‘Coalitions for Change’: The Potential of a Global Coalition of Parliamentarians to Push for Progress in Girls’ Education

By Dr Rebecca Gordon, Research Fellow in Leadership for Inclusive and Democratic Politics at the International Development Department, University of Birmingham and Professor Pauline Rose, Director of the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge.

Girls reading a book in reading camp at Manu Mara Government Girls Primary School, Battagram District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, Pakistan.

© Asad Zaidi/Save the Children

Across the world, there are many examples of parliamentarians who have championed progressive policy change for girls’ education. This has been accompanied by high-level political advocacy and convening of discussions to highlight barriers to girls’ education, with the aim of identifying solutions. With such visible commitments, the role of parliamentarians in ensuring that these statements translate into real change becomes ever more important.

Our policy report, commissioned by the Platform for Girls’ Education (established by the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office under the leadership of the then Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, and co-chaired by Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Education Dr Amina Mohamed), identified the importance of establishing a global coalition of parliamentarians in creating transformative change for girls’ education. We are pleased that these findings have contributed to the establishment of the International Parliamentary Network for Education (IPNEd).

Successful reform rarely comes about from individuals acting alone, but relies on alliances and collective action

Bipartisan cross-country coalitions are particularly important in promoting girls’ education in a coordinated and sustainable way. They provide a stronger collective voice to ensure long-term progress. The recent founding of IPNEd is a very promising development in filling a gap in this respect. It seeks to facilitate the collaboration of parliamentarians across countries to deliver co-ordinated messaging and calls for action to accelerate quality education for all. It is notable that the UK Co-Chair is Harriet Baldwin MP, a champion for girls’ education, whose experience includes being Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Global Education.

As our policy report sets out, it will be vital that IPNEd adopts a transformative leadership approach, which is needed to dismantle entrenched power structures that prevent all girls from accessing 12 years of quality education. Such transformational leadership needs to tackle patriarchal norms and structures that create resistance to change. It requires motivated and committed leaders, who work individually and collectively to convert political commitment into meaningful action.

There are a number of ways in which coalitions of parliamentarians can push forward progress in girls’ education:

• Supporting and scrutinising cross-cutting legislation to promote gender equality;

• Calling for dedicated resources;

• Strengthening accountability through non-partisan engagement and ensuring sustained political commitment;

• Sharing lessons on effective practices between countries.

Graphic by Dr Kalifa Damani

1) Supporting and scrutinising cross-cutting laws and policies to promote gender equality

Cross-parliamentary coalitions, when appropriately established and formalised, can provide a stable, non-partisan platform for supporting and scrutinising laws to promote gender equality.

For example, cross-parliamentary committees have been shown to play a key role in ensuring gender-sensitive policy development in Malawi. In this case, cross-parliamentary committees were found to have enabled parliamentarians to liaise with civil society organisations to gain insights into how new legislation would affect women. Given their representative function, parliamentarians can provide a link between these key stakeholders and high-level political leaders who are developing legislation and ensure that new legislation promotes gender equality.

Another successful example is the Forum of Rwandan Women Parliamentarians, a cross-party caucus which championed gender equality, including drafting and introducing the country’s Gender-Based Violence Bill.

Additionally, parliamentarians play an important role in supporting progress in girls’ education through their role in scrutinising legislation. A positive example of an influential coalition of parliamentarians in scrutinising policy and legislation has been the UK’s International Development Committee (IDC), a select committee of the House of Commons.

The IDC’s remit is to examine the policy, spending and administration of the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and its associated public bodies. It has been effective in scrutinising the UK’s commitment to ‘Leaving No One Behind’ in education, the underlying principle of the Sustainable Development Goals. Its bipartisan approach was particularly effective in influencing DFID’s 2018 Education Policy, which has a strong focus on tackling marginalisation in education. The IDC was chaired successfully by Stephen Twigg MP, who particularly championed the role of girls’ education. Continuing bipartisan oversight, led by Sarah Champion MP, will become even more vital as DFID and the FCO merge in the coming weeks.

2) Calling for dedicated resources

Progress in girls’ education requires the mobilisation of domestic resources and support from parliamentarians in enshrining such funding commitments in constitutional or legal provisions. This can ensure that commitments are sustained beyond the terms of individual governments.

Support from parliamentarians has also shown to be significant for securing commitment to gender equality in international aid spending, and for holding governments to account on these commitments. For example, the Canadian government launched the Feminist International Assistance Policy in 2017, which ensures that by 2021-22, 95 percent of Canada’s bilateral international development assistance initiatives will target or integrate gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. In 2014, the UK government became one of the first donor countries to enshrine in law its commitments to advancing gender equality through bilateral aid spending, through the International Development (Gender Equality) Act. The legislation had high-level bipartisan political support.

3) Strengthening accountability through non-partisan engagement and ensuring sustained political commitment

Parliamentarians have a critical role to play in strengthening accountability through non-partisan engagement and ensuring sustained political commitment to gender equality. For example, over the past 30 years, the Forum of Women Parliamentarians has aimed to redress the gender imbalance in political representation in national parliaments. This has been through bringing together women parliamentarians from around the world and from across the political spectrum to learn more about how different countries are addressing gender inequality.

 Illustration by @juliainclusion

Another example of a coalition of parliamentarians that has ensured sustained political commitment is the Global Tuberculosis Caucus. This coalition brought together political representatives from 150 countries to fight the tuberculosis epidemic by working across geographic and political divides. They have engaged with civil society and other stakeholders to confront stigma and social isolation associated with the disease. Importantly, they also raised significant additional funds to fight tuberculosis, which contributed to ensuring sustained political commitment to combatting the disease.

4) Sharing lessons and effective practices through cross-country engagement

Non-partisan cross-country coalitions that bring together political leaders from different contexts into a formal network with a common agenda for promoting girls’ education can also play a vital role in sharing effective practices between countries and scaling them up.

A key example of a regional coalition is the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE), which was established in 1992 by five women ministers of education as a pan-African organisation aimed at promoting girls’ education. FAWE initially brought together key prominent women leaders in education to share ideas and experience, and to promote positive programming examples that could be translated into other contexts. 

“[FAWE meant that] voices were no longer just localised. Good things that were happening in other countries were beginning to benefit us as well. At regional meetings we would hear other countries speaking about girls’ education and come back home with more energy I think in promoting and creating policies that would get things to develop”

– Barbara Chilangwa, Former Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education, Zambia

FAWE has successfully collaborated with civil society organisations to develop and implement initiatives to support girls’ education and has promoted discussions on gender equality among high-sectoral and government leaders.

The work of FAWE, along with the other examples presented in this blog, demonstrates how transformative leadership through non-partisan coalitions of parliamentarians, in collaboration with other key stakeholders, can have a lasting positive impact to mobilise support for reform. These provide important lessons that IPNEd can build on in their work to promote girls’ education.