Elections
Feliz viernes, Rulers! We’re sure having a weird summer. I’m happy to be back with you this week for a humbling interview about the remarkable leaders braving their country’s tumult.
Let’s get to it.
Autocratic Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro stole his reelection, according to opposition leaders, tally analyses, sources with direct knowledge of the president’s decision and international allies including the U.S.
The race was between Maduro and Edmundo González Urrutia, but it is women — led by Maria Corina Machado, dubbed the “iron lady” of Venezuela — who are heading the opposition fight. Machado, despite fearing for her life, has remained publicly ubiquitous, taking to the streets and leading rallies and protests in the capital city of Caracas.
Machado won her party’s primary by 93 percent in October, but in January, Venezuela’s Supreme Justice Tribunal banned her from running for office, accusing her of conspiracy and corruption. Her chosen replacement, Corina Yoris, was then also blocked from running. A day before the deadline, the little-known González was written in as the party’s candidate.
Since the elections on July 28, when Maduro claimed victory against González, protests have racked the country, more than 2,000 people have been jailed and at least 23 killed.
Read here the full article published by Politico on 9 August 2024.
Image by Politico
With voters heading to the polls in countries around the world, 2024 has been dubbed the year of elections. While a recent change in the United States election will put a woman at the top of a major party ticket, a June presidential election just over the border in Mexico stood out. Earlier this summer, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo was elected president of Mexico, shattering the political glass ceiling in North America. In second place came Xóchitl Gálvez Ruiz, another woman. Sheinbaum–in addition to perhaps being born a leader (and having a Nobel-prize winning brain)–and Gálvez are the product of an enabling environment–otherwise, how to explain the rise in women’s political leadership only in the second half of the 20th century? The first woman ever to be elected to the highest office (in this case, the office of prime minister) occurred in Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka) in 1960.
This blog, part of CGD’s work on women’s leadership, focuses on political leaders and explores which conditions enable women’s leadership by contrasting Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), a region that is ahead of most in women’s presence in politics, with Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) that is currently some steps behind. The 42 countries in LAC have had a total of 26 women heads of state, presidents, or prime ministers (PMs), with seven incumbent women heads of government (including Sheinbaum who will assume office on October 1, 2024). The 48 countries in SSA have had a total of 16 women heads of state, presidents, or PMs, with four incumbent ones.[1] Women currently hold 36 percent of parliamentary seats in LAC and 27 percent in SSA. Countries in LAC also have a higher share of women cabinet ministers.
Read here the full article published by the Center for Global Development on 09 August 2024.
Image by Center for Global Development
NEW YORK -- Vice President Kamala Harris' official nomination on Monday as the Democratic Party presidential nominee will be the second time a woman heads a major-party ticket in the U.S., a country that has never elected a female president.
Should Harris win the election in November, it would mark a historic moment for the major democracy and a powerful symbol of progress just over a century after women won the right to vote in the country.
Her rise from California's attorney general to vice president, and now possibly the president of a global superpower, has renewed public discourse over female leadership -- or lack thereof -- in politics. Breaking the glass ceiling in the Oval Office would also allow the U.S. to join many countries in Asia that have led the way in electing female heads of government.
Since the end of World War II, at least 13 Asian and Pacific countries and regions have had women hold the top leadership position.
Sirimavo Bandaranaike became the first woman elected prime minister not only in Asia, but the entire world, when she first took office in 1960 in Sri Lanka, at the time still called the dominion of Ceylon. Bandaranaike was elected less than a year after the assassination of her husband, then-Prime Minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike.
Read here the full article published by Nikkei Asia on 4 August 2024.
Image by Nikkei Asia
Vice President Kamala Harris has secured the Democratic nomination for president, becoming the first woman of color to win a major party’s nomination and officially setting up her matchup against former President Donald J. Trump.
Ms. Harris, 59, earned the support of 99 percent of the 4,567 delegates who cast ballots, the Democratic National Committee said in a statement late Monday. In an unusual move meant to avoid potential legal headaches, the roll call was held virtually over five days, instead of in-person at the Democratic National Convention, which begins on Aug. 19 in Chicago.
The convention’s secretary, Jason Rae, must certify the results of the roll call before Ms. Harris and her soon-to-be-announced running mate accept the nomination.
