Interactions with parliaments can provide highly effective avenues for women’s organizations to elevate their influence in decision-making arenas and open doorways to impact positive, longterm policy changes. By nurturing stronger relationships with parliamentary bodies and their members, women’s organizations can better position themselves to influence strategic agendas, advocate for legal frameworks that promote gender equality, and ensure that their perspectives are represented in legislative processes.

In 2022 and 2023, ParlAmericas surveyed more than 200 representatives from women’s organizations across the Americas and the Caribbean on their relationship with parliament. The findings, available in the What We Heard reports for Latin America (2023) and the Caribbean (2022), demonstrate that women’s organizations see value in strengthening their advocacy with national legislative bodies. The reports highlight the most commonly used mechanisms for advocacy and shed light on challenges encountered in the process.

In collaboration with partner organizations, ParlAmericas additionally convened capacity-building sessions aimed at strengthening the legislative advocacy efforts of women’s organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean. These brought together more than 200 civil society representatives spanning 30 countries in the region.

One of the key takeaways from ParlAmericas’ surveying and capacity-building sessions was the importance of sharing among women’s organizations on good practices for engaging with parliaments. Such knowledge exchanges can have concrete results on gender equality advocacy goals by fostering collective learning and collaboration.

This publication compiles a series of legislative advocacy strategies and considerations, drawing from the experiences of women’s organizations from across the hemisphere. It offers tips, useful resources, insightful examples, and lessons learned from successful – and unsuccessful – experiences engaging with legislative bodies in pursuit of women’s empowerment and substantive gender equality.

Many of the practices and frameworks presented are informed by the open parliament movement, which centres civic participation as an exercise of democratic rights through methods like cocreation of legislative initiatives by the public with decision makers. When made accessible and meaningful, these civic participation instruments can enhance the diversity of perspectives and quality of debate on issues that impact the lives of women and marginalized or underserved populations.