Elections
BOSTON (WWLP) – The League of Women Voters convenes on Beacon Hill each year to advocate for their priority legislation.
The nonpartisan League has locations across the state, including in Amherst, Berkshire County, and the Northampton area, and members are united by a simple mission to strengthen democracy.
An issue championed by the League is the Safe Communities Act, which would limit local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
“What the Safe Communities Act seeks to address is this feeling of fear and solidifying our commitment, commitment that many of our local law enforcement agencies have already made,” said Framingham Representative Priscila Sousa.
Despite support from the League, this bill is unlikely to pass, as House and Senate leadership have both publicly expressed disinterest in moving the legislature forward. Voters were also encouraged to support a bill allowing election day registration, meaning you can register to vote and cast your ballot on the same day.
As of now, improperly or unregistered voters can file a provisional ballot.
Seventy-three women are among 252 candidates registered to run for parliament in Kirkuk province, the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) declared on Wednesday.
Speaking to Shafaq News, IHEC spokesperson Ali Abbas revealed that the electoral race in Kirkuk includes five political alliances, nine individual parties, and seven independent candidates. In total, 179 men and 73 women will compete for the province’s 12 seats.
According to IHEC data, Kirkuk has 1,229,740 registered voters. Among them, 897,030 have updated their records, obtained biometric identification cards, and are eligible to cast ballots.
Election researcher and activist Abdulrahman Ali highlighted that this year marks the highest female participation in Kirkuk’s history, noting that three of the province’s seats are reserved for women under Iraq’s quota system, which guarantees at least 25 percent female representation in the national Council of Representatives.
“This positive shift in social and political awareness encourages female candidates to put forward ambitious programs addressing the needs of women, families, and youth,” Ali said.
Nationwide, IHEC reported that only 37 of 130 candidates nominated by political parties are women.
Several motions proposed by women and presented to the Tonga Legislative Assembly were met with resistance and disparaging questioning from the House, during its final sitting for the year.
The Speaker Lord Fakafanua expressed deep disappointment over the "degrading and mocking terms towards women," in the House on 18 September.
The motions, written by participants of the Practice Parliament for Women 2025, were presented for the House to recognize, and for the government's table to consider.
The Practice Parliament for Women 2025, an initiative by the Legislative Assembly aimed at empowering women's voices in Tonga's legislature, saw 30 women from across Tonga engage in official debates last week. The women adopted seven motions, including one that called for introducing temporary special measures (TSM) seats for women in Parliament.
Entrenched attitudes
But when the women's motions were presented to the Legislative Assembly, the responses revealed entrenched attitudes toward women, held by members of a parliament that is mostly comprised of men.
Speaking to the TSM Motion, Vava'u Noble’s Representative No. 2 and Chair of the Committee of the Whole House, Lord Tu’ilakepa, noted that there was an "increasing presence of women in Parliament."
He questioned the Speaker, whether men would also have an opportunity to bring proposals and told the Speaker to consider a "Parliament for men."
He went on to express concern that such initiatives might lead to "the other class" (referring to the gay community) also wanting their own Parliament.
“I fear the other class might attempt to do their own Parliament,” he said.
He also made comments about women's roles, saying women were now taking over CEO positions.
“I hope my wife will not participate in this but stays in her place as a woman,” Lord Tu'ilakepa said.
ElectHER, a pan-African non-partisan organisation advancing gender-inclusive democracy, has concluded a two-day engagement in Anambra State combining a multi-stakeholder roundtable with an advocacy visit to security agencies, as part of efforts to ensure an inclusive, peaceful and secure governorship election on November 8, 2025.
The stakeholder engagement roundtable, held on Wednesday at the Radisson Onyx Hotel, Awka, brought together representatives of the Independent National Electoral Commission, security agencies, political parties, civil society, academia, journalists and grassroots leaders.
Discussions centred on voter mobilisation, women’s participation and strategies to deliver credible, inclusive and peaceful polls. The engagement was convened with support from the European Union Support to Democratic Governance in Nigeria programme, which partners with civil society to deepen electoral integrity and inclusion.
Speaking during the event, the Chief Executive Officer, ElectHER, Ibijoke Faborode, noted that Anambra State has a legacy of women’s political visibility, starting from Dame Virginia Etiaba’s tenure as Nigeria’s first female.
In the 9th Assembly, a constitutional amendment bill to create special or reserve seats for women in parliament failed to see the light of day as both the Senate and the House of Representatives failed to vote positively for the bill. This attracted protests from women’s groups at the gate of the National Assembly for about a week. The bill, which was reintroduced in the 10th Assembly, has continued to generate serious attention from members of the House of Representatives, with the Speaker, Abbas Tajudeen, being the chief driver. Unfortunately, it has not gained the same momentum in the Senate. This has raised a series of questions about whether or not the bill will sail through when the lawmakers vote on the bill. TONY AKOWE reports
For several years, Nigerian women have clamoured for what they called equal representation in the political affairs of the country. Beginning from the 35 percent affirmative action canvassed at the Beijing conference, the agitation has grown by the day. With less than 20 women out of about 469 lawmakers in Nigeria’s National Assembly, the under-representation of women has continued to grow. Incidentally, this number has been on a downward trend since 1999. With only 3 women in the Senate and 13 women in the House of Representatives in 1999, the figure rose to 4 Senators and 21 Representatives in 2003 and 9 female Senators in 2007, with 27 House members becoming the highest ever women representation in the National Assembly. The figure dropped to 7 Senators and 26 House members in 2011. While the number of Senators increased to 8 each in 2015 and 2019, the number of House members continued to drop, dropping to 22 in 2015 and 13 in 2019.
