Advocacy & Lobbying
More than 750 Nigerian women, representing all 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), have converged on Abuja in a historic show of solidarity to submit a memorandum at the National Public Hearing for the Special Seats Reserved for Women Bill.
According to the Chair of the Women’s Political Participation–Technical Working Group (WPP–TWG), Ebere Ifendu, the women embarked on a peaceful walk to the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja, where the leadership of the National Assembly would receive their memorandum during a stakeholder engagement.
Although the National Assembly is currently on recess, Ifendu emphasised that Nigerian women remain resolute and determined to use the symbolic action to press home their demand for gender inclusion in governance.
Nigeria’s ongoing debate on women’s political inclusion will take centre stage today, Thursday, in Abuja, with policymakers, civil society leaders, and grassroots women converging for “She The People”, a high-level dialogue convened by the Emerge Women Development Initiative.
Themed “Deepening the Conversation, Accelerating Women’s Representation in Governance”, the dialogue will spotlight gender-focused legislative reforms before the National Assembly and explore strategies to build momentum to push for the passage of the Reserved Seats for Women Bill (HB 1349 & SB 440).
Founder of the initiative, Mary Ikoku, said the dialogue, strategically scheduled ahead of the public hearing on the Reserved Seats Bill slated for September 22, 2025, at Transcorp Hilton, Abuja, offers an urgent corrective measure to decades of exclusion.
Full article here.
Speakers at a press conference have called on the political parties to reconsider their stance on reserved seats for women in the Jatiya Sangsad (parliament).
They also stressed that changes must be brought in the decisions reached in discussions between the National Consensus Commission with the political parties, over reserved women’s seats in parliament and giving nomination to female candidates in 300 constituencies.
According to them, those changes must be incorporated in the proposed July National Charter.
They also warned that unless women’s voices are taken seriously, they will chart their own course at the ballot box.
Full article here.
The herstoric Hine E Hine gathering concluded today after three days celebrating 40 years of the Māori women’s refuge movement. Founding leader Denise Messiter ONZM used the occasion to connect decades of liberation work with urgent calls for pay equity, women’s representation, and greater Māori participation in democracy.
Hosted by Waikato Women’s Refuge Te Whakaruruhau, the gathering brought together veteran wāhine toa and emerging leaders from across Aotearoa. It was the first such event in 30 years.
“This gathering has celebrated the movement and our work in the emancipation of women across Aotearoa,” said Messiter, who has led refuge mahi in Hauraki for four decades. “Now we must turn that strength into political action, starting with the local body elections.”
In Kenya’s political arena, women are rarely seen as leaders in their own right. Instead, they are often labelled with degrading terms like flower girls or slay queens, or portrayed as sidekicks to powerful men. These sexist narratives undermine their legitimacy and overshadow their ideas and capabilities.
This problem is not unique to Kenya. When a US governor dismissed Vice President Kamala Harris because she lacked “humility” as a stepmother, it reflected a global pattern that reduces women’s value to their biological or marital roles.
In 2010, Kenya took a bold constitutional step by enshrining the two-thirds gender principle, which requires that no more than two-thirds of any elected or appointed body be of the same gender. On August 27th, we celebrated the 15th anniversary of this Constitution. Yet despite this milestone, the promise of gender equity remains unfulfilled. This failure is not due to legal complications but a deliberate refusal to share power with women. Today, women hold only 23.3 per cent of National Assembly seats, 31.3 per cent in the Senate, and just six out of 47 governor positions. This is despite women making up over half of Kenya’s population. Women remain political outsiders in a system they helped build. Their exclusion is a loss for democracy and denies women their rightful place in shaping Kenya’s future.
On August 15, 2021, the lives of the Afghan people underwent a stochastic lifestyle shift. It marked the establishment of a Taliban-governed Afghan state for the first time since 2001. This theocratic regime has been characterized by humanitarian organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as oppressive toward women, with documented restrictions on their rights to work, education, freedom of movement and public participation. Additional documented human rights concerns include religious intolerance, persecution of minorities, suppression of press and speech freedoms, extrajudicial killings and denial of due process.
The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, coined “The Fall of Kabul,” was a far more hastened onslaught of events than American intelligence and even the Taliban themselves anticipated. The United States military completed its withdrawal by August 30, 2021. It took the Taliban just 10 days to retake Afghanistan. The only thing to change as impetuously in Afghanistan as the system of government change was the constitutional rights of Afghan women.
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
With Victorian council elections to be held in October, the state government’s target of reaching 50-50 gender representation at the local level is under threat.
While the state achieved a record 43.8% of women elected to councils in 2020, outperforming most federal and state parliaments, and succeeded in achieving gender parity in 47 out of 76 councils, the overall 50-50 gender representation target by 2025 will still be difficult to reach.
Globally, gender quotas have been a tried and tested way of lifting women’s political representation. But research also shows quotas can divide public opinion, and they work better in some contexts than others. With this in mind, we wanted to test alternative measures to support women in politics, which also attract public support.
Click here to read the full article published by The Conversation on 8 February 2024.
Image source: The Conversation
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.