Advocacy & Lobbying
Can women voters decide the upcoming 2024 General elections? Their growing number of voters and favourable legislation, such as the one-third reservation for women in Parliament and legislatures, make them an important segment. Political parties are trying to attract women voters, a critical segment. To do this, they are offering various benefits.
According to a recent report, the high turnout of women voters could significantly impact the 2024 elections. The report predicts that by 2047, women’s voter turnout may reach 55%, while men’s turnout could decrease to 45%.
It is worth noting that B.R. Ambedkar, the father of the Indian Constitution, once stated that “Political power is the key to all social progress.” This statement holds today, as women cannot expect to receive justice unless they have a say in decision-making processes.
Women in India are demanding more measures to remove gender bias. Last September, the Parliament passed the Women’s Reservation Bill to empower women. This bill ensures a 33% reservation for them in Parliament and state legislatures. Both the Congress and the BJP claimed credit for the bill’s passage. Congress leader Sonia Gandhi said, “It is our bill.” In 2008 Sonia Gandhi passed it in the Upper House but failed to do so in the Lok Sabha. Last September, PM Modi introduced this bill with pride, and it passed almost unanimously after 27 years. Due to the delay in the census and delimitation process, the bill will be implemented only after four years.
Read here the full article published by The Siasat Daily on 9 April 2024.
Image source: The Siasat Daily
JAKARTA - Politics and women are two things that are considered difficult to put together, but are being pursued. Women's involvement in politics is still underestimated, even though they have an important role for long-term policies.
Women are not the dominant actors in the political realm of various countries, including in Indonesia. According to data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), in the 2019-2024 period, only 120 women were able to occupy the seats of the DPR RI out of a total of 575 people. This means that this number has only reached 20.87 percent of the total members of the DPR RI from the results of the 2019 Legislative Election.
This figure does show an upward trend in both the number and percentage compared to the previous three edition elections. But although women's participation in politics has developed in recent years, women's representation in politics is still low.
The lack of representation of women in the political field is partly due to patriarchal cultural conditions. In countries that adhere to patriarchal values such as in Indonesia, women's opportunities to become politicians are relatively limited due to public perceptions about the division of roles between men and women, which tend to limit women's role in household affairs.
Read here the full article published by VOI on 6 April 2024.
Image source: VOI
Earlier this month, in celebration of International Women’s Day, the National Democratic Institute premiered an interview we conducted with one of our partners, Honorable Neema Lugangira, a champion of legal reform and women’s empowerment in Tanzania. Hon. Lugangira has served as a Member of Parliament (MP) in Tanzania since 2020 and is Chair of the Women in Politics (WiP) parliamentary group that NDI conducts joint advocacy with on women’s issues. She is the founder of Omuka Hub, a non-governmental organization, and one of NDI’s legal reform advocacy partners who works to accelerate digital inclusion in Tanzania. Through Omuka Hub, Hon. Lugangira has championed access to digital resources in underserved areas and strengthened the online visibility of women in politics. As a parliamentarian with an extensive background in policy advocacy and legislative reform, she has prioritized promoting gender equality in politics in Tanzania and across Africa. In 2024, Hon. Lugangira, together with the WiP group, played a pivotal role in advocating for the adoption of inclusive amendments to three electoral laws. Her work with WiP has resulted in new protections within Tanzanian elections law that penalize Violence Against Women in Elections (VAW-E), making Tanzania the first country in the African continent to do so. We sat down with Hon. Lugangira to discuss this change, her insights into the legal reform process, and what this means for women in Tanzania.
“To get to where Tanzania is at the moment [you need to] first understand your landscape. You need to have a thorough review of your existing laws… and where Tanzania is at the moment.” - Honorable Neema Lugangira
Despite constituting half of the population as of the 2022 Census, women in Tanzania are significantly underrepresented in public office and political party leadership at both the local and national levels. In 2020, only 26 women were elected to parliament out of 264 seats, and women comprised only nine percent of candidates for president, parliament, and councilorships.
Read here the full article published by the National Democratic Institute on 2 April 2024.
Image source: National Democratic Institute
In the ongoing war in Sudan, there is an insufficiently narrated tragedy—the plight of women who are paying a hefty price for this war and are simultaneously being kept from the table in the discussion of how this war can end. International Women's Month coincides with a difficult period in Sudan, where women are facing various forms of violence and violations, including rape, sexual assault, kidnapping and the loss of providers. This is all occurring in a context marked by extreme poverty and lack of medical facilities, especially those related to sexual and reproductive health.
The war that erupted on April 15, 2023 between the Sudanese army and Rapid Support Forces has led to a humanitarian crisis that UN reports have ranked among the largest globally—stating that nearly 8 million people have been displaced due to the war, 88 percent of whom are women and children. There are more than 4 million women and girls at risk of sexual assaults, and alarming reports have appeared of women being sold in markets in Sudan.
The painful irony is that Sudanese women were at the forefront of the Sudanese revolution that overthrew Omar al-Bashir's government on April 11, 2019. Despite their contributions and sacrifices, they found themselves marginalized and excluded from decision-making positions in the subsequent transitional government. The promises of allocating 40 percent of the Sudanese parliament’s seats for women remained unfulfilled. When the actual figures emerged, they reflected a failure to meet Sudanese women's aspirations and acknowledge their vital role in society and the political process.
Read here the full article published by the Washington Institute on 25 March 2024.
