Advocacy & Development
Nairobi, Kenya, 27 July 2026 – The Government of Kenya, through the State Department for Gender and Affirmative Action under the Ministry of Gender, Culture and Children Services, UN Women Kenya and partners concluded a two-day National Consultative Forum on the implementation of the Presidential Technical Working Group (TWG) Recommendations on Gender-Based Violence (GBV), including Femicide, with a renewed commitment to translate recommendations into measurable, coordinated and adequately financed action.
Convened under the theme "Translating TWG Recommendations into Measurable Outcomes and Sustained Actions (Pamoja Dhidi ya Dhulma ya Kijinsia: Wakati ni Sasa!)", the forum brought together national and county governments, Parliament, the Judiciary, law enforcement agencies, development partners, civil society organizations, academia, survivors, faith-based organizations, youth representatives, and the private sector to develop a practical roadmap for implementation.
Speaking on behalf of the Cabinet Secretary for Gender, Culture and Children Services, Principal Secretary for the State Department for Gender and Affirmative Action, Ms. Anne Wang'ombe, reaffirmed the Government's commitment to ending GBV and femicide and accelerating implementation of the TWG recommendations through strengthened coordination, legal reforms, survivor-centred services, prevention programmes, and improved accountability mechanisms.
Islamabad, Sep 6 (IANS) Only two per cent of women own land alone or jointly in Pakistan, showcasing the gender gap in land ownership and the economic environment, as per a recent study, local media reported on Sunday.
According to the study conducted by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), 67 per cent of women are employed in Pakistan's agriculture sector. However, only 1.5 per cent of agricultural households are women-headed, the daily Dawn reported.
According to the study, only about two per cent of ever-married women aged between 15 and 49 years own land jointly or alone, while 97.2 per cent of women had not inherited a house or land, it said, citing the study
The study revealed that 99.1 per cent of women in Sindh do not own land alone or jointly. According to the study, 57 per cent of men have a financial account while only 14 per cent of women do so. The study revealed that 11 per cent of women own a mobile wallet, compared with 48 per cent of men.
Earlier in June, a report said that Pakistan secured the last spot in the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2025 and its overall gender parity score drop from 57 per cent in 2024 to 56.7 per cent in 2025, showcase the inequalities faced by women in the country regularly across economic participation and independence, social freedoms, political representation, education, health, and personal agency and autonomy.
The Philippines climbs to 20th place in the 2025 World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index, leading the region in economic parity, while Indonesia rises to 97th, reflecting steady gains in political representation and leadership.
How is Southeast Asia doing in closing the gender gap? There are clear improvements, going by the World Economic Forum's 2025 Global Gender Gap Index. Released earlier this month, the report found that despite years of socioeconomic and geopolitical disruption, the setbacks caused by the pandemic have been almost completely reversed.
Most of the improvements come from lower-income nations, which have successfully closed larger proportions of their gender gaps than most of the higher-income countries. Nevertheless, many of the top spots on the index are still held by European economies, with New Zealand (fifth) and Namibia (eighth) being two of the challengers.
This year's report places special attention on two Southeast Asian economies for noticeable improvements despite structural challenges.
Background
Mongolia has made important progress in strengthening gender equality and inclusive governance, including through recent reforms to the Parliamentary Election Law and the Law on Political Parties. The 2024 parliamentary elections saw women’s representation rise to 25.4 percent. However, women and youth remain underrepresented in decision-making, particularly in local governance and political party leadership.
At the sub-national level, the gender quota for local election candidates has remained at 20 percent since 2012, with limited enforcement mechanisms. Youth political participation also remains low, despite young people making up a significant share of the population and registered voters. Structural barriers, limited access to resources, weak institutional mechanisms, gender stereotypes, and male-dominated political party cultures continue to constrain the meaningful participation and leadership of women and youth.
Building on the achievements and lessons learned from the first phase of the KOICA-funded project, this second phase will support legal, institutional, and socio-cultural reforms to advance equal participation and representation in public decision-making. The project will work nationally and sub-nationally, in partnership with the Secretariat of the State Great Khural, government institutions, political parties, civil society organizations, media, universities, and other stakeholders.
Where VAWP remains sensitive or overlooked, advocacy can help bring the issue to the surface. In Indonesia, the Women’s Parliamentary Caucus has taken this step through a public declaration condemning violence against women in politics and calling for stronger protections. Public commitment of this kind can help challenge the culture of silence, mobilize collective action and build momentum for deeper institutional reform.
