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News from the Field: iKNOW: Yes women can

The International Knowledge Network of Women in Politics, or iKNOW Politics, was created with UNDEF support two years ago as an active online community with a significant resource base to support women candidates and voters in elections, including in conflict and post-conflict countries. A recent evaluation shows that the project has successfully completed its main tasks in terms of outputs, and its global audience and number of resources have doubled since its creation. Many women canvassed indicated that they had distributed and shared resources with peers, thus creating a multiplying effect in increasing knowledge of women in politics.

The number of resources and members have both doubled in the past year. The website has received over 25 million hits, at a current rate of almost 138,000 hits on the site every day. iKNOW Politics has over 1,100 resources in its online library, 3,500 registered members, and over 60 experts from 28 countries.On average, 31 documents have been downloaded everyday from the iKP website. In terms of issues, the majority of resources are on advocacy (civic education, civil society organizations and general themes), skills-building (leadership and decision-making), elections and quotas, and parliaments and representatives. Eighty-five percent of members surveyed who asked a question through the Ask the Expert feature found the response from the iKP expert useful.

Based on feedback from canvassed iKP members and non-members, forward-looking recommendations include:

Increase promotion of the project among key audiences, particularly among Members of Parliament;

Consider activities and actions to increase reach to the grassroots level;

Guide members to create Threads that solicit a debate as well as determine another mechanism;
for members who wish to post a statement or opinion;

Encourage and facilitate the possibility for members to submit resources;

Consider offline activities to provide a real world meet-up among members (at the country or regional level, possibly facilitated by the regional coordinators).

iKNOW Politics is a joint project of the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Fund for Women, the National Democratic Institute, the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.

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