As a young lawmaker in the Missouri state legislature, Senator Claire McCaskill once sought advice from a senior member about how to get a piece of legislation out of committee. He responded by asking if she had “brought her knee pads.”

In the wake of the revelations about predatory attacks on women in Hollywood, in newsrooms and in the halls of legislatures, women around the world have been stepping forward to provide #MeToo testimonies about their experience of sexual harassment.

We hope that you’ve noticed the orange-ing of NDI’s website logo as part of our institutional contribution to the worldwide 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence. Violence against women (VAW) is rooted in gender inequality and must be stopped. It is also one of the many barriers to women’s meaningful and active political participation that NDI’s programs work to overcome.

Communication technologies are having a significant impact on the way we practice democracy around the world. Online platforms are an exciting and expanding space for citizens to gather information and voice their opinions. They offer new opportunities for politicians and their constituents to connect, and for young women and men and other new entrants to politics to cost-effectively find a voice and build their political networks. However, these platforms can also be a forum for misinformation, hate speech, abuse and harassment.

To achieve a world “in which every woman and girl enjoys full gender equality and all legal, social, and economic barriers to their empowerment have been removed,” will require political action — leadership, commitment and accountability. The U.N.’s “Transforming Our World” sustainable development framework, which will be adopted by the General Assembly in the coming days, is the latest call to action. We will all be judged on what we do over the next 15 years to make that ambition into an empowered reality for women and girls. Sustainable development goal 5 to “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls” expands significantly on the Millennium Development Goals by detailing in a single goal a full range of issues and actions that will drive success. However, in the proposed indicators, which anchor accountability for the new global framework, critical metrics for women’s participation in political life and public decision-making are missing.

Each year, NDI awards its Madeleine K. Albright Grant to an organization outside of the United States that defies the odds to give women the tools to participate and lead as equal and active partners in their communities.

At the Madeleine K. Albright luncheon this week in Washington, D.C., the former Secretary of State and NDI’s chairman presented this year’s award to the Worker Women Social Organization (WWSO) of Kandahar, Afghanistan.