Advocacy & Lobbying
KUCHING: Dewan Rakyat Speaker Tan Sri Johari Abdul has called for stronger laws to protect women in politics, citing online harassment and fake news as key deterrents.
Many women, he said, are hesitant to enter politics due to uncontrollable challenges on social media, including slander, fake news, criticism and threats.
“Fake news, and when we enter politics, we are exposed to criticism and threats sometimes.
“This makes women feel that it’s not worth it and right now, we see Singapore has passed laws to prevent slander and so on.
“I am considering, if necessary, to introduce such laws in Malaysia. We should do so as this would prevent relentless attacks, fake news, which ultimately does not help anyone but gives satisfaction to those irresponsible individuals who spread such slander,” he said.
He was speaking to the media after attending the 4th Meeting of the Coordination Committee of Women Parliamentarians of the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (WAIPA) at Damai Lagoon Resort here today (April 22).
Read here the full article published by Sarawak Tribune 22 April 2025.
Image by Sarawak Tribune
Brussels, Belgium – On 4-5 February 2025, UN Women convened a two-day Expert Group Meeting (EGM) to address one of the most persistent barriers to gender equality in political and public life: discriminatory social norms. The event brought together feminist scholars, policymakers, activists, and practitioners to chart a path forward for transforming social norms and ensuring women’s full and effective political participation. This experts’ meeting was organized under the WYDE | Women’s Leadership, funded by the European Union, and under the leadership of UN Women’s Political Participation team, which is a collaborative global effort aimed at advancing women’s full and effective political participation and decision-making at all levels, especially those most often left furthest behind.
Despite decades of international commitments and mobilization, including the Beijing Platform for Action and the Sustainable Development Goals, women remain significantly underrepresented in political decision-making worldwide. Social norms continue to shape perceptions of women’s roles in decision-making, restricting their access to leadership positions, prescribing what their roles should be and reinforcing structural inequalities. As part of the WYDE| Women’s Leadership Initiative, UN Women is prioritizing social norms change and shifting attitudes that portray women’s roles in communities and society as incompatible with political power, to enhance women’s political participation. Over two days, feminist scholars, policymakers, activists, and practitioners were introduced to UN Women’s corporate work on gender equality social norms and also explored social norms that impact women’s participation in public life with the ambition to lay the groundwork for an approach towards addressing these norms and measuring norms change.
Read here the full article published by UN News on 17 April 2025.
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
The Fiji Women’s Rights Movement and the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre have called for reforms to increase women’s participation in politics.
They outlined systemic barriers that limit women’s involvement in the political process.
During its joint oral submissions to the Fiji Law Reform Commission, FWRM Board Chair Akanisi Nabalarua and FWCC Manager Legal Services Miliana Tarai outlined several key recommendations to address these challenges and create a more inclusive political environment.
The submission has garnered widespread support from civil society organizations (CSOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including Empower Pacific, Young Women’s Christian Association, femLINKPacific, Strumphet Alliance Network, Rainbow Pride Foundation, and the Social Empowerment Education Program (SEEP) with more endorsements expected in the coming days.
The main focus of the submission is the need for financial and logistical support to enable women candidates to fully participate in election campaigns.
Alongside this, FWRM and FWCC are advocating for stronger civic education programs that promote voter rights and women’s leadership, as well as addressing societal norms that hinder women’s political engagement.
Read here the full article published by FBC News on 11 April 2025.
Image by FBC
At least 30 women politicians associated with different political parties at the local government level from two districts—Ratnapura and Kegalle—came together to discuss the digital threats they experience in their daily political careers due to their gender. This gathering was held in Ratnapura from 4-6 March. It was a unanimous consensus that every woman who participated in this event agreed that all of them are concerned about cyber gender-based violence, and that digital threats are on the rise.
When discussing the various digital threats they experience in their political careers, gendered disinformation was identified as a major issue. False news and fabricated information, manipulated images, video and audio clips, and misleading narratives are often used to discredit women. These false allegations, which often centre on their personal lives, morality, or relationships, circulate widely and damage their public image. This has a larger societal and political impact on their careers.
In addition, women discussed various digital threats they faced. Doxxing and privacy violations further endanger women politicians, as their personal details—such as home addresses and phone numbers—are leaked online and shared in public networking groups and WhatsApp groups. In many cases, such as in Matara and Ratnapura, it was also noted that women politicians often shared some personal information on social media. When questioned, they would say there is nothing to hide, as everyone knows everything. Our telephone numbers, NIC numbers, home addresses, dates of birth, etc., are almost everywhere. These international NGOs have them; Grama Niladharis, development officers, agricultural officers, local NGOs, even shop owners, pharmacies, and private companies have them.
Read here the full article published by DailyFT on 10 April 2025.
