Advocacy & Lobbying
Funding of €171,162 has been announced for the Longford-based See Her Elected (SHE), in support of their work in supporting and encouraging the participation of women from rural Ireland in local politics.
Minister of State for Planning and Local Government Alan Dillon allocated the funding to Longford Women’s Link, the parent organisation of See Her Elected.
“The outcome of the local elections in June of this year was encouraging in terms of the participation of women in local government,” the minister said when announcing the funding.
“A record 681 female candidates participated, representing an almost 18% increase on the previous elections in 2019, and almost a third of candidates overall.
“The 247 women councillors elected make up 26% of councillors overall – the highest proportion of women elected to local government in the history of the state.
“There is, however, still plenty of work to be done towards our goal of making our council chambers fully reflective of the communities they serve. Groups like See Her Elected are essential to making that goal a reality.”
Read here the full article published by the Westmeath Examiner on 10 November 2024.
Image by Westmeath
As election cycles come and go, the conversation around the low female representation in Sri Lanka’s political sphere is frequently revisited. After all, while Sri Lanka boasts of having the first female Prime Minister in the world, the actual percentage of women in politics still stands at a disappointing 5.4% decades later. A recent regional report analysed Sri Lanka’s legal environment and its application over the past decade, examining the obstacles women faced in politics to provide actionable recommendations.
The regional report titled “A New Paradigm– Building a Regional Coalition to Promote Political Participation of Women in Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka” was launched on October 29. In this report, the research on Sri Lanka was conducted by People’s Action For Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL) in collaboration with The Asia Foundation (TAF).
Speaking at the launch, PAFFREL’s Executive Director, Rohana Hettiarachchi remarked that most South Asian countries didn’t have fair representation of women at the policy-making level. “In Sri Lanka there are a lot of women leaders at administrative level, but not many in policy-making and parliamentary level. The future target is to increase meaningful women’s participation.”
Read here the full article published by the Daily Mirror on 4 November 2024.
Image by Daily Mirrors
By the time the first verified reports about COVID-19 were published, misinformation about the virus was already being shared. Disinformation and ‘fake news’ soon followed. It didn’t take much time at all before distortions, lies and fictions were reaching more people, more quickly, than facts.
None of this should surprise us, since we’ve known for some time that lies spread faster than truth. The real problem arises when lies are believed. And when does that happen? Research tells us that lies are more likely to be believed, and especially catch fire, when they reinforce our pre-existing beliefs. While some beliefs are harmless, others can be weaponized, with the help of disinformation, to achieve undemocratic ends.
In the world of politics, this is already happening. Disinformation campaigns regularly rely on sexist beliefs about women, power and politics in attempts to delegitimize women who hold or seek office. Distinct from online abuse, trolling, revenge porn or even pornographic deepfakes, disinformation is a stealthier, more pernicious way to undermine women and dissuade them from entering politics. This emerging threat has devastating implications for women in public life and, by extension, democracies everywhere.
It’s crucial that we pay attention, and commit energy and resources to better understand this problem. What’s at stake is simply too important to ignore, especially now. Just when women are inching closer to a more equitable share of public power, trying to actualize democracy’s promise of government by the people, for the people—women being a key part of the people—gendered disinformation puts hard-fought gains at risk.
Read here the full overview published by Fundación Multitudes.
Multiple studies show that the use of social media has a negative impact on the political leadership of women and girls in Latin America. Social media is one of citizens' most used tools in the region to get information and communicate with others, with a high level of internet penetration, and raising a series of issues related to the low level of digital literacy in the countries.
One of the biggest problems with the massive penetration of social media in Latin America is that users don’t have the knowledge nor the tools to know what is real and what is not. Identifying gender political violence online, including disinformation and fake news, is particularly difficult considering that lies spread faster than truth , making them more vulnerable to disinformation.
In order to understand if the safeguards in place are efficient, it is essential to identify the state of implementation of the institutional incentives for women to participate in politics, in addition to looking at the existing safeguards and legislation to counter online gender-based violence and disinformation in Latin America. Specifically, we look at the current state of affairs in four countries of the region. Our research question is: What is the state of implementing the institutional incentives for women to participate in politics, the existing safeguards to counter gender-based violence online, and the existing legislation against disinformation in Colombia, Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil?
Access here the full report published by Fundación Multitudes.
Today, we commemorate the United Nations Day. We are reminded of the UN's noble mission to promote peace, human rights and development for all. We are reminded of the continued need for diplomacy, dialogue and negotiation to prevent and resolve conflicts - and to ensure dignity, equality, and justice for all women and men. I am honoured to join you on this UN day, in this Annual Open Debate on Women and Peace and Security.
During the high-level week of the recent General Assembly, a Nigerian poet speaking at an event on dismantling patriarchy asked: “What is peace if not a world where power is shared, where voices rise without fear?”.