However, Technology Facilitated Gender Based Violence (TFGBV) can quickly move beyond the reach of traditional parliamentary rules and approaches. In Asia and the Pacific, for example, 60 per cent of women parliamentarians have experienced online gender-based violence. In Australia, this challenge has been tackled through legislation empowering an independent online safety regulator to receive reports, require harmful content to be removed and hold platforms accountable. However, responses remain uneven. As abuse continues to take new forms, parliaments will need frameworks that can adapt, innovate and keep pace with the realities of digital political life.
Over the last decade, a new threat to democracy has emerged in the form of technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV). While women in politics and LGBTQI+ people have long faced barriers to their participation in public life rooted in unequal gender norms, the scale and spread of TFGBV poses a significant threat to democracies worldwide because of its silencing and chilling effects.
Political parties have a primary role to play in tackling online violence against women and gender diverse politicians. While the prevalence and impact of TFGBV, such as coordinated disinformation campaigns, deepfake image-based sexual abuse or trolling are well documented, many parties are still building their knowledge on how to respond effectively and have not put in place internal practices and policies that respond to the rapidly evolving, poorly regulated digital ecosystem.
A new report from the Environmental Voter Project (EVP), shared first with The 19th, finds that far more women than men are listing climate and environmental issues as their top priority in voting.
The nonpartisan nonprofit, which focuses on tailoring get out the vote efforts to low-propensity voters who they’ve identified as likely to list climate and environmental issues as a top priority, found that women far outpace men on the issue. Overall 62 percent of these so-called climate voters are women, compared to 37 percent of men. The gender gap is largest among young people, Black and Indigenous voters.
The nonprofit identifies these voters through a predictive model built based on surveys it conducts among registered voters. It defines a climate voter as someone with at least an 85 percent likelihood of listing climate change or the environment as their number one priority.
“At a time when other political gender gaps, such as [presidential] vote choice gender gaps, are staying relatively stable, there’s something unique going on with gender and public opinion about climate change,” said Nathaniel Stinnett, founder of the organization.
Read here the full article published by The 19th News on 14 April 2025.
Image by The 19th News
As smoke from wildfires in Canada smothered New York City in a polluted haze in June 2023, some worried patients called the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center asking if it was safe to come in for their appointments. Was the outside air so unhealthy that they should postpone their visits? Pregnant women expressed concern about how the heightened pollution might affect them and their fetuses. If they did venture outside for any reason, what masks should they wear?
The doctors understood the fears but did not want women to postpone visits, especially if the patients were pregnant. “If people cancel their appointments during pregnancy, it can put them and their baby at risk of health problems,” says Blair Wylie, MD, an obstetrician who had joined Columbia eight months prior to lead its new Collaborative for Women’s Environmental Health.
The department changed some appointments to virtual.
Wildfire smoke was not the environmental risk that Wylie expected to address when she moved to New York after leading maternal-fetal medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “I was thinking of heat waves. I was thinking of floods,” she says.
Read here the full article published by the Association of American Medical Colleges on 6 June 2024.
Image by the Association of American Medical Colleges
New York, New York
March 10, 2025
AS PREPARED
The United States thanks the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and co-facilitators Cabo Verde and Costa Rica, as well as all participating delegations and civil society partners, for their efforts in developing the Political Declaration.
While we are not a CSW member this year, we engaged in negotiations because the United States strongly supports protecting women and girls, defending their rights, and promoting their empowerment.
We are pleased the Declaration focuses on respecting, protecting, and promoting the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all women and girls. In signing Executive Orders to defend Americans from unhealthy and extremist gender ideology, President Trump has made clear his Administration “will defend women’s rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male.”
We also appreciate that the text addresses the need to prevent and respond to all forms of violence against women and girls. The Administration of President Trump has committed to protecting women by, among other things, curbing mass migration and securing borders. Violence against women and girls is rampant on migratory routes. Further, as we have seen in many tragic cases in the United States, women and girls are victimized by foreign criminals operating individually or in gangs. We must work against the open-borders ideology that tolerate such assaults on the rights of women.
However, several aspects of the text make it impossible for the United States to support the Declaration. These include, but are not limited to:
Language to Protect Women and Girls
It is the policy of the United States to use clear and accurate language that recognizes women are biologically female and men are biologically male. It is important to acknowledge the biological reality of sex to support the needs and perspectives of women and girls. We are disappointed the Political Declaration did not focus on the needs and perspectives of women and girls through precise terminology.
The United States supports the elimination of discrimination on the basis of all protected classes, including race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, national origin, and genetic information. We note the United States is not a party to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and interpret references to CEDAW as relevant to States Parties and the implementation of their obligations. The United States emphasizes that non-binding declarations such as this Political Declaration do not change the current state of conventional or customary international law or imply that States must join or implement obligations under international instruments to which they are not a party.
