#MujeresOGP: Bringing more women to the open government movement

In late October 2015, during the Global Summit of the Open Government PartnershipThe Open Government Partnership (OGP) is a multi-stakeholder initiative focused on improving government transparency, ensuring opportunities for citizen participation in public matters, and strengthen... More, we participated in the first meeting of women from different countries of the world that work on different themes of open government, with the goal of strengthening democracy in Latin America.

Our first meeting, held at the cultural hub Punto Gozadera in Mexico City, marked an important milestone. It gathered some 20 women from various countries, occupations and backgrounds, who are working on transparencyAccording to OGP’s Articles of Governance, transparency occurs when “government-held information (including on activities and decisions) is open, comprehensive, timely, freely available to the pub... More, civic and technological innovation, civic hacking and open dataBy opening up data and making it sharable and reusable, governments can enable informed debate, better decision making, and the development of innovative new services. Technical specifications: Polici.... They are all seeking to increase civic participation and achieve the broader objective of making governments more transparent and accountable. This was an opportunity for dialogue and for sharing ideas and visions to strengthen the role of women in the open government realm.

We gathered many perspectives from women that work in civil society organizations and Latin American governments, as well as academics, hackers, journalists and activists. The dialogue led to a key common conclusion: we need to put together a task force of women leaders from all different sectors to set the stage for genderOGP participating governments are bringing gender perspectives to popular policy areas, ensuring diversity in participatory processes, and specifically targeting gender gaps in policies to address gov... More diversity in government policies, foster women’s leadership in decision making and public policy, ensure gender mainstreaming in open government processes, favor the inclusionOGP participating governments are working to create governments that truly serve all people. Commitments in this area may address persons with disabilities, women and girls, lesbian, gay, bisexual, tr... More of diverse social groups and make our work more visible in order to ensure the participation of more women in open government initiatives.

Advancing gender equality and closing the inequality gap means working in pursuit of basic human rightsAn essential part of open government includes protecting the sacred freedoms and rights of all citizens, including the most vulnerable groups, and holding those who violate human rights accountable. T... and, given the current context, represent critical components of the global efforts around the Agenda 2030 for sustainable development. Strengthening and empowering women, through building more opportunities to participate in the public arena, means strengthening and empowering communities and states in the 21st century.

Moving Toward Open States

Today, governments are becoming aware of the need to incorporate mechanisms to change the culture and advance the open government framework. This is evidenced by the fact that, five years after its launch in 2011, 70 countries are now members of OGP. This large group of countries seeking to transition to more open governments holds key political potential to bring attention to gender equality as a tool to achieve more equal and human rights-centered democracies.

We are seeing growth in spaces for making governments more transparent, collaborative and participative in order to transform governments that have traditionally been opaque. We have also seen growth in the sharing of information, innovative experiences and perspectives, as well as the implementation of meaningful public policy. However, it is clear that these spaces are dominated by male leadership.

It is often said that the lack of female leadership in the open government movement is a result of a lack of skill or due to women’s personal decisions; it has been claimed that women have not shown interest in this topic. However, this fails to account for the widespread gender inequality and the broader inequality that prevails in our societies.

Women, Inequality and Politics in Latin American Countries

The open government movement is not an isolated idea, and it is impacted by the same issues that surround the public, social and cultural domains in every country. Therefore, the lack of female leadership is not solely a manifestation of a condition of the open government movement, but a consequence of a broader societal context.

Two key factors that allow for strengthening autonomy of women and, therefore, their ability to make decisions, are educationAccountability within the public education system is key to improving outcomes and attainment, and accountability is nearly impossible without transparent policies and opportunities for participation ... and employment. In the last decades, we have successfully advanced towards closing the education gap, including in higher education. However, this has not yet been successfully translated into equality in job opportunities: we have not yet broken the glass ceiling or achieved equal status and number in leadership roles.

Latin America is no exception. In this region, women are getting better access to jobs, including in the legislative branch (largely as a result of quotas) and academia. However, women are still mostly absent from political party leadership, union leadership, and corporate leadership. For example, only six women have been elected as president in the past 50 years in Latin America. This executive decision-making position has historically been dominated by men, and this is mirrored in ministries, subnational executive branches, and the majority of institutional structures. Women only reach certain heights. And when they do, they are generally subject to a higher level of scrutiny than their male counterparts.

This trend is also present in the open government movement, in open data and civic innovation, and tightly linked to technological innovation: women often occupy lower-status positions, but rarely hold decision-making roles, and therefore have low visibility. There is often an overlap with other types of inequality, including socio-economic.

It must be a priority for us to develop an inclusive and cross-cutting open government agenda where every voice is part of the creation and implementation of innovative and effective public policies for transparency, collaboration and participation. Open government initiatives that are designed to strengthen democracy will not reach their full potential as long as they fail to promote gender and racial equality.

OGP Women

Months after our meeting in the cultural hub in Mexico City, we gathered in the second meeting for women during the Regional Americas Meeting in Montevideo, Uruguay, last June. We made progress in the creation of a partnership of women leaders from civil society, academia, government, international bodies, and corporations to further the participation of women.

#MujeresOGP seeks to represent a channel for communication and impact for greater visibility of women working on open government, as well as a mechanism for creating knowledge for influencing decision makers that advance transparency, accountability, trust building and the creation of mechanisms for collaboration toward open states.

We now have to identify key women and motivate them to join the open government movement in their own countries. For that purpose, we will launch in the coming months a platform that includes mechanisms for dialogue and identification of activities that will strengthen bonds and actions to promote gender equality. Over the past month, we have been creating a women’s directory with a growing number of participants, currently 130. Our ultimate goal is to build a community of women capable of channeling specific demands for public policies to further equality.

We invite all women who work in the open government movement to be a part of our project, Women in Open Government. by using the #MujeresOGP hashtag and by filling out this application form.

We want to gather all the women in the Americas, including members and non-members of OGP, to be a part of this shared space for exchange and impact.