Leadership continues to be a male domain in Bhutan. Women representation in the leadership sphere is largely insignificant, both at the national and local government levels. Bhutan Network for Empowering Women (B-NEW) wants to change the trend. It wants to see increased women participation in the next local government elections and is working towards it.
As a step towards the goal, B-NEW, is working to rope in more women, to not just contest, but win as well. B-NEW aims to raise women participation in the next local government election to 20 percent.
During its National Conference held in Monggar earlier this week, B-NEW highlighted the reasons why women representation in the leadership position still fall far behind men.
“We are very pleased to see that number of women participating has grown and we believe that this is the good sign for how the situation will be in the next local government election in 2016, where we hope that more women will participate,” said Bjoin Forte, the Director of Danish Institute for Parties and Democracy.
The two-day conference was supported by the Danish Institute for Parties and Democracy.