A/HRC/23/50 positions in councils.22 The requirement of female leadership changes voter attitudes and improves perceptions of female leadership effectiveness. 41. Effective political participation of women requires not only admission to political institutions but also integration into their decision-making forums. Women’s full participation requires concerted action to overcome the de facto segregation of women’s political participation in sectors which are stereotypically associated with women’s gender roles. It requires that women be integrated into positions with decision-making power across the spectrum of issues dealt with by the institutions to which they have been elected or appointed. During political transitions, the same applies to all transitional authorities and mechanisms. 42. The Working Group welcomes a general trend in recent years to extend special measures or positive action to other areas of public life beyond legislative bodies. Positive action encompasses actions to promote women’s participation in public life by such tools as media campaigns and training opportunities, which are not legally binding quotas, and new generation transformative measures setting out an overriding objective of equal power of women and men to shape society and their own lives.23 43. The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), in its 2013 Plan of Action for Gendersensitive Parliaments, has drawn attention to the need for gender sensitivity in the composition, structures, operations, methods and work of parliaments. In the plan, it noted that “gender-sensitive parliaments remove the barriers to women’s full participation and offer a positive example or model to society at large” (p. 8). The Working Group considers the IPU plan of action to be adaptable for other public and political institutions in which women’s equal representation must be secured. 44. The election and appointment of women to public and political office is a necessary condition for equality in public and political life, but the number of women in office is insufficient for advancing gender equality in society. Evidence shows that women who are appointed or elected to public office do not necessarily promote gender-equality agendas. Policy outcomes that advance substantive equality between men and women involve larger processes of public debate, alliance-building across political divides, and activism by autonomous women’s movements based on universal standards of equality, nondiscrimination, human rights and inclusive democracy. 3. Women’s agency and autonomous movements 45. The whole spectrum of women’s engagement and activism in political and public life, through all State institutions, the wide range of organizations in civil society and the diversity of public discourse, is integral to democracy, development and peace. 46. Women’s participation in political and public life remains dynamic, multifaceted, and resilient, including in gaining access to power through alternative structures, as recognized in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. Even as the glass ceiling in formal political institutions stays mostly intact, women actively open new spaces for discourse, build networks across long-standing divides and create new communities of engagement. Through the autonomous movements they build at the local to global levels, women’s political engagements develop across formal administrative boundaries and are transnational in reach based on the universality of women’s right to equality, challenging 22 23 Lori Beaman et al., “Powerful women: does exposure reduce bias?” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 124, No. 4 (2009), p. 1497. See, for example, the background report on Western European and North America prepared for the Working Group (2012), p. 43. 11