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the guardian
Polish election: Tusk party urged to show it is not ‘deceiving women’ on abortion
Polish election: Tusk party urged to show it is not ‘deceiving women’ on abortion

Poland’s presidential elections are a “historic, groundbreaking” chance for Donald Tusk’s centrist party to show it was not trying to “deceive women” when it promised to change some of Europe’s most restrictive abortion laws, campaigners have said.

Voters across Poland will head to the polls on Sunday in the first round of the elections to replace Andrzej Duda, the current president who is aligned with the former rightwing government and has veto power over legislation.

Polls have suggested the frontrunner is Rafał Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw, whose centrist Civic Coalition led by the prime minister, Donald Tusk, has promised to relax abortion laws. But in recent weeks his lead has narrowed and support has climbed for Karol Nawrocki of the populist, anti-abortion Law and Justice (PiS) party, suggesting the two could be pitted against each other in a runoff vote on 1 June.

Full article published by The Guardian on 15 May 2025.

Image credits: The Guardian

 

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What the voter gender divide means for Canada’s political future
What the voter gender divide means for Canada’s political future

Canada’s recent federal election suggests a growing gender divide in political preferences.

Polling indicated women voters leaned strongly toward the Liberals, while an increasing number of men — particularly younger men — gravitated toward the Conservatives.

This polarization was not simply a matter of partisan preference, but reflected deeper social, cultural and economic realignments rooted in identity politics and diverging values.

The gender gap also mirrors patterns across western democracies, where far-right populist parties increasingly draw male support through nationalist, anti-immigration and anti-feminist narratives, while women — especially racialized and university-educated — opt for progressive parties promoting equality and social protection.

What the polls showed

While official voting records by gender are not available, several public opinion polls heading into the election indicated gender was a key predictor of party support.

Abacus Data found that women’s early preferences were nearly evenly split — 31 per cent for the Liberals and 32 per cent for the Conservatives. But as the campaign progressed, Liberal support among women rose steadily by two to three points per week, reaching 35 per cent by April 8, while support for the Conservatives fell to 30 per cent.

This pattern was echoed by an EKOS Politics analysis, which described the 2025 election as defined by a “massive gender divide” — women supported the Liberal Party by a 25-point margin, while the Conservatives held a slight lead among men, especially those under 50.

Findings from Angus Reid further underscored this divide. Among men, support was closely split, with the Conservatives holding a slight lead over the Liberals (44 per cent to 42 per cent). Among women, however, the Liberals enjoyed a commanding lead, with 51 per cent support compared to 32 per cent for the Conservatives.

Together, these three polls suggest a growing gender gap in Canadian politics — one that shaped party support throughout the election campaign.

The New Democratic Party, meanwhile — once positioned as a progressive bridge between working-class voters and social justice movements — struggled to attract voters as it had in previous elections.

The NDP’s waning influence in the 2025 election highlights the erosion of class-based solidarity, which has seemingly been supplanted by identity politics.

Full article published by The Conversation on 15 May 2025.

Image credits: The Conversation

 

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The Conservatives had a chance to reach millennial women like me. It was their mistake to ignore us
The Conservatives had a chance to reach millennial women like me. It was their mistake to ignore us

Do the federal Conservatives have a problem with women? All signs point to yes — but not in the way many progressive voters think. It’s not that they’re afraid of strong women. Rather, it’s that they can’t seem to figure out how to talk to female voters.

Throughout the recent election campaign, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives had perilously low support from women across every age group. In its final poll before voting day, Nanos had Mark Carney’s Liberals ahead among women by 20 points. Angus Reid had them leading by 25 points for women 55-plus,10 points for women 35 to 54 and 22 points for women 18 to 34. Even Abacus, which presented a tighter race than most pollsters, clocked the Liberals at eight points ahead of the Conservatives among women. Apart from the Trump factor, women’s distrust of and distaste for the Conservative Party was its biggest electoral liability.

Unlike Trump, Conservatives’ standing with women is largely within their control. Yet for all their focus on deficits, they stubbornly chose to ignore their deficit among female voters, despite having ample resources and time, as well as favourable issues to play with.

It’s a bad Conservative habit that persists across leaders and elections: ignore the issues and demographics you’re losing on and double down on base support. While this may work sometimes, you can’t simply opt out of appealing to women and expect to win an election, let alone majority government.

When Poilievre enjoyed a 25-point lead and victory seemed assured, perhaps the Conservatives figured they didn’t need to reach out to women. Instead of expanding the big blue tent, they focused on internal battles over which type of conservative deserved to be in it. As they slid in the polls, it became abundantly clear that they should’ve spent less energy on conducting purity tests and more on fixing their women problem.

Read here the full article published by The Star.

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globe and the mail
Number of female candidates drops across parties: study
Number of female candidates drops across parties: study

The number of female candidates running for federal office has dropped in this election, a fresh analysis shows, raising fears that this will make gender parity in the House of Commons a more distant prospect.

The main political parties except the NDP have fewer women standing compared with the 2021 general election, while the number of visible-minority candidates has also dropped for the Liberals and NDP.

Andrew Griffith, a fellow of the Environics Institute and a former director-general in the Immigration Department, who carried out the study with Professor Jerome Black, former chair of McGill’s Department of Political Science, said he was surprised by the reversal of the trend toward more female candidates since 2011.

The Conservative Party has seen a drop of almost 10 percentage points in the number of female candidates it has fielded compared with 2021. While a third of its candidates were women last time, now only 23 per cent are female, the analysis shows. The Liberals have seen a decline of about 6.5 percentage points, from 43 per cent to 36.5 per cent this time, according to the study.

Read here the full article published by The Globe and Mail on 23 April 2025.

Image by The Globe and Mail

 

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Electing More Women Helps All Of Us Build Wealth (And Vice Versa)
Electing More Women Helps All Of Us Build Wealth (And Vice Versa)

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

 

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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-21/men-and-women-are-more-divided-and-it-could-sway-the-election/105188052
Evidence grows that men and women are more divided — and it could sway the election
Evidence grows that men and women are more divided — and it could sway the election

Is gender the sleeper issue of this election?

According to research to be published later this week by the ANU, the views of women and men in Australia are becoming more divided.

Researchers found the number of people who believe Australia has gone "too far" in promoting equality has doubled to 19 per cent.

What's more, the data suggests that gender and politics are getting more polarised and the views of women and men more divided. It is consequential for how we understand this election.

There was a moment in the second election debate where the leaders were asked to make a choice about what they regarded as their signature legacy policy.

Anthony Albanese nominated universal childcare as the change he most wanted to be known for as prime minister. Peter Dutton nominated his legacy wish as affordable energy, starting with his gas reservation plan and nuclear power stations.

The answers spoke volumes about not only their priorities and personal passions, but also who they were overwhelmingly talking to in the election campaign.

Read here the full article published by ABC News on 20 April 2025.

Image by ABC News

 

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Breaking the mold: Understanding gender and electoral violence
Breaking the mold: Understanding gender and electoral violence

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.

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Survey: When should a woman have children if she’s thinking about running for office?
Survey: When should a woman have children if she’s thinking about running for office?

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.

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South Africa: Gender and elections pre-audit
South Africa: Gender and elections pre-audit

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.

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Why rules and systems matter: lessons from around the world
Why rules and systems matter: lessons from around the world

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.

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Relaunch: Resilience and rebuilding for women candidates after an electoral loss (2018)
Relaunch: Resilience and rebuilding for women candidates after an electoral loss (2018)

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.

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Making gender visible in election violence: Strategies for data collection
Making gender visible in election violence: Strategies for data collection

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.

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