“Vice President Harris has historic momentum at her back as we embark on the final steps in officially certifying her as our party’s nominee,” Jaime Harrison, the D.N.C. chair, and Minyon Moore, the convention chair, said in a statement.
Ms. Harris, whose mother was an immigrant from India and whose father is from Jamaica, would be the first Black woman and first person of South Asian heritage to hold the office. Ms. Harris landed at the top of her party’s ticket after President Biden withdrew from the race on July 21 under pressure from his party and cleared a path for Ms. Harris’s ascent.
Read here the full article published by The New York Times on 6 August 2024.
Image by The New York Times
Throughout the course of US presidential races, politicians have carefully chosen what names they go by. Bernie and Pete embraced their first names while Biden, Trump and Warren favored their last names. Some, like Nikki Haley, have used both.
As Kamala Harris sets her eyes on the presidency, she is using a combination. The vice president is running under the “Harris for President” slogan – a departure from the “Kamala Harris for the People” motto of her 2020 campaign – but is using her first name for social media accounts, including Kamala HQ on X, formerly Twitter.
There’s a solid science behind each choice, experts say. Candidates, in particular women, can use the psychological connotation of a first name to their advantage, to help them seem more likeable and accessible. But this psychology can also serve as a disadvantage, playing off implicit biases to portray a candidate as less qualified or confident.
A balancing act
The science comes together in a “balancing act for women,” according to Dr. Stav Atir, assistant professor in the Management and Human Resources Department at the University of Wisconsin School of Business, who has studied how gender affects the way we talk about professionals.
Atir was lead author of a study that found people were more than twice as likely to describe a male professional by surname in “high-status” fields, including politics. In the medical field, other research indicates that female physicians are more than twice as likely to be called by their first names instead of “doctor,” compared with their male counterparts.
This difference, the study found, can have real-life effects: People perceived those referred to by their surnames as superior and 14% more deserving of a career award, such as raising funding or being selected for a position.
Read here the full article published by CNN on 5 August 2024.
Image by CNN
Gender shouldn't matter when choosing a president — but after nearly 250 years of American democracy and zero women presidents, it clearly has.
The question isn't whether voters are ready for a female leader. Vice President Harris has already passed that milestone.
She has more than proved her integrity, leadership and effectiveness. Every time this sexist trope is used against Kamala Harris, voters see it for what it is — a cheap shot intended to keep her from shattering that last glass ceiling over the White House.
A better question is whether voters are ready to support that proven leader, stand behind her when she's viciously attacked, and be her allies on the campaign trail, and, once elected, in governing.
Women know they are "ready to lead, and leading" every day — there isn't a challenge they can't meet or an obstacle too daunting to tackle. And they know that to win in November, Harris will have to overcome centuries of sexism and decades of extremist politics that led to Donald Trump's rise and return.
To succeed as the first woman president, Harris must depend on a broad coalition of support, one built on shared values and fundamental rights, not partisan bickering.
Read here the full article published by the Times Free Press on 3 August 2024.
Image by Times Free Press
For women across the world, electoral politics can be a hostile and violent place. Women who stand for office can expect casual sexism and discrimination, ranging from snide remarks about their appearance to being propositioned by their male colleagues. In some countries, this psychological violence escalates to physical violence in which men seek to make the public sphere so inhospitable for women that they disengage from electoral politics.
Writer Nanjala Nyabola investigates in this paper the parliamentary quota systems in East Africa and demonstrates how well quotas can work when supported with institutional will and how resoundingly they can fail when patriarchal political spaces conspire to undo them. All of the eight countries that are traditionally thought to make up East Africa—Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, Ethiopia, South Sudan—have quotas entrenched in their electoral systems.These quotas take different shapes however.
Click here to read the paper.
It is a well-established finding that proportional representation (PR) is associated with greater female legislative representation than single member majoritarian systems However, the degree to which different types of PR rules affect voting for female candidates has not been fully explored. The existing literature is hampered by a reliance on cross-national data in which individual vote preferences and electoral system features affect one another.