The idea of voices rising without fear crystalizes both our goal and our challenge.
We recall the fear of millions of Afghan women and girls robbed of an education, a future, and a voice, how they suffocate in silence - prisoners in their own homes.
We recall the fear of the women in Gaza, displaced many times over, waiting for death, whether by bombs, fire, disease, or starvation. How they know neither what to feed their children or how to feed them, what to tell them of their futures after a year of relentless destruction with no end in sight.
We recall the hostages held in Gaza and their anxious families and mothers who are still waiting for their release.
Read here the full article published by UN Women on 24 October 2024.
Image by UN Women
Amid Iran’s heightened, unconscionable mass scale of executions and a growing abolitionist campaign of resistance led from within the country’s prisons, Iran’s Supreme Court overturned the death sentence for Sharifieh Mohammadi, a feminist labor activist. Mohammadi was alleged to have ties to labor organizations that were accused of baghy, or seeking armed rebellion against the state. Despite the fact that the suspected organizations had denied her membership, undermining the charge of baghy, this summer she was sentenced to death. On October 13, her defense lawyer confirmed that her death sentence had been overturned and that she is up for a retrial.
Thousands of people, including many human rights activists and drug offenders, have been executed in Iran since 1979. As of October 18, Iran has killed 570 people on death row in 2024, and the number continues to rise. On October 6, Iran executed Akhtar Ghorbanlu, a child bride. Mohammadreza Azizi, who was 17 at the time of his alleged offense, is scheduled for execution in October. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has demanded a moratorium on the death penalty in Iran.
Read here the full article published by The Nation on 24 October 2024.
Image by The Nation
Abstract
Violence against women politicians is increasingly recognized as an issue that undermines women's presence in politics. Latin America has been at the vanguard of this global discussion. In 2012, Bolivia became the only country in the world to criminalize “political violence and harassment against women.” Several other countries have similar legislation in the works. What explains the emergence of these bill proposals? This article argues that the creation of these bills is the result of three processes: activism at the local level used international norms to propose an innovative solution to a problem; women politicians and “femocrats” worked within the state apparatus to overcome resistance; and international actors worked to foster connections among activists and politicians across the region. In this process, international norms have been transformed, with important implications for women's political representation.
Click here to read the full article published by the Cambridge University Press on 27 July 2020.
Image by Cambridge University Press
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Today, we announced the release of our new report, The State of Women: 2023 Multiplier Report and Roadmap, a comprehensive report drawing on insights from extensive data gathered from a wide-ranging network of women nationwide. Utilizing data collected from She Should Run participants and research conducted between 2020 and 2023, we found that most women—across demographics and ideologies—need multiple points and types of encouragement over several years in order to consider running for office.
Click here to read the full report published by She Should Run on 6 November 2023.
The 2023 edition of the global Women Peace and Security Index (WPS Index) scores and ranks 177 countries in terms of women’s inclusion, justice, and security.
No country performs perfectly on the WPS Index and the results reveal wide disparities across countries, regions, and indicators. The WPS Index offers a tool for identifying where resources and accountability are needed most to advance women’s status - which benefits us all.
The WPS Index is published by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security and the PRIO Centre on Gender, Peace and Security with support from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Click here to read the full report published by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security and the PRIO Centre on Gender, Peace and Security on 26 October 2023.
Nearly a quarter of a century after the adoption by the Security Council of its resolution 1325 (2000), women’s full, equal and meaningful participation in building peace should be the norm, not an aspiration or an afterthought, but the data show that this is far from being a reality. In peace processes, negotiating parties continue to regularly exclude women, and impunity for atrocities against women and girls is still prevalent. Women continue to face entrenched barriers to direct participation in peace and political processes, and women’s organizations struggle to find resources, while military spending continues to grow every year. This remains the case even though there is ample evidence that women’s participation contributes to more robust democracies and longer-lasting peace.
Click here to read the full report published by Relief Web on 24 October 2023.
The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women today considered the combined seventh to tenth periodic report of Nicaragua in the absence of a delegation.
Committee Experts raised questions on the treatment of women human rights defenders in Nicaragua, and the lack of sufficient health services for women, among other issues.
Click here to read the full report published by the United Nations News on 23 October 2023.
Violence against women in politics (VAWIP) is an urgent problem worldwide. At the time of this writing, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband had just been violently assaulted by a conspiracy theorist, shouting “Where is Nancy?” after breaking into their house. In Canada, women, Indigenous, Black, racialized, and queer political actors face harassment and threats on a regular basis. During the 2022 Québec provincial election, politician Marwah Rizqy received death threats from a man who allegedly called the police to inform them where they could find her body (she was pregnant at the time). In 2022, federal Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland was accosted by a man who yelled profanities at her while she was with her all-women staff. These are not isolated incidents, and the political science community has an important role to play in addressing them.
Click here to read the article by Cambridge University Press on 15 September 2023.