Gender equality focus of OSCE meeting in Vienna

ODIHR and the OSCE’s Kazakh Chairmanship hosted a two-day Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting in Vienna on 6-7 May. The subject of the meeting, gender equality, is one that the OSCE has focused a lot of attention on in recent years.

The opening session saw numerous calls for greater efforts to ensure that women are able to play a greater role in public life. The event’s keynote speaker and Portugal’s State Secretary for Equality, Elza Pais, said that women’s equal participation in public life “is not about political correctness or a question of benevolence vis-à-vis women.

It is about the efficient development of society.” The meeting also involved discussions on how to empower women as members of political parties and as elected officials. For more information on ODIHR’s work in the field of gender equality, see: //www.osce.org/odihr/13374.html.