New Delhi, Oct 2 (IANS) President Pranab Mukherjee will Wednesday inaugurate the seventh meeting of women speakers of parliament, which will exchange experiences on gender issues.
The two-day meeting on the theme “gender sensitive parliaments” will be attended by MPs and will adopt an outcome document.
Being held at the initiative of Meira Kumar, the first woman to hold the office of speaker in the country, the meeting is an annual event.
According to an official statement, the meeting is being hosted by the Indian parliament and the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
The statement said annual meetings of women speakers of parliaments are organised to provide to women speakers a forum to exchange ideas and experiences on gender issues which are of interest to national and international agendas. The idea is premised on the notion that women need to be in parliaments in order to ensure that the laws are made by both women and men.
The statement said that according to data available, only 37 women preside over 190 parliaments across the world, 77 of which are bicameral. “As such, women occupy only 13.5 percent of the total number of 274 posts of presiding officers of parliament or of one of its houses,” the statement said.
