Women's Network (GGWN)

The Global Greens Women’s Network (GGWN) supports the participation of Green women worldwide in democratic political processes, by focusing on: 

• Capacity building and empowerment: training and developing skills, such as public speaking and leadership.
• Governance and participation: confronting inequalities at the organisational level and exchanging best practices to tackle them and promote participation.
• Campaigning about major topics relevant to women: such as gender justice and climate change.
• Carrying out formal functions as part of global Greens governance: e.g. nominating women to the Asia-Pacific Greens Federation (APGF) Council.

Contact: 

Merja Kähkönen for further information about the network including information on how to get involved.

Updates:

• Facebook page of the Global Greens Women's Network.
• Articles & Videos: relating to Women in Green Politics can be found by searching for GGWN.
• Join: The GGWN by submitting this form.  

Announcement:

Organisational Background:

Women and Green politics

There is a global correlation between Greens politics and higher rates of women’s political representation and participation. Countries with a strong Greens presence in parliament often have more women parliamentarians.

However, this is both not universal and insufficient, and Greens national parties continue to have problems with under-representation of women in publicly elected positions, as well as within internal positions in the parties. There has been no systematic research on gender equity amongst Greens parties to date.

The GGWN facilitates better understanding and action in women’s equal participation in political and party structures and activities; and women’s empowerment as agents of political, environmental and social change.  The GGWN does this by sharing existing skills, knowledge and resources; running training, mentorship and educational programmes; supporting individuals in their work; campaigning to raise awareness of these issues on a broader level; and conducting research to better understand the issues and possible ways of alleviating them.

The GGWN seeks to work with all Greens members across the world, including parliamentarians, other publicly elected office holders, internal office holders, and general members. 

Organisational structure

The Global Greens Women’s Network's organisational structure consists of:

• Convenor: Alex Bhathal (Australia)
• Secretary: Tamar Primoratz (Israel)
• Liaison with the Global Greens Coordination: Merja Kähkönen (Finland)
• Communications Administrator stewards the GGWN Facebook page and a Facebook group.
• Delegates from each Federation's regional Women's Network forms the governing body of the GGWN. 
• Project Coordinators from each Federation are responsible for implementing projects at the global and federal levels. 

Projects:

Global Greens Women’s Academy

Regular training and workshops to build skills and share knowledge and experience amongst women-identifying Greens members. These Academies will run in both face-to-face sessions, as well as online.

The Academy's key aims are:

• Capacity­ building and empowerment: training and developing skills (such as public speaking, policy development, fundraising skills) and leadership.
• Addressing governance and participation­ barriers to gender equality within political systems, including within Greens political systems, addressing inequalities at the organizational level and exchanging best practices to tackle them and to promote participation.
• Education on topics of relevance to women and gender. For instance, women and climate change.

The first face-to-face GGWN Academy will be held as a side-meeting of the 4th Global Greens Congress which will be held in Liverpool, UK, 30 March to 2 April 2017. This meeting will be open to all women-identifying Greens members around the world. The meeting will focus on building skills and sharing knowledge and experiences amongst women participants.

Intended Academy Workshops:

• Tackling gender inequality within political systems and Greens party structures
• Building pro-women political cultures and responding to anti-women, anti-feminist and misogynist practices
• The effects of climate change on women and power of women to act against climate change               
• Women as agents of change – sharing our success.

Following the first Global Greens Women’s Academy, we hope to create hard copy as well as web page publications of the Academy’s proceedings, including the outcomes achieved and activities undertaken, and provide resources and research for Greens members and others worldwide who are interested in the work of promoting women’s participation in democratic politics and in particular in Greens politics.

Mentorship programme

The GGWN proposes to run an ongoing mentorship programme, which will match Greens women around the world with one another, to build skills and knowledge and to share experiences.  The mentorship programme will be coordinated by the GGWN Coordination Group, once established.

Objectives, results and indicators

Aim 1: Capacity­ building & empowerment: training and developing skills and leadership.

• Objectives: The participants have improved their competencies and have
• a) better skills in influencing political decision making and in achieving political results,
• b) more confidence in public speaking
• c) achieved leadership roles within their parties and/or societies, and
• d) better organisational capacities.

Aim 2: Addressing governance and participation­ barriers to gender equality within political systems, including within Greens political systems, and solving inequalities at organizational level and exchanging best practices to tackle them and to promote participation.

• Objectives: The democratic culture of the Green parties has improved by women having
• a) achieved better positions in their parties, and
• b) influenced their parties such that the parties have developed tools for gender equality and women’s participation.

Aim 3: Education on topics of relevance to women and gender. For instance, women and climate change.

• Objectives: Women have better knowledge of the issues discussed and are able to
• a) use facts related to the topic, and
• b) have courage to argue for their views and to take political initiative regarding topics both within and outside their party.

In order to achieve our basic aims, the GGWN would need to achieve the following activities:

2016:

• Academy organisational setup
• established of a Steering Committee (5 members)
• established website to post pre-reading and resources; sharing of these with Greens parties and members around the world
• achieved online modules of education, forum
• booked venues
• booked speakers
• sending out of preliminary programme (by Sept 2016) for early registration
• publishing of programme (by Dec 2016)
• opening early registration (by Dec 2016).

2017:

• confirmation of speakers
• programme published
• holding the actual forum
• attendance of 80-100 participants
• participation of speakers – TED performances
• publishing of proceedings and outcomes.

2018: 

• research undertaken evaluating participants’ ongoing learning as a result of attending the Academy
• planning for the next Academy
• 150 participants engaged in using web resources. 

Actual outcomes of the overall GGWN activities:

• By 2018: 25% increase in the number of Greens women elected to public office in countries around the world.
• Specific increases in particular countries and regions, to be determined by research.

Type of Activities and Major target groups

Sustainability

Training of trainers

Sustainability is important for our project in two ways. As Greens, we think about ecological sustainability in all our actions. However, sustainability is also important in the sense of continuity of the Network and the permanence of its results.

As a global network, our work will mostly happen online. This means that resources are mostly used in change-making: training, sharing information and producing tools for political influence. The project resources are used to purchase services and not material, and only one live meeting, during the next Congress in 2017, is planned. Participation online will be possible in this case, as well.

During the project, a functioning and sustainable structure will be built for the network. The structure will utilise the existence of federal Women’s networks in Asia-Pacific and Europe and will support the formation of federal women’s networks in Africa and the Americas as well. This will strengthen the regional aspect and give a possibility to respond to different needs.

The sustainability of the results (capacity building, strengthening democracy and empowering Greens parties) will be assured by giving women the tools to utilise and multiply what they learn. Information and best practices gathered during the project will be made available online for everyone and translated into English, Spanish and French. During the project, we will ensure that the participants not only learn the content, but also gain the tools used, so that they are able to use them themselves when organising similar training and projects locally and regionally. This will be supported via the regional women’s networks. The networks are able to use regional and local funds and foundations available for support for such projects.

In the Congress, a host party will be appointed for the Network. The host party will be able to support the functioning of the network with its resources even when the Green Forum funding ends. In addition, part of the funds collected by the Global Greens fundraising campaign (Become a FROGG) may be channeled to the Women’s Network in the future. The Global Greens has also tried crowd funding, and as it turned out to be a promising tool for fundraising, it will be used in the future. Crowd funding can be a tool to fund the projects of the Women’s Network as well.