Elections

As Bangladesh moves towards its 13th national parliamentary election, the issue of women's political representation has once again come into sharp focus. Despite repeating promises by political parties to increase women's participation in direct electoral contests, the nomination lists released ahead of the election reveal that women continue to be vastly underrepresented among candidates for general seats. This pattern raises fundamental questions about the role political parties play in shaping democratic inclusion and whether the symbolic rhetoric surrounding gender equality is being matched by substantive action. The composition of nomination lists from major political parties such as the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Jatiya Party, National Citizen Party (NCP) and others provides an illuminating snapshot of the current state of women's electoral inclusion and the deeper challenges that persist.

The most striking feature of the data on nominations for the 13th national election is the persistently low number of women candidates. According to official figures from the Election Commission, women make up a tiny fraction of those contesting general seats: only 65 women out of 1,842 validly nominated candidates, amounting to just 3.53 per cent of the total list. This percentage is far below even modest thresholds proposed in some political discussions, which suggested that parties should nominate at least 5 per cent women candidates across constituencies. In many ways, the lack of women nominees underscores the structural barriers that women face within party nomination processes in Bangladesh.

Full article.

On March 1, 2024, Iran held the first round of its parliamentary elections, marking the 12th time since the 1979 revolution that Iranians elected members of the national parliament. Meanwhile, on March 31, 2024, Turkey held its local elections throughout the country’s 81 provinces, electing metropolitan and municipal mayors alongside councilors and other neighborhood representatives.  

When it comes to women and electoral politics, Iran and Turkey diverge from one another in fundamental ways, while they also share important similarities. A comparative study of the two countries reveals that, despite the notable backlash against women’s rights and the absence of free and fair elections (though to different degrees) in both countries, large sections of the feminist movement in Iran and Turkey assessed the elections differently in their respective countries. 

Considering the institutional structures of their respective contexts, feminists in Iran actively campaigned for a boycott of the elections, declaring them illegitimate, while feminists in Turkey considered the elections as an opportunity to help reverse Turkey’s authoritarian and anti-woman turn.  

Full article here.

Introduction

In several countries, including in Venezuela, El Salvador, Thailand, and Tunisia, electoral contests were indeed manipulated by incumbents to further entrench their power. But the global picture was not uniformly negative. Whether in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Senegal, or Guatemala, citizens mobilized from below to push back against executive overreach and bad governance. Although far-right leaders and parties made gains in several Western democracies, including in Austria, France, Germany, Portugal, and the United States, this same pattern was not evident in many other parts of the world, where politics were shaped by other issues and cleavages.

Despite these varied political outcomes, the past year’s record number of elections brought no uptick in women’s political representation. Globally, women’s parliamentary representation and the number of countries led by women failed to increase.

The barriers to reaching gender parity in politics are mounting, from continuing democratic erosion and rising ethno-nationalism to a widening pushback against progressive gender norms in different parts of the world. Yet looking beyond global and regional averages also reveals surprising bright spots. In countries as diverse as Mongolia, Sri Lanka, and the United Kingdom, more women are serving in political office than ever before. Several countries elected their first-ever female presidents, including Mexico and Namibia.

This report analyzes advances and setbacks in women’s political representation in 2024, building on the mid-year assessment published by the Colmena Fund for Women’s Political Power in October. It begins by examining global trend lines in women’s parliamentary and executive representation, highlighting both progress and backsliding. It then turns to four countries that held significant elections over the past year and interrogates their impact on women’s political power: the Dominican Republic, India, South Africa, and Sri Lanka. To close, the analysis draws attention to several broader themes that emerged from the electoral contests of the past year. 

Full report.

The Women’s Fund of Central Ohio recently commissioned original research to uncover the barriers and accelerators women experience in building wealth in our region. We worked with The Center for Community Solutions to survey over 3,000 women from across Central Ohio and conduct focus groups with 126 women of varying identities, backgrounds, and life experiences.

The research, published in “Making Women Wealthy and Free” demonstrates that building financial stability and wealth has many outcomes, including increasing women’s representation in decision-making spaces. This in turn creates systemic changes that benefit women, families and communities.

Michele Swers, a political scientist at Georgetown University, has conducted research that shows that when women are elected to Congress, they tend to focus more on issues that impact women, like paid leave and intimate partner violence, than men do. The problem is women are still vastly underrepresented in political office. Currently, only 28.2% of Congressional members are women. What will it take for more women to run for office and win?

Our research shows that women candidates in Central Ohio experience challenges running for office for the following reasons:

• They don’t feel like standard campaigns are structured or designed for them or their families.

• They are expected to oversell themselves and their qualifications, something they don’t feel men are asked to do.

• Women candidates feel they have to be assertive, especially when asking for campaign funds, but not too assertive, or they could end up being viewed negatively, which doesn’t help them.

• The common stereotype that women are bad at fundraising makes it harder to raise money as a candidate and can be a barrier to running for office in the first place.

We found that women need access to more affordable childcare, paid leave, and more flexible work schedules to find a balance that works for themselves and their families. To accomplish these policy victories, public and private stakeholders and advocates have to work together.

When women build wealth for themselves, our entire economy is better off. Women need policies that will help them do that, and we know that women elected officials are more likely to make those policies a priority. Electing more women is good for families, our communities, and our country. Working to remove the barriers women face in running for office and winning is essential to fighting for the policies benefit all of us.

Read here the full article published by Gender On The Ballot on 15 April 2025.

Image by Gender On The Ballot