Polls and pundits have offered up plenty of predictions, but in a democracy, voting rules. The elections this fall will provide hard data on President Donald Trump and the GOP’s prospects for retaining a majority in the U.S. House, as the country and the world take stock of the national mood leading into next year’s midterms. On the ballot are state
offices in Virginia and New Jersey, U.S. congressional seats, control of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and more.
In all contests, women’s votes will be key—and not just because women vote more than men.
Celinda Lake, a leading pollster and president of Lake Research Partners, has studied public opinion for decades. She told Ms. that women “are our own voters, we make up our own minds. … Women really want government to be a help for their families. They believe that they could depend on a social safety net program.”
This is one reason why there’s been a marked gender gap in U.S. elections since at least 1980, with women more often favoring Democratic candidates than men—often decisively.
Statewide races offer the best barometers of public sentiment toward the current administration, and we’ll be closely watching the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia.
Women around the world are playing increasingly visible roles in the political processes of their countries as voters, candidates, representatives, protesters, journalists and as civic educators in the home, the community and beyond. However, as emerging democracies struggle to consolidate, overcome violent pasts and address crippling poverty, they often falter and breed disillusionment. Religious and ethnic divisions may appear or intensify. In these complex contexts, electoral violence threatens – or beckons – women in new ways.
In Breaking the Mold: Understanding Gender and Electoral Violence, IFES introduces the concept of gendered electoral violence in transitional democracies and presents a new framework which accounts for all forms of public and private violence committed by and against women. Where current frameworks fail to fully take women into account by neglecting or stereotyping gender-specific forms of violence, IFES’ new framework draws on research in domestic violence and feminist security studies to expand our understanding of types of violence and victim and perpetrator roles. This framework can help ensure that practitioners meet short and long-term needs, such as the protection and education of women candidates and voters in the short term, and better documentation and therefore responses to gendered electoral violence in the long-term.
Click here to see the white paper.
By Ruth Igielnik and Kim Parker,
As moms across the United States celebrate Mother’s Day this weekend, five of the six women vying for the Democratic residential nomination are themselves mothers.
These women, all seeking the same high political office, became mothers at different points in their careers – some while they were starting out in politics and others long before that.
Roughly half of Americans (51%) say it’s better for a woman who wants to reach high political office to have children before entering politics, according to a 2018 Pew Research Center survey on gender and leadership. About a quarter (26%) say it would be better to wait until she is well-established in her political career, while 19% say it would be better for a woman not to have children at all if she plans to seek higher office.
Click here to read the full article published by the PEW Research Center on 9 May 2019.
May 3: A preliminary gender audit of the South African elections due to be held on 8 May shows that while there will be a slight increase in women’s representation, women are still missing from the top echelons of political parties and from the media.
“On World Press Freedom Day it is an indictment on South Africa that women still constitute just one fifth of those whose views and voices are heard,” said GL CEO Colleen Lowe Morna at the launch of Gender Links report.
At 55% women will constitute the majority of voters in the 2019 South African elections. Gender Links predicts using available data that the proportion of women in the House of Assembly will increase from 40% in 2014 to 44% in 2019.
But, without a legislated quota, and with vacillating commitment by political parties to gender parity, South Africa will again miss the 50% mark. Apart from Agang, the political party formed by anti-apartheid activist Mamphela Ramphele that is expected to garner less than 1% of the vote, none of the political parties contesting has achieved gender parity in its top five.
“Male leaders either oppose quotas; fail to implement them; or backslide into misogynistic slurs despite the lofty language in their political manifestos,” noted GL advisor Kubi Rama who authored the report.
A further measure of women’s lack of #Voiceandchoice in our society is the fact that women sources in news coverage persists at 22% or about one fifth of those whose views and voices are heard in the elections. Despite being one of the most pressing social justice issues of our time, gender equality represents less than one percent of media coverage, according to Media Monitoring Africa.
“The message as South African go to the polls next week are clear,” says Rama. “Political parties need to engage with the fact the women constitute 55% of the electorate and address their concerns in manifestos, party lists and in leadership. The media must do better. Women sources are available but barely accessed.”
Click here to see the report.
This Represent Women's report explores how rules and systems, particularly gender quotas and proportional representation systems, have helped nations around the world sustain progress toward gender parity in elected office. Understanding the impact of systems on representation in government is essential to designing strategies that address institutional barriers. The conclusion includes a proposal with tangible, data-driven solutions based on lessons learned from other nations that can move the United States toward reaching gender parity in government - in our lifetime.
Click here to see the report.
Some women candidates may be hesitant to run again because they know that the barriers for women running for office are higher than they are for men - why should the standard after a loss be any different? This research shows that voters think women who have lost their elections are still qualified and likeable (two must-haves for women candidates), and that losing an election can be a good moment for a powerful launch of a woman candidate’s next campaign. It also points to concrete steps for women candidates to help set them up for a future run.
Click here to see the report.
Election violence is an important issue from a number of perspectives. Understanding the causes and consequences of violations of personal integrity is always relevant, but election violence adds a different dimension to this already serious issue: it also violates electoral integrity and decreases democratic quality (Norris 2013). Therefore, election violence should be studied as a simultaneous violation of personal and electoral integrity. In this contribution, I define election violence as occurring when (1) the goal of the act is to affect an electoral outcome or prevent someone from running in an election, and (2) the means by which it is carried out violates the personal integrity of individuals involved in the electoral process.
Click here to see the academic article.