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.
Despite women being at the forefront of the August 2024 uprising that toppled the Awami League government, political parties have largely failed to honour their pledge to nominate at least 5 percent women candidates in the parliamentary election.
Muhammad Yunus-led interim government had introduced reforms aimed at restoring democracy, including a commitment under the July National Charter that parties would nominate women in no fewer than 5 percent of the 300 directly elected seats.
Election Commission data show that while more than a hundred women submitted nomination papers, only around 65 survived scrutiny.
The final number of women contesting will be confirmed on Jan 20 after appeals.
Among the parties that signed the July Charter, the BNP nominated the highest number of women in absolute terms but still fell short of the five percent benchmark.
Women remain largely absent from the electoral race, with 30 of the 51 political parties contesting the upcoming national election fielding no female aspirants at all, Election Commission data shows.
The figures lay bare a stark imbalance -- despite women making up half the population, their presence among candidates remains marginal.
Of the 2,568 aspirants for the February 12 polls, only 109, just 4.24 percent, are women. Seventy-two of them were nominated by parties, while the rest are independents.
The exclusion is most pronounced among Jamaat-e-Islami, which submitted 276 nominations without a single woman, followed by Islami Andolan Bangladesh with 268.
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.
On Sunday, 5 October, Syria held its first parliamentary elections since the fall of the Assad regime last year.
Despite concerns over inclusivity and repeated delays, the elections were seen by many as a step forward after decades of dictatorship — particularly for women — with Syria's interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, calling the parliamentary election "historic."
But despite women playing key roles in education, healthcare, relief work, and civil society — especially during the war when they took on significantly greater economic and social responsibilities — Syrian women’s political presence remains limited. This is mainly because politics is still viewed as a male domain.
Ahead of the vote, for example, a government decree allocating only 20 per cent of parliamentary seats to female representatives triggered widespread debate across both political and social circles.
While some described the move as a “token measure” that failed to reflect the scale of sacrifices made by Syrian women during the war — and those still being made as the country continues to face multiple crises — others viewed it as a necessary, temporary step towards addressing decades of marginalisation and exclusion.
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Political parties act as gatekeepers, meaning that improvements in the representation of women depend on parties’ willingness to nominate women candidates. Previous research suggests that party characteristics and gender quotas largely explain women’s nominations, but overlooks the political context in which parties operate. This study highlights the gendered outcomes that occur when parties make nomination decisions in times of public discontent, namely increasing political distrust and increasing perceived corruption. We theorize that parties hold similar biases to voters: gender stereotypes that regard women as more trustworthy and honest should advantage women as political trust falls and perceptions of corruption rise. We hypothesize that parties nominate larger percentages of women in these circumstances. Using two waves of data from over 100 political parties in 18 Latin American countries, we find that parties nominate more women when a large proportion of the public distrusts the national legislature, providing support for the theory.
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Women ran for and were elected to office in record numbers in the 2018 election. They made historic gains across levels of office and reached new milestones for women’s political representation. But not all women achieved record levels of success in 2018. Republican women’s representation dropped across offices and within their party.
The progress for all women in election 2018 should also be put into important context. First, despite breaking records for candidacy and officeholding, women – who are just over half of the population – were still underrepresented among all candidates and remain less than one-third of elected officials.
Finally, measuring progress for women in electoral politics means looking beyond the numbers. When considering the gender and intersectional dynamics at play in U.S. campaigns, it is clear that there is much progress left to make in creating equitable conditions for success for women and men in American elections.
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The report on “The Empowerment of Women in Politics and the 6 th Legislature National Assembly Elections 2018” is an analysis of the data and views of Cambodian women’s participation in politics, especially the process of the 6th Legislature National Assembly (NA) Elections 2018.
This report looks in particular at the women’s political empowerment and elections; number of women candidates, measures for how to select women candidats, policies of political parties for promoting women’s political participation, political party platforms on women’s and children’s issues, challenges facing women both as voters and candidates including violence against women in politics. Also, it shows about women’s opinions on electoral progress, and activities related to promoting women’s participation in politics as well as the outcome of elected women representative from the single party CPP which dominated the election and the outcome. It also provides an overview of a rapid survey on “The reason of women voters who voted or have indelible ink on their finger and women voters who did not go to vote or have no indelible ink on their finger” conducted by Women Volunteer Citizens throughout the four provincial target area of COMFREL a day after the election and two case studies. The report closes with a set of recommendations to improve gender equality and women’s political empowerment in Cambodia.
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This policy paper aims to reconsider the concept of parity democracy in the current context of the EU and focusing on the elections to the EP in May 2019. As developed in the Athens Declaration, adopted at the European Summit of Women in Power in 1992, parity democracy stands on 5 basic arguments (equality, democracy, good use of human resources, needs and interests of women and quality of policy-making) which are recalled and updated with a view to provide stakeholders, including democrats standing for gender equality and feminist movements, with useful ammunitions to inform and convince EU citizens (women and men) to vote and to vote for women defending equality. This policy paper is, therefore, part of broader Gender Five Plus’ efforts to inform EU citizens and influence stakeholders for greater gender balance in the EU. The analysis in this policy paper is based on desk research, literature review and includes diverse forms of experience in EU policy-making. It is divided into four different parts and a list of recommendations. Part I tries to answer the question of why parity democracy is important to the EU; Part II focuses on why the EU and parity democracy are important to women; Part III analyses gender balance in the EU decision-making (focusing in the EP); Part IV examines the possible challenges and opportunities for fostering parity democracy in the current EU context and the conclusion provides space for a reflection on the EU that we want and need to build. Finally, derived from the analysis of the whole policy paper, a noncomprehensive list of recommendations is provided.
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IMF examines the impact of gender equality on electoral violence in Africa using micro-level data from the sixth round of Afrobarometer surveys. The sample covers 30 countries. IMF finds that gender equality is associated with lower electoral violence. Quantitatively, their estimates show that an increase in female-to-male labor force participation ratio by 1 percentage point is correlated with a reduction of the probability of electoral violence across the continent by around 4.2 percentage points. Their results are robust to alternative ways to measure electoral violence and gender equality, as well as to alternative specifications. The findings of this paper support the long-standing view that women empowerment contributes to the reduction of violence and underscore the urgency of addressing gender inequality in Africa.
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Understanding and explaining outbreaks of election-related violence is a complex task; predicting whether forthcoming elections will turn violent, which factors may underlie or trigger violence, and what can be done to prevent violence is even more difficult. One way to address the problem is to empower those who have immediate responsibility to prevent and mitigate election-related violence, such as electoral management bodies, security sector agencies and other state and non-state agencies.
The Electoral Risk Management Tool (ERM Tool) is designed to empower people to ensure peaceful and credible elections. The software aims to build the capacities of users to understand, analyse and mitigate electoral risks. Specifically, the ERM Tool can build users’ capacity to understand electoral risk factors; collect and analyse risk data; design prevention and mitigation strategies; and record the results of actions.
The software is accompanied by three Guides. This Prevention and Mitigation Guide aims to assist and inspire users to tailor strategies and actions for the prevention and mitigation of election-related violence. It is complemented by an Internal Factors Guide and an External Factors Guide which provide guidance to the users of the ERM Tool in identifying electoral risks in a given country and electoral context.
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