Gender-sensitive Parliaments

This domain assesses how gender-sensitive the procedures for recruitment of parliamentary staff are.

A gender-sensitive parliament assures that both women and men have equal opportunities to become a member of the parliamentary staff; gender-sensitive recruitment policies and procedures are based on merit, and expertise assessed through tests and interviews. Special attention in the selection tests and interviews should be paid to gender-sensitive language use (during the situation and in the materials) and test duration (women with babies or young children may be inhibited in taking part in long-lasting procedures). It is also important to foresee that the recruitment boards are gender baalanced. Special measures for choosing candidates may be implemented, such as preference for under-represented groups when competence profiles and skills are equivalent. 

Data sources: Parliaments’ websites may provide basic information about recruitment procedures, selection criteria and equal opportunities policies. Other information is to be drawn from internal parliamentary procedures and rules and/or from the Human Resources division of the parliamentary administration.