Image by DailyFT
With the adoption of the General Assembly and Security Council resolutions on sustaining peace and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a multilateral policy consensus is emerging around a common vision for peaceful societies. Building and promoting positive peace, rather than containing conflict and its consequences, is recognized as a more effective strategy for addressing today’s complex and interlinked global challenges. These global frameworks treat prevention as an integral part of effective and participatory governance and view peace as both an enabler and an outcome of sustainable development. Under this broad conception of peace, all groups and individuals are free to pursue their needs and aspirations without fear, with equal opportunities, with justice, and in security.
With no political solution on the horizon to end the conflict in Syria, it is clear that humanitarian agencies must continue to prepare for a protracted conflict. In late 2013, the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) undertook an extensive literature review and a month-long field assessment in Jordan, including indepth interviews, focus group meetings and observation. The goal of the project was to identify how the humanitarian community was integrating existing gender guidance across all sectors and whether gender was being dealt with centrally as an institutionalized way of working rather than peripherally. It looked at the ways in which humanitarian agencies, including UN agencies and international and local organizations, assessed these needs and planned their programs. It also asked questions about the opportunities and good practices and models for promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the No Ceilings initiative of the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation joined forces to assess the evidence on the gains and gaps in progress for women and girls over the past 20 years. They asked: What do women’s and girls’ lives look like around the world 20 years after the Beijing conference? What barriers remain? What do the numbers tell us? How have laws and policies progressed over the same period? What information do we still need in order to assess the status of women and girls? The foundations worked with The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and the WORLD Policy Analysis Center at UCLA (WORLD) to examine the performance of 197 countries and Beijing Platform signatories and develop a picture of how the lives of women and girls have changed since the Beijing conference.
The findings are presented in this report and are available in a visual representation at noceilings.org.
The rise of social media in the past decade has changed the political landscape - not only the way friends connect with one another, but also how people and public officials communicate. Elected officials and governments across the globe are able to engage directly with the people they represent on a scale previously inconceivable. This report, a joint effort between the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, Facebook, and the Women in Parliaments Global Forum, is designed to show how women legislators from around the world use social media to engage with citizens as well as how social media can play an even more effective role in facilitating a dialogue between governments and their citizens.
This report is based on the results of a survey that examined the use of social media by female Parliamentarians from 107 countries. The survey sought to discover factors affecting their level of social media use and to identify areas where greater knowledge could strengthen that use.
Click here to access the report.
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UN Women launched www.cidade5050.org.br where candidates will be able to make public commitments to gender equality. The project was developed in a partnership between UN Women Brazil, the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE), the Patrícia Galvão Institute and the Research Group on Democracy and Inequality at the University of Brasilia (Demodê/UNB). It has institutional support of Congress in Focus, and #MeRepresenta and In Press Group.
The digital platform "City 50-50: All for Equality", available at www.cidade5050.org.br aims to encourage debate on equal rights between women and men in local elections this year. The platform is a place where candidates can make commitments to gender equality and voters can get information to help them define their vote. It arises from the understanding that a society can only be called democratic when there is equal participation between women and men.
Candidates of the 5,568 Brazilian municipalities, which already have registered their candidatures with the TSE can register and make public commitments to promote women's rights during the election campaign. Voters, in turn, will be able to identify their candidates’ proposals for this topic, and afterwards make the elected accountable.
The Minister of the Superior Electoral Court, Luciana Lossio, highlighted some measures already taken to ensure women's political empowerment: "We had a major trial at the Superior Electoral Court that buoyed the condemnation to all political parties that do not comply with the 10 per cent allocation of radio and TV space to encourage women´s participation. Now we are joining in a partnership with UN Women, to seek a solution to this problem of the Brazilian Electoral Politics."
Among the more than 144 million Brazilian voters who will vote in October, 52% are women. However, only 31% of the candidates running for office (Mayors, Vice Mayor and City Council) are women - the percentage is within the law, which requires a minimum of 30% women candidates.
For this elections, 52 municipalities have only women as candidates for city council, according to a survey conducted in mid-August this year by the TSE. Only men compete for Mayor in 3,815 of the 5,568 municipalities, equivalent to 68% of the total. Currently, women occupy 10% of the municipalities and represent 12% of councilors in municipalities.
To read the full story, visit the UN Women regional website for Latin America and the Caribbean.
The report’s chapters were built in response to the Concluding Observation No. 60 by the CEDAW Committee, where the Committee request from the Iraqi government’s side to submit, within two years, a written report on steps and measures taken to respond to the recommendations included in the Concluding Observations (12 and 18). The Concluding Observations, of the CEDAW Committee, were issued after its 57th session on February 2014, in which the last government’s report, submitted to the Committee at the end of 2013, was discussed, concerning Iraq's obligations to implement the CEDAW Convention, also in that session Iraqi CSOs presented the first CEDAW shadow report for Iraq since signing the convention back in 1986.
This report includes a review of the situation of Iraqi women after an increase in the phenomenon of migration and displacement, in addition to the procedures and measures and legislation adopted to implement recommendations 12 and 18, and the civil society’s observations on the government’s report plus a number of activities run by the Iraqi Women Network and some of its members during this period of time.
Click here to read the Summary of the humanitarian situation and the situation of women in Iraq and the role of CSOs.