Image source: Washington Institute
Every March 8, millions of women mobilize in Latin America to be part of the agenda of International Women's Day. The problems experienced by women and gender diverse people in the region are not few: since 2018, 14 of the 25 countries with the most femicides are in Latin America, 27.4 percent of women in the region experience multidimensional poverty, and nearly 8,400 women die each year in the region due to complications in pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period. According the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, in Latin America one in two women does not have a job and one in four does not have their own income. In Central America, less than 40 percent of women have a bank account.
On this day, women respond to and highlight the problems that affect them in their own contexts, causing each town and each Latin American city to have its own complaints and requests.
Here are some Latin American cities that filled their streets on International Women's Day.
Read here the full article published by Global Voices on 21 March 2024.
Image source: Global Voices
Excellencies,
Strengthening democratic institutions and processes is key for accelerating the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. Indeed, democracy is the political system best equipped to achieve these goals. Equally, gender equality is essential for democracy, as well as for sustainable development more broadly.
According to International IDEA's Global State of Democracy Indices, levels of gender equality are higher in democracies than in non-democratic regimes. The reasons for this are many. Relative to other forms of government, democracies provide more equal access to political power; produce more inclusive, participatory, and representative decision-making; and develop more effective, accountable, and transparent institutions, with lower levels of corruption. All of these elements are critical for the empowerment of women and girls. Data from International IDEA Global State of Democracy reports have shown that only 3% of democracies perform very poorly on gender equality measures. For authoritarian regimes, the proportion is 50%. And since we know that the achievement of not just SDG5 but the SDGs overall depends upon further progress on gender equality, this means that democracy drastically improves the likelihood of success in achieving the 2030 Agenda.
Click here to read and hear the full state published by International IDEA on 19 March 2024.
- Gender equality has suffered since the pandemic began.
- It will now take an estimated 135.6 years to close the worldwide gender gap between men and women.
- However, progress is being made in areas including science and politics.
- Improving paternity policies and representation of women will help.
There is still a huge amount of work to do to achieve gender equality around the world.
The time it will take to close the gender gap grew by 36 years in just 12 months, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021. This means it will now take an estimated 135.6 years for men and women to reach parity, according to the report, which assesses areas including economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and political empowerment.
Click here to read the full article published by The World Economic Forum on 3 March 2022.
This report and accompanying policy brief is intended to trigger a UN ‘rethink’ about women’s participation in transitional justice at both the policy and programme levels.
Fundamentally, ‘meaningful’ women’s participation in transitional justice does not only involve women being present—instead, it involves the convergence of several elements and manifests when women from diverse backgrounds: have the ability to enter; are present; possess self-efficacy; deploy their agency; and exert influence over transitional justice processes.
It recommends several adjustments for UN policy and programming—both in general and in relation to the updating of the UN Secretary-General’s 2010 Guidance Note on transitional justice—to better promote women’s meaningful participation in transitional justice.
Click here to access the report.
This report assesses women’s access to justice and women’s political participation in parliament, local councils and civil society organisations in Colombia. It examines existing legal, political and institutional frameworks in order to better understand successes, challenges and implementation gaps in the government’s pursuit of access to justice and gender equality. The report also offers examples of different approaches in OECD member and partner countries to support Colombia in closing gender gaps. Based on this analysis, the report proposes actionable solutions to help Colombia design and deliver policies that effectively promote women’s political participation and access to justice, including for survivors of gender based violence.
Click here to download the full report published by the OECD on 11 July 2020.
In 2016 at the launch of the #NotTheCost campaign, NDI presented a list of strategies to address and prevent violence against women in politics, focusing on a wide range of potential change-makers, from the global to the grassroots levels. While a deeper understanding of the issue has emerged, new problems have arisen. The world is grappling with a global pandemic. Many countries have seen their democratic institutions severely weakened. Technological innovations have created new contexts and means of perpetrating violence against women. On the fifth anniversary of the #NotTheCost campaign, NDI is renewing its call to action and presenting new opportunities to end both prevailing and newly emerging types of violence against women in politics. In the 2021 call to action, NDI identifies new opportunities to end both prevailing and newly emerging types of violence against women in politics.
Click here to read the full report.
The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) organized the conference "Promoting the political participation of women with disabilities" in Vienna on 16 and 17 April 2018. The event was held as part of ODIHR’s project “Our right to participate – Promoting the participation of Persons with Disabilities in political and public life (Phase II)”, implemented across the OSCE region.
The conference served as a platform to raise awareness about the limited participation of women with disabilities in political life across the OSCE region and to identify positive measures which can facilitate more diverse and inclusive democratic institutions and parliaments. It explored ways to strengthen linkages between the women’s movement and the disability movement, drawing on common experiences, challenges and opportunities.
Click here to read the meeting report.
Inclusive politics remains an elusive goal in Pakistan, which has a history of military interference in governance institutions, unstable elected governments and internecine conflict. Women’s voices, within the corridors of power or as constituents whose interests must be accounted for, have been weak but are growing stronger.
Activism, led by the women’s movement and civil society advocacy groups since the 1980s, has yielded results. The state has opened up democratic spaces to women in elected legislatures and local bodies through an expanded reserved seats quota; and recently legislators revised electoral rules to mandate a minimal level of women’s greater inclusion as candidates and voters.
This paper aims to contribute to the growing body of literature around how feminist mobilisation and political voice leads to progressive policy outcomes. It does this through exploring three questions:
How did the women’s movement lead to the decision to restore and increase the quota for women in elected bodies?
How have women used their elected positions, and worked in caucuses, to promote their interests? What other measures will further strengthen their political voice?
Can we gain insight into pro-women policymaking by looking at women’s activism, political voice, and other factors within a broader contextual framework to identify patterns that may predict further progress?
Click here to see the paper.