Freedom of Opinion and Expression
With regard to paragraph 15(j), we note that in recent years governments have censored speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech. Under the guise of combatting “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “malinformation,” governments infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of Americans. Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.
Right to Development
We regret the Political Declaration includes language on the purported “right to development,” as this term does not have an internationally agreed meaning. We cannot accept references to this as a “right.”
The 2030 Agenda
Another concern we have about this resolution is its reaffirmation of the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Although framed in neutral language, the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs advance a program of soft global governance that is inconsistent with U.S. sovereignty and adverse to the rights and interests of Americans.
In the last U.S. election, the mandate from the American people was clear: the government of the United States must refocus on the interests of Americans. We must care first and foremost for our own – that is our moral and civic duty. President Trump also set a clear and overdue course correction on “gender” and climate ideology, which pervade the SDGs.
Put simply, globalist endeavors like the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs lost at the ballot box. Therefore, the United States rejects and denounces the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the SDGs, and we will no longer reaffirm them as a matter of course.
Equal Pay for Equal Work
The United States understands the intention of the inclusion of “equal pay for work of equal value” to promote pay equality between men and women, and accepts the formulation on that basis. The United States works to achieve pay equality by observing the principle of “equal pay for equal work.”
Temporary Special Measures
With respect to so-called “temporary special measures,” and other measures intended to achieve parity for women and girls, the United States opposes the use of quotas, targets, or goals for participation based on sex. It is the policy of the United States to protect the civil rights of all Americans and to promote individual initiative, excellence, and hard work. Every citizen, including women and girls, should have an equal right and opportunities, without discrimination, to take part in the conduct of public affairs.
Climate Change
The United States does not support the inclusion of references to climate change in this declaration.
Original post available here.
Guest Editors
Roopa Dhatt, MD, MPA, Georgetown University, USA
Anna Kalbarczyk, DrPH, Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health, USA
Submission Status: Open | Submission Deadline: 7 December 2025
BMC Public Health is calling for submissions to our Collection on Women's role in politics and public life. We invite research that delves into the role of women in politics and public life, focusing on their leadership, participation, and the challenges they face. We welcome studies that examine gender equality, women's rights, and the impact of women's economic participation on public policy and health outcomes, with the aim of fostering a more inclusive political landscape.
Click here to apply.
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In the ever-evolving political landscape of Nigeria, the struggle for gender equality remains a daunting challenge, particularly in the sphere of elective politics. The ongoingordeals of Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan and other female politicians serve as painful reminders of the deep-seated misogyny that continues to undermine women’s political participation. Despite constitutional guarantees and international conventions advocating for gender equity, women in Nigeria are still treated as political outsiders, systematically excluded, and viciously maligned.
To opine that there are stubborn walls of misogyny been waged against Nigerian women in politics is not an exaggeration. This is as misogyny is deeply entrenched in Nigeria’s socio-political fabric, manifesting in ways that range from subtle bias to outright violence against women who dare to challenge the status quo. The cultural and traditional expectations placed on women limit their ability to assert themselves in the public sphere. Many still believe that a woman's place is in the kitchen or at best in an appointed, symbolic role rather than in the competitive arena of elective politics.
In fact, Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan’s political journey is a testament to the relentless opposition faced by women in politics. Despite her competence, courage, and determination, she has been subjected to smear campaigns, character assassination, and physical threats. Her case is not isolated. Women like Remi Sonaiya, ObyEzekwesili, and Aisha Yesufu have all faced virulent attacks simply for daring to seek political relevance. The misogynistic environment discourages many women from aspiring to public office, as they are often reduced to objects of ridicule rather than being recognized for their ideas and leadership capabilities.
Read here the full article published by Modern Ghana on 2 March 2025.
Image by Modern Ghana
Women are more likely to be hesitant in expressing their opinions about politics online than men, a new survey by Statista Consumer Insights has found. This was the case in all of the 21 countries polled, with the gender gap narrowest in Finland at 3 percentage points (22 percent male, 19 percent female) and widest in Mexico at 10 percentage points (26 percent male, 15 percent female). This mirrors wider patterns of gender roles and equality in society, with Finland having scored in the top three places in this year’s Global Gender Gap Index by the World Economic Forum.
Even aside from gender, the degree to which people express their views on politics online varies greatly by country. For example, in China only 13 percent of respondents on average said they had expressed their opinion about politics online in the past month. This includes having commented on or even liked a post related to politics on social media. In Japan (not shown on this chart), the figure was even lower at just 5 percent (7 percent men, 3 percent women). At the other end of the spectrum comes South Africa, where 32 percent of respondents said they had expressed their political opinion in the past four weeks (37 percent men, 27 percent women).
Read here the full article published by Statista on 17 January 2025.
Image by Statista