WFEAs most pressing goal is to empower 2000 women to stand for public office by 2022. The torrid news coming from Canberra relating to sexual harassment/assault/bullying/misogyny has seen an unprecedented number of women sign up to our programs. We now have a waiting list we’re having trouble servicing.
WFEA is seeking funding to run an additional six EQUIP training programs through 2021 to allow us to scale and meet increased demand for women seeking information on how to get elected to create positive change for their communities. These costs include: 2 program facilitators and associated costs, catering and venue hire, promotion of events, outreach to local communities, follow-on resourcing, IT and administration.
Achieving gender and cultural parity in our legislative chambers has considerable long term benefits including:
– greater cross-party collaboration
– women MPs are more visible in their electorates and take more constituent meetings
– less adversarial chambers
– broader policy discussions and implementation that has far reaching positive outcomes for a greater number of people in the community
– greater trust in our democratic institutions and inspiring others to get involved
Approximately 180 women would be directly trained to run for office as a result of these additional programs. But the benefits extend beyond individuals; with the potential for each woman to benefit thousands of people in her electorate creating positive change for our society over the long term.
These additional programs will make a difference by:
- increasing attendees knowledge on how to run for elections
- helping attendees understand the direct link between government decisions and benefits for their community
- providing leadership skills and confidence to empower women and their communities ultimately promoting equity and inclusion in Australia.
For the female participants, the specific outcomes from this project will include:
- Increased political engagement and understanding
- More women putting themselves forward for elections
- Increased community (inc online) of women sharing an interest in positive civic duty
For the Australian community, the benefits of more women being in public office include:
- Women tend to work more collaboratively across party lines, creating a less adversarial working environment
- Women MPs tend to be highly responsive to constituent concerns & are more visible in their electorates
- Women bring a different perspective to policy issues. This broadens the policies discussed & broadens the solutions considered
- Women’s participation encourages citizen confidence in democracy
- Younger women see role models, perpetuating confidence
Project data that will be measured includes:
- specific outreach into marginalised and disadvantaged communities and monitoring attendance from these communities
- conversion of attendees into our online WFEA alumni community
- analysing and collating attendee feedback forms from each event to improve and evolve future training
- attendees advocating for women in their community to attend future WFEA events
- analysing which communities we're successfully engaging with and which communities we need to engage better with
- measuring what % of women run for office post our training workshops, how often they run, for what parties, at what level of gov and recording their experiences to inform our future training Different levels of data will be shared depending on the audience. The success of our programs to help women to run, and also be elected, will be shared on our website, and across our rapidly growing social media channels. More specific data will be shared with facilitators and donors ensure we're continuing to improve our offering whilst also demonstrating the impact of our projects.
Women for Election Australia is a non-partisan, not-for-profit which aims to strengthen our democracy by increasing the number, influence and diversity of women in politics in Australia and by engaging more women in the political process. We do this by providing the very best online and face-to-face education programs and support for women to enable them to enter political life, run for office, support electoral campaigns and move up the ladder to higher elected and appointed office.Our vision is for strong, diverse and gender-balanced governments that are truly reflective of the people they serve. Legislative chambers with gender and cultural diversity promote equity and inclusion, are less adversarial and more likely to collaborate on introducing policies that benefit a greater number of people in our communities.WFEA is dedicated to identifying and assisting a diverse range of women to access our training modules. This includes members of the LGBTQI+ community, Indigenous women, women in regional and remote communities, differently-abled women and culturally and linguistically diverse women.
I raise up my voice— not so that I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard… We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back.
Also known as Australian Women Donors Network (ABN: 28 141 197 471), Australians Investing in Women is a registered charity endorsed by the Australian Tax Office as a deductible gift recipient (DGR1) under a special listing, all donations over $2 are tax deductible.