The following are some of the main strategies to help women maximize their power and effectiveness as representatives:

1. Raise awareness. Campaigns with the media should focus public attention on the importance of balanced participation and representation of women and men. Political parties or women's organizations could be financed to mount such campaigns and related activities. NGOs interested in encouraging the participation of women in political life have often been active in awareness raising. To encourage such campaigns, women and men politicians must be pro-active in identifying and establishing relations and promoting these issues with key members of civil society as well as with media producers and presenters. An example of this is the "Movement for Equal Rights ­ Equal Responsibilities" in Cyprus which aims to promote public awareness that women can be politicians.

2. Work in partnership with men. This entails designing programmes, whether inside or outside specific political fora, that take into account men's concerns and perspectives with respect to solidarity with women politicians. This idea is now gaining credibility with the growing realization that women need the support of their male colleagues, partners, and electorate to enhance the effectiveness of their strategies and increase the value of their social and political message.

3. Enlarge the pool of eligible, aspirant women. This means enhancing women's interest in becoming politicians as well as increasing their involvement in politics. Eligibility for and involvement in politics are partly a matter of access to general resources such as education, income, time, and partly a matter of specific resources such as knowledge and information about politics and political experience. Policies to enhance women's access to higher education, to paid employment and to various social and economic organizations provide a context for political participation that is increasingly hospitable to women.

4. Take positive action. Quotas have been particularly effective in increasing women's presence in legislatures. In Sweden, women used several means to press their parties to nominate women candidates and place them in favourable positions on party lists. One way was to simply put forward women's names, a tactic that was very important in the early stages. They also conducted campaigns to promote women candidates and issued proposals to get women into better positions on party lists. Finally, they acted as watchdogs and protested whenever reversals occurred. This process of securing substantial increases in women's electoral fortunes was achieved without recourse to formal compulsory quotas. Recommendations, arguments, and the threat to press for quotas succeeded in setting targets requiring women to get 40 per cent of the nominations. Once these targets were set, considerable progress was achieved. ¹⁸

5. Amend laws to allow positive discrimination. Such practices are rare in politics. In general, governments do not use the law to compel parties to promote women, not least because such policies often run against other legal principles. The latest defeat in the British courts of the British Labour Party's policy of "forcing" women onto their lists (simply because they are women) in order to increase their numbers in parliament and in the party itself is not unusual. In Italy, the 1993 law to impose quotas of women on candidate's lists was overturned by the constitutional court in 1995; a similar regulation by the French Socialist Party was overturned in 1982. However, some countries have introduced laws requiring that women hold a certain proportion of seats on government appointed bodies. Such laws were introduced in Denmark in 1985, Finland in 1987, Sweden in 1987, Norway in the 1980s, the Netherlands in 1992 and Germany in 1994. Published statistics in these countries indicate that women's participation in such bodies has risen steadily since. Governments can also use incentives. This is particularly easy where there is state funding of political parties. For example, the Dutch Government was able to make financial support for political parties dependent on their efforts to increase the proportions of women in their electoral bodies.

6. Raise the general standard of living and access to resources of all women. The high achievements of Scandinavian women stem from a combination of government policy, party initiative and demographic changes. The remarkable position of women in Scandinavian politics rests on social / demographic foundations involving considerable changes in the structure of women's family, economic and social lives. These are probably irreversible. The policies on equality of representation have included government equality reforms operating in conjunction with the influence of the women's movement, functioning both autonomously and through the political parties. To some extent there is feedback between demographic and political change as policies have included explicit attempts to change demographics and the gendered division of labour both in the family and in paid employment.

7. Build and maintain links with women's organizations. The maintenance of ties to the women's movement is crucial both for their support and for information on issues; similarly, the women's movement needs bases in political parties and in the legislature.

8. Caucus and network. This allows women MPs to share information, ideas, resources and support. Networks may be party-based, cross party (very rare), local, regional, and international. Meetings, conferences, seminars, newsletters and electronic mail links are useful networking devices. Consultations with women's organizations and research gauging the needs of women (demand) and their practical constraints (supply), enable women MPs to target their efforts to activities that will be most useful and effective.

9. Use the mass media effectively. Women MPs must use the mass media, particularly the resources offered by organized media women broadcasters, editors and journalists, to communicate their concerns and highlight relevant issues. As well as enhancing the image of women MPs and promoting their political ideas, the mass media is instrumental in educating and mobilizing voters, particularly in rural areas ­ an important concern particularly in developing countries where women, with limited resources, may have difficulty reaching out to these voters.

10. Establish women's committees and other machinery accountable to the legislature. This provides opportunities for women deputies to gain experience and for women's issues and perspectives to be debated and publicized.

11. Collect, monitor and disseminate statistics and facts about women's political participation and representation. This enables women's advocates in parliament to analyse the position of women in decision-making and to define problems, devise appropriate solutions and seek political support for their preferred solutions. In particular, a collation of data on how women MPs have actually managed to make a difference through their legislatures is an ongoing need.

12. Mainstream gender issues. Ensure that gender issues are integrated within different political, social and economic concerns, in order to reveal the interdependency and linkages with other issue areas.

The ultimate objective of enhancing the quality of women's political participation is a goal that must be worked towards constantly. Much the same way as men's political input is in constant need of improvement, women should not be complacent about their contributions to the political process; nor should they take whatever gains achieved for granted. Political participation is a process ­ a process that is evolving and developing. The actors involved in this process should be prepared always to strive to keep ahead of the changes. Women and men politicians have achieved a great deal in the area of women's participation, and although the road ahead is long, the lessons learned from the accumulation of experiences, can, and will, significantly illuminate and facilitate the many paths ahead.