Based on the experience of previous elections, gender issues are rarely or only formally addressed in the programs. Parties generally do not communicate with women, and if written, their programs are mainly oriented on male voters' interests.
Project "Read Politics" is an initiative of two women. The main goal of the project is to contribute to the increase of critical political thinking and reading among the readers/voters. To be more precise, "Read Politics" is a critical analysis of mainstream Georgian politics from a feminist perspective; Feminist analysis of political parties' political agenda during the 2020 Parliamentary election period.
To achieve this goal, the project activities were divided into two periods:
First, it included monitoring the pre-election period; Researching and analyzing programs/action plans presented by the registered political parties through the feminist lenses and by using an intersectional approach.
Based on the research, the project team produced a feminist analysis of how (if) individual political parties are addressing gender-sensitive issues. Project authors selected ten political parties and one political coalition according to the methodology and analyzed their programs, key speeches and information connected to programmatic activities on different platforms
On the other hand, the project organized direct meetings with party representatives and discussed the main findings of the research and analysis. This format was helpful to discuss the issues, which were not addressed in the programs. The exchange of critical/feminist analysis of the programs with party representatives will contribute to sensitize them towards the issues of gender democracy/feminist approach to policymaking in general.
