Washington, DC - The National Democratic Institute (NDI) has launched #think10 (go to think10[dot]demcloud[dot]org), an innovative safety planning tool for politically-active women. #think10 was developed by the Institute’s Gender, Women and Democracy team, which initiated the #NotTheCost campaign in 2016.

During Monday’s launch event at New York University, Washington D.C., NDI Chairman and former U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine K. Albright, in her keynote speech said, “What #think10 will provide is a way for women to take informed steps to enhance their safety. We cannot reduce the risk to zero, but we can empower women to take back some control. NDI’s Women’s Political Participation Risk Index (WPPRI) will also help in this effort. For the first time, it will provide a baseline to measure each country’s progress on this issue, and it will call attention to a problem that has been swept under the rug for far too long.”

The #think10 safety planning tool provides women in politics guidance on how to enhance their personal security by combining scores from a self-assessment questionnaire and the country score from NDI’s new Women’s Political Participation Risk Index. The WPPRI calculates the risk to politically active women in 172 countries. In using the tool, women in politics can develop a safety plan relevant to their personal and professional profile, and in their political context. Each country’s ranking in the WPPRI is built from three indicators: the level of women’s political participation at the national level; the state of democracy in each country; and the likelihood of violence that women in that country face. NDI has based these indicators on data gained from the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the Economist Intelligence Unit, and Georgetown University’s Institute of Women Peace and Security.

Other guest speakers included Farida Bemba Nabourema, Executive Director, Togolese Civil League and Dr. Mona Lena Krook, Professor, Rutgers University. A number of guests at the launch event used tablets to answer the #think10 toolkit questionnaire and consider the level of safety planning that their scores suggested.

“While the #think10 tool can’t possibly cover every single situation that a woman in politics might face everywhere in the world, we’ve worked hard to make it a meaningful tool, by differentiating between individual women in the same country.  Women who are politically active in North Korea, which is the country with the highest WPPRI score, don’t all face the same level of risk. Just as political women in Norway, which has the lowest WPPRI score, aren’t all equally safe,” stated Sandra Pepera, Director, Gender, Women and Democracy at NDI.