In this study, Sona N. Golder, Laura B. Stephenson, Karine van der Straeten, André Blais, Damien Bol, Philipp Harfst and Jean-François Laslier draw upon an experiment conducted during the 2014 European Parliament (EP) elections to isolate the effects of different PR electoral systems. Participants in the experiment were given the opportunity to vote for real EP candidates in three different electoral systems: closed list, open list, and open list with panachage and cumulation. Because voter preferences can be held constant across the three different votes, the authors could evaluate the extent to which female candidates were more or less advantaged by the electoral system itself. The study concludes that voters, regardless of their gender, support female candidates, and that this support is stronger under open electoral rules. Concerns about voters being put off because of the presence of women on the ballot appear to be unfounded.
Click here to read the study.
Georgia’s October 2016 parliamentary elections were characterized by an open political environment, a competitive campaign, overall results that were validated by credible observers, and some underlying problems that need concerted attention. NDI's final report draws attention to a set of recommendations that could contribute to greater public confidence in the approaching local and presidential elections.
The elections were characterized by an open political environment, a competitive campaign, overall results that were validated by credible observers, and some underlying problems that need concerted attention.
Yet the elections highlighted some problems. The most pressing of these were incidents of violence and intimidation that occurred throughout the process; concerns about the qualifications, neutrality, and competence of some polling station commissioners; and questions about the impartiality and consistency of adjudication measures. In addition, the elections underscored shortcomings related to the legal framework, parties’ campaign strategies, election observation, campaign financing and the misuse of administrative resources, and the underrepresentation of women and minority groups.
Women in Georgia were well represented among voters (51.1 percent), observers, and election administrators, demonstrating their commitment to and engagement in politics and elections. However, women were underrepresented as candidates, making up only 17 percent of majoritarian candidates and 37 percent of party list candidates. At this stage, it appears that only three parties and one bloc qualified for the financial incentive of a 30 percent increase in state funding for including three candidates of a different gender in every 10 names on their proportional lists, with Patriots’ Alliance the only party to both qualify for the financial benefit and pass the threshold to hold seats in parliament. The overall number of women MPs did increase slightly, from 18 (12 percent) prior to the election to 24 (16 percent); however, fewer women majoritarian MPs were elected -- five in October as compared to seven in the previous parliament.
Click here to read the full report.
For more information, contact:
In Georgia: Diana Chachua, dchachua@ndi.org, 577 779639
In the United States: Emily Rodriguez, erodriguez@ndi.org, +1 202 728-5500
Women participation in different aspects of elections is increasing in Tanzania, but candidates still have to contend with many challenges, the Tanzania National Elections Gender Assessment report says. The report by the International Republican Institute (IRI), notes, however, that while the percentage of women representation through affirmative action is picking up, many of the women are still reluctant to go for competitive elective posts. The IRI notes in the report that the 2015 General Election saw noteworthy developments in the women's participation in politics. For more details, read the report here.
Source: AllAfrica Global Media
In the 2014 elections in Malawi, the incumbent female president Joyce Banda lost the presidency, and the number of women MPs was reduced from 43 to 33. This decline in women representation came despite opinion polls showing strong support for women’s political rights and for equal gender representation in politics. Why has women’s representation gone down when public attitude surveys indicate strong support for women? Click here for the answer.
By Tiyesere Mercy Chikapa, Lecturer of Public Administration and Human Resource Management, Department of Political and Administrative Studies (PAS), Chancellor College, University of Malawi.
Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) Brief, vol. 15 no. 6, 4 p.
Abstract: Though more than 100 countries have adopted gender quotas, the effects of these reforms on women's political leadership are largely unknown. We exploit a natural experiment—a 50–50 quota imposed by the national board of the Swedish Social Democratic Party on 290 municipal branches—to examine quotas’ influence on women's selection to, and survival in, top political posts. We find that those municipalities where the quota had a larger impact became more likely to select (but not reappoint) female leaders. Extending this analysis, we show that the quota increased the number of women perceived as qualified for these positions. Our findings support the notion that quotas can have an acceleration effect on women's representation in leadership positions, particularly when they augment the pool of female candidates for these posts. These results help dispel the myth that quotas trade short-term gains in women's descriptive representation for long-term exclusion from political power.
Click here to access the article.
The authors:
Diana Z. O’Brien is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Indiana University.
Johanna Rickne is Research Fellow at the Research Institute of Industrial Economics and Affiliated Researcher at the Uppsala Center for Labor Studies.