Good morning,

Honorable guests, ladies and gentlemen, and women leaders of Mongolia,

 I am pleased to be here today and speaking with you again. 

Women around world have been fighting for their political rights for hundreds of years, yet we are still yet to achieve equal rights and participation as well as gender parity, especially, at the decision-making levels.

Although we have countless studies that prove gender equality is one of the key factors for development as well as numerous international conventions that guarantee women’s rights, progress has been too little and too slow thus far.

• As of September 2022, there are 30 female presidents and prime ministers in 28 countries in the world. In Mongolia, we are still yet to see female president or prime minister. According to UN Women, at today's rate, gender parity will not be achieved at the executive government level for at least another 130 years. 130 years!
• At the parliamentary and national legislative decision-making levels, only 26 percent of all national parliamentarians are women on average. In Mongolia, the percentage is only at 17%. As per the same study above, gender parity at the parliamentary and national legislative decision-making level won’t be reached for the next 40 years. 
• At the local decision-making levels, only two countries have reached 50 percent female representation with 20 additional countries with more than 40 percent representation of women. In Mongolia, it is still below 30%.

Equal political participation and power sharing between women and men at the decision-making level is adopted in the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, yet, these statistics I mentioned above clearly show why we must “accelerate” our push and why the movement for change is urgent.

That is why we have gathered today at this forum to see how we can accelerate this lagging progress and bring about substantial change nationwide in Mongolia.

I would like to thank KOICA for the supporting and funding the UNDP’s "Promoting gender equality in public decision-making and women's empowerment in Mongolia" project as well as the various national stakeholders for your support in making this event and movement possible.

Among many interventions that we are supporting through the project, some of the main proposed solutions are the suggested change in the Law on Elections in terms of increasing the quota of female candidates to 35-40%, making the electoral system fair and just for women where all votes count and including funding mechanisms that support gender equality in the Law on Political Parties to increase women’s participation in the decision-making level in Mongolia.

However, improving the legal environment alone won’t bring about the change we want to see. Perhaps, an even bigger barrier for women to enter politics so far has been traditional stereotypes. Unless men and women come together to address stereotypes and effect change in people’s attitudes towards women, the real and impactful change will not be possible. To this end, I call on you to speak out to counter stereotypes wherever you are and appeal to people around you to do the same. Only then, we can start to see change in people’s understanding of what gender equality means in reality.

Today, women's rights movements across the world are more active than ever as the problems and challenges are getting larger in scope due to the ongoing global crises including the pandemic and geopolitical crises.

The Women’s Leadership Network, established with the support of our project, is truly one of the great examples of a grassroot movement that is a driving force for achieving gender parity and the Sustainable Development Goals in Mongolia. I commend the commitment and dedication of all women and men here today for your active role and participation to make this network successful and accelerate the movement for change in Mongolia.

UNDP Mongolia remains committed to support the Government of Mongolia and people of Mongolia – all the women and, girls and boys – to achieve gender equality at all decision-making levels to build a more sustainable and inclusive future for Mongolia.

Thank you.