PACE President Rik Daems has called for the Parliamentary Assembly to achieve gender parity, launching the hash-tag #IWant5050 in a video clip to mark International Womens’ Day (8 March 2020).
The President pointed out that the Assembly – which brings together parliamentarians from the 47 Council of Europe nations – had “an issue” in that it did not have equal numbers of women and men.
“70 years ago, at our first session, things were much worse,” he pointed out. “There were around a hundred male representatives, but only two women.”
In 2010, the Assembly introduced a new rule for national delegations which required them to include at least one member of “the under-represented sex”, and today women make up a third of the Assembly.
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“But I want the Assembly to be a place of true equality,” concluded the President. “I want to make it fifty-fifty.”
PACE