The Women in Parliaments Global Forum (WIP), the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) are developing a toolkit to support female parliamentarians in their work on taxation in their national contexts.
Taxation is the biggest source of public finance and in developing countries taxes raise up to ten times more revenues than traditional aid. Taxation systems can also play role in achieving global goals such as gender equality and women’s empowerment. As gatekeepers of national budgets, Parliamentarians play a key role in creating a transformative financing agenda especially for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Please complete the survey, linked below, which was introduced last month at the UN Third International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. At the conference, NDI, UNECA and WIP organized a side event for female MPs that focused on the role of legislators in domestic resource mobilization to advance gender equality as part of the Post-2015 Agenda.
Survey responses will give us a baseline of information on the various legislative budgetary landscapes, and help us understand the current levels of and potential for women’s participation in budget and revenue processes. These are critical inputs to help us deliver a targeted, practical, and accessible toolkit. To ensure diverse representation of parliamentarians worldwide, the assessment is available in Arabic, English, French, and Spanish:
Arabic: http://bit.ly/
English: http://bit.ly/
French: http://bit.ly/
Spanish: http://j.mp/FFGenderEquality_
Please do take 20 minutes to complete the survey by Friday, September 11. Your information will remain confidential.
We will send the completed toolkit to survey respondents who submit an email address.
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More information on the survey and the SDGs:
The Sustainable Development Goals, which will be adopted in September 2015, include an increased focus on gender equality and women’s empowerment. The Addis Ababa action agenda emphasizes the importance of domestic resource mobilization in achieving those goals. Our particular interest is in ensuring that female parliamentarians are provided with the information necessary to make informed decisions about the various policy options available to national legislatures so that both tax collection and national budget allocations are implemented in ways that promote gender equality and women’s empowerment.
For those of you who participated in our side event “Money Matters: Female Parliamentarians and Domestic Financing for an Equal Post 2015 Agenda” in Addis, we hope you enjoyed the insightful presentations from the expert panel. Due to technical difficulties, we were unable to collect responses submitted during the session. Please participate in this exercise and follow the links below to register your responses.