TED Webinar Outcome Report - Youth and Women as Political Drivers

Democracy is increasingly being shaped by actors who are redefining what political influence looks like. The recent Team Europe Democracy (TED) webinar on “Youth and Women as Political Drivers” (5th of May 2026, TED Webinar Recording - Women and Youth as Political Drivers | Capacity4dev) returned to a central question: how youth and women function as active drivers of political change and whether institutions are capable of recognising and responding to that shift.

Moderated by the European Network of Political Foundations (ENoP), the webinar brought together practitioners, parliamentary actors, civil society organisations, political foundations and representatives of the EU and Member States to reflect on the contrast between symbolic inclusion and substantive political influence. Framed against dynamics of democratic backsliding, shrinking civic space and contested legitimacy, the discussion consistently returned to one premise: youth and women are not peripheral participants but central political drivers shaping agendas, norms and mobilisation. Yet they are still often framed as consultation targets rather than political actors. The challenge is therefore not participation, but power, how agency is recognised and translated into durable influence.

This was echoed by the Belgian Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation, which highlighted a key paradox: women and young people are not disengaging from politics but increasingly driving it elsewhere through issue-based mobilisation, digital ecosystems, artistic expression and community organising. These practices, often treated as informal, have become central arenas of political production, reflecting a growing mismatch between institutional logics of representation and decentralised forms of political mobilisation.

DG INTPA, through the Women and Youth Democratic Engagement (WYDE) programme, reinforced the need for intersectional approaches addressing differentiated barriers linked to gender, age, disability, geography and socio-economic exclusion. It also highlighted a persistent bias in democracy support, where programming often reaches already connected actors while structurally excluded groups remain outside institutional reach. Technology-facilitated violence against women in politics further compounds constraints on visibility and participation.

Across interventions, youth and women were consistently framed not as beneficiaries of democracy support, but as political actors actively reshaping institutions, narratives and governance practices.

Experiences from youth and women political participation advocates illustrated different but complementary pathways for translating participation into influence.

From The Gambia, Abdoulie O. Bah (National Youth Parliament; EU Youth Advisory Committee) illustrated the institutionalisation of youth as political drivers rather than symbolic participants. The National Youth Parliament was presented as a structured political arena grounded in elected representation and formal linkages with governance systems, designed to translate youth agency into recognised political presence. This design is reinforced through corrective inclusion mechanisms, including reserved seats for women and young persons with disabilities, reflecting the recognition that political agency is unevenly distributed and must be structurally enabled. Beyond representation, emphasis was also placed on leadership development through a National Youth Leadership Academy and engagement with local governance structures, alongside his role in the EU Youth Advisory Committee, which provides a structured feedback channel into EU and international democracy support programming, increasingly framed around co-creation rather than consultation.

From Senegal, Marie Hélène Ndiaye (founder Ubuntu Edutainment) illustrated a different pathway: political agency emerging from cultural and artistic ecosystems. Theatre, poetry and storytelling function as infrastructures of political consciousness, shaping how communities interpret power and injustice long before formal political entry points exist. Her “zero to hero/shero” trajectory reflected how political legitimacy is socially constructed before institutional recognition. Her transition into municipal politics also revealed persistent barriers, including gender bias, party gatekeeping and resistance to independent political trajectories.

European Centre for Electoral Support (ECES),  framed its intervention around the gap between mobilisation and institutionalisation, highlighting the fragile space in which political energy is either translated into governance impact or absorbed without effect. Drawing on the Indian Ocean Regional Youth Parliament (PRJIO) and experiences in Madagascar (Gen Z), it showed how structured mechanisms can link mobilisation to institutional dialogue. Yet ECES cautioned that institutional design alone is insufficient. Without grassroots legitimacy and sustained capacity-building, such mechanisms risk becoming procedural interfaces rather than pathways of power. 

The European Partnership for Democracy (EPD) approached this shift as structural rather than cyclical. Youth participation is not declining but fundamentally transforming, with younger generations increasingly acting through protest, decentralised mobilisation and issue-based organising rather than formal electoral pathways. Drawing on the Global Youth Participation Index (GYPI), this transformation was framed as a growing disconnect between institutional models of participation and the evolving ways in which political agency is expressed. Across WYDE Civic Engagement experiences in Ecuador (Fundacion Datalat), Nigeria (PROMAD Foundation) and Philippines (GoodGovPH), EPD highlighted that the value of democracy support lies in building co-creation infrastructures between citizens and institutions. These include participatory budgeting, structured dialogue platforms and mechanisms that turn engagement from one-off events into continuous institutional interaction.

Demo Finland returned to political parties, while often perceived as rigid gatekeepers, parties remain central arenas where political agency is either constrained or converted into institutional power. Crucially, party transformation is also increasingly shaped through external partnerships, peer learning and transnational exchange. Experiences from Sri Lanka and Ethiopia illustrated how sustained engagement on gender equality, leadership development and internal reform can shift institutional cultures and strengthen inclusion. These processes should also be seen within a wider geopolitical context of competing democratic and authoritarian governance influence models. In this context, party reform and gender equality are not only domestic institutional reforms but part of a wider transnational field in which democratic norms are continuously negotiated, supported and contested.

International IDEA (I-IDEA), through the INTER PARES | Parliaments in Partnership programme, reframed parliaments as decisive institutional arenas where political participation is either converted into influence or absorbed into symbolism. Through peer-to-peer parliamentary partnerships between European national parliaments and partner institutions across Africa, Asia, Latin America and wider Europe, parliaments are not only supported but actively reshaped as political systems in their own right. Youth Parliamentary Academies in Zambia and Benin were illustrated not simply as training spaces, but as institutional interfaces where youth and legislatures can actively renegotiate political inclusion and rethink their own understandings of representation and legitimacy.

Additionally, it was reiterated that numerical gains in women’s representation do not automatically translate into influence. Informal power structures and institutional cultures continue to mediate access to decision-making. As such, sustainable inclusion therefore requires reforms extending beyond representation to procedures, oversight and parliamentary culture.

Across the Q&A, a shared reflection emerged: democracy support is entering a phase of recalibration where the challenge is no longer expanding participation, but converting it into influence, particularly in constrained civic environments. Contributions from EPD, ECES and Demo Finland converged on the need to move beyond linear, output-driven approaches that privilege short-term results and already-established actors, as these risk reproducing the very exclusions democracy support seeks to address.

A more adaptive logic is required: diversifying entry points beyond elections and parties, strengthening local governance as an arena of agency and investing in (middle-layer) intermediary structures that connect civic energy to institutions. This also requires flexibility, experimentation and greater domestic ownership of participation mechanisms. I-IDEA added that in moments of political transition, responsiveness becomes decisive, as youth-led mobilisation can rapidly reshape political landscapes.

Women and young people are already reshaping political life through hybrid forms of engagement across institutional, civic, digital and cultural spaces. The central question is no longer whether participation exists, but whether democratic systems can recognise and translate these forms of agency into sustained influence. The resilience of democracy will thus depend less on expanding access to existing structures than on whether those structures are able to evolve in response to where political life is already being produced and contested.