 There are several factors that continue to hinder women's political participation in positions of power and decision-making at all levels. They are social-cultural, they are political, they are legal, but a lot of it has to do actually with the social-cultural issues whereby a lot of societies' male leadership is still seen as the norm and as a result, whether it's in political parties, whether it's in relation to access to political financing, men tend to be advantaged and in this regard we see that there's a lot of resistance and pushback when women come and present themselves as candidates for positions of power and decision-making and one of the trends that we are seeing is for instance the increasing violence against women in politics and physical violence or online violence and harassment. It's all these factors that continue to hinder and prevent women across the world to come into politics and into positions of power and decision-making. So the factors are several and that is why we need multi-dimensional measures in different sectors, whether it's social related and cultural related, political context, legal context and various educational, economic empowerment. It's really there's no one-size-fits-all. We need to adopt multi-dimensional measures and that's what even agenda 2030 is all about and the specific SDG-5 on gender equality and empowering women and girls. In several countries they've been measures adopted to accelerate or maybe create inroads or spaces for women to access and come into positions of power and decision-making such as gender quotas but I would also want to add quickly that gender quotas on their own are not enough and they are not a one-size-fits-all solution. Gender quotas can only be effective in respect of the type of electoral system that a country implements. The political culture and context as well, like context as well like I said before the increasing violence against women in politics on its own it's a deterrent so even if they are gender quotas that still needs to be addressed the issues of perceptions, stereotypes and attitudes towards women so gender quotas is just one form of a measure that is being used in several countries and indeed we've seen where countries of gender quotas they've been substantive or significant increases in the number of women mostly in parliament and they are turning to work more progressively in national assemblies and we have also realized that they are countries that are implementing gender targeted public funding for political parties whereby political parties are required by law to allocate part of the funding that they get to promoting gender equality but these are very few countries from the work that we have done is the international idea with respect to political financing because that's one of the key hindrances. We don't have more than 30 countries that have implemented gender targeted funding but we have countries such as Albania, such as Finland, Belgium that are implementing these measures and it's contributing in creating and facilitating an enabling environment. At the end of the day a lot of the measures we also see that they are guaranteed in the constitution several countries in implementing gender quotas have articulated the commitments to gender equality and women's empowerment in the constitutional provisions in the electoral laws and these are measures that are needed but beyond having these mechanisms and measures in the legislation there's need for implementable strategies to translate them into reality and this is an ongoing process a lot of it happening with respect to gender awareness that has to happen in different countries at the different levels starting within political parties because this is where also a lot of the challenges arise from the internal party democracy processes so you will find that as an international idea we push a lot with respect to intra-party democracy transformation processes within political parties and that's one of the strategies that even as an institution we are at the forefront in leading in order to create equitable opportunities for both women and men to participate in positions of power and decision making