Elections

On June 2, over 60 percent of registered Mexican voters went to the polls for a monumental election, with over 20,000 public offices up for grabs at the federal and local levels. This election was historic, as a woman was elected to hold the highest office in Mexico for the first time. This comes more than 70 years after women gained the right to vote and stand for election. Over the past few years, women in Mexico have gone from being fringe operatives in the political arena to taking center stage. Still, this transformation took time and deliberate action to achieve.

While gender quotas have been used in Mexico since the early 2000s, they were not enough to achieve equality. In 2014, Mexico transitioned from relying on its gender quota system to a “gender parity system,” which mandates equal opportunity based on gender in candidate lists for local and national offices. This transition did not occur naturally; it resulted from consistent, permanent debate at all levels by activists, institutions, academics and women in politics who worked together across party lines to close the political gender gap.

The Impact of Gender Quotas in Mexico

Mexico’s 2002 first legislative quota passed by Congress required that 30 percent of candidates be women, with specific penalties for parties in cases of non-compliance. In 2008, the gender quota was raised to 40 percent, but parties were exempt from complying in cases where candidates were selected in democratic primaries. Six years later, in 2014, gender parity mandates were enshrined in Mexico’s constitution, marking the highest protection standard for women’s political rights. The impact of these hard-fought efforts has been undeniable; women’s participation in Congress has steadily increased with every reform.

Read here the full article published by Ms. Magazine on 11 June 2024.

Image by Ms. Magazine

Today’s Guardian report that online harassment against women politicians is intensifying is unsurprising, but it indicates a serious problem in UK democracy. There are two important factors to consider here. Firstly, online abuse needs to be addressed not as a case of individualised behaviour but as something structural. Online abuse is often facilitated by powerful actors, for example, our research shows how online abuse towards academics during Brexit was staged by right-wing newspapers on their social media pages. The digital media economy means that news organisations and social media companies have an incentive to promote articles that whip up anger or outrage that encourages engagement, and therefore advertising revenue.

Secondly, online abuse of women and other marginalised people needs to be understood not solely as ‘slurs’ or individualised insults but as a denial of a legitimate presence in political life. Our research found that online abuse of women academics and professionals, criticised not only their knowledge and expertise but their very status as academics, or, through threats of violence of death, even their right to exist at all.

Read here the full article published by the University of Birmingham on 11 June 2024.

Image by University of Birmingham

In September last year, when the Women’s Reservation Bill was passed in Parliament, it raised hopes of a more gender-equal legislature. The near-unanimous support for a Bill that promised 33 per cent reservation to women in Lok Sabha and state assemblies seemed to frame a political class that had finally accepted an idea whose time had come. Yet, eight months on, with the 18th Lok Sabha set to convene for its first session in a few weeks, the number of women in the lower House has dropped, from 78 out of 543 (an all-time high) in the 17th Lok Sabha to 73. It is clear that greater efforts must be made to break from the boys-club mindset, which continues to dominate politics.

Since the 1991 general election, when the gap between male and female voter turnouts started narrowing, women’s imprint on the political landscape has only become larger and deeper. In the recent elections too, while the number of women who turned out to vote saw a dip in some phases, the overall gender gap was almost non-existent, with both male and female voter turnout pegged at about 66 per cent by the Election Commission. Women have used the power that comes with their participation to shape electoral outcomes, with even political parties recognising the growing importance of the “woman vote”. This recognition has mostly taken the form of targeted welfare schemes that have often taken campaign centrestage, including in the recent Lok Sabha polls: In West Bengal, for instance, the popularity of women-centric schemes such as Lakshmir Bhandar, a monthly cash transfer to over 2 crore women, is believed to have helped in sustaining the dominance of the ruling TMC. Earlier, the impact of Laadli Behna was seen to play a role in the BJP’s return to power in the Madhya Pradesh assembly polls.

Read here the full article published by The Indian Express on 8 June 2024.

Image by The Indian Express

Johannesburg, 31 May: As election results from the 2024 South African elections pour in, Gender Links (GL) predicts a drop in women’s representation in the national assembly of between three and five percentage points.

The result would be South Africa dropping from its current twelfth place in the global ranking of women’s political participation (WPP) to twentieth.  Chantal Revel, princess of the Koranna Royal Household of the Khoi and San First Nations people, who made history by changing South Africa’s electoral system for this election through the Constitutional Court, is not on the ballot papers.

“While democracy is the biggest winner in this election, there may be other casualties,” noted GL Special Advisor Colleen Lowe Morna. “We are watching the numbers closely, because gender equality is intrinsic to every aspect of democracy. It should be a key metric in election analysis.”

There is a close correlation between WPP in South Africa and the electoral fate of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), both because of its dominance in the past, and its voluntary party quota now at fifty percent. The ANC is predicted to lose considerable ground in the 2024 elections. While several political parties have shown commitment to including women on their party lists, other more conservative parties have not observed the principle of equality.

After increasing to 43% in 2009, WPP decreased to 40% in 2014 and then rose to 46% in 2019. Now all indications are that the proportion of women in the national assembly will drop back to the 2009 levels or below.

Several factors make 2024 a watershed election in South Africa. The 2024 elections are arguably the most contested since the advent of democracy thirty years ago in 1994, when the ANC won 63% of the vote.

Read here the full article published by Gender Links on 31 May 2024.

Image by Gender Links

LONDON — Claudia Sheinbaum broke the glass ceiling when she was declared the winner of Mexico’s presidential elections this week.

It is a modern-era feat that eludes Group of Seven powerhouses such as the United States, France and Japan. But Sheinbaum’s decisive victory means Mexico joins the likes of its Latin American compatriots, Argentina and Brazil, in electing a female head of state in the 21st century.

Pablo Calderon Martinez, a Northeastern University associate professor of politics and international relations, says the breakthrough is no accident.

When Sheinbaum is sworn in, Calderon Martinez points out, four of the most senior government positions in Mexico — president, Supreme Court president, head of the National Electoral Institute and the mayor of Mexico City — will be held by women.

In addition, there is an almost 50-50 gender split in the Congress of the Union, the country’s federal legislature.

Calderon Martinez says efforts were made in Mexico to “correct gender imbalances” with it written into law that every political party has to put forward a field of candidates that is made up of 50% women.

Read here the full article published by Northeastern University on 4 June 2024.

Image by Northeastern University