Elections
While the number of women running for federal office has waned nationally, New Jersey is seeing more women run this election cycle, including a Latina who was one of just four in the country to launch a campaign for Senate, according to a Rutgers University-based political center.
After voters elected women to Congress in record-breaking numbers in the last three election cycles, the number of women candidates is now down in nearly every category, staff members of the Center for American Women and Politics told reporters Tuesday.
Debbie Walsh, the center’s director, said while 2024 won’t be a record-setting year, there are several milestones on the horizon for women. She called it “incredibly prescient” to speak about women in politics this week in light of the news that Vice President Kamala Harris has secured enough support from Democratic delegates that she will likely win the Democratic Party nomination for president next month.
Walsh noted Harris would be the first Black woman and first Asian-American person to win a major party’s nomination for president.
“Should she go on to win in November, she will shatter what Hillary Clinton coined the highest, hardest glass ceiling in American politics. Our research and programming has long been oriented towards changing the perception of power, and this transformative moment would forever alter how Americans view leadership in politics,” she said.
Read here the full article published by the New Jersey Monitor on 25 July 2024.
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Up to 63.8 percent of the 80 members of the newly elected Rwandan Chamber of Deputies, the lower house, are women, a list from the National Electoral Commission (NEC) has shown.
The new development represents an increase of women MPs, up from 61 percent in the previous parliament.
A 2021 report dubbed ‘Women in Parliament’ published by the Inter-Parliamentary Union showed that Rwanda was the world’s leading country in terms of having the largest number of women in government positions.
Besides the 63.8 percent of the country’s parliamentary seats being occupied by women, some 13 ministerial positions out of the available 32 in the current cabinet are occupied by women.
Among the women MPs in the new parliament are notable names that are making a comeback, including the outspoken Christine Bakundifite, who was a member of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which spearheads scrutiny of government entities and officials.
Two of her counterparts, Germaine Mukabalisa and Beline Uwineza, who were also PAC members in the previous parliament are also back, in addition to Madina Ndangiza who served as the Chairperson of the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians (CWP) Africa Region.
Veneranda Uwamariya, a former University of Rwanda lecturer and local government official in Huye District is also back as well as Phoebe Kanyange, an experienced politician who previously served as spokesperson of the political parties’ forum.
Aside from the 24 seats reserved for women parliamentarians (who are elected through an electoral college system), 27 women who vied for the 53 remaining seats were also elected to the parliament.
Read here the full article published by The New Times on 26 July 2024.
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Shirley Chisholm, a Democratic congresswoman, was the first African American woman to run for president of the United States. Sixty years later, Kamala Harris will become the first Black and South Asian American woman to be nominated for president by a major party. Is the United States poised to elect her?
Chisholm, from Brooklyn, N.Y., first ran for office in 1964 — the year both Harris and I were born (the vice president on Oct. 20 and me on Oct. 30). When Chisholm began her presidential campaign in 1972, Harris and I were probably more focused on our toys and our friends, but I was fascinated by politics and aware of Congresswoman Chisholm.
For Black women of my generation, Black women political leaders were few and far between in the 1960s and ’70s, and the numbers remain below our percentage of the population.
Black women represent 7.7 per cent of the total U.S. population, according to the U.S. Census. The Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) reports that 5.4 per cent of all voting members of Congress identify as Black women. Nonetheless, the situation has improved greatly compared to 1968, when Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to U.S. Congress.
Read here the full article published by The Conversation on 24 July 2024.
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Vice President Kamala Harris is gaining support to become the Democratic nominee for president.
Before she vaulted to the national stage, Kamala Harris served as California’s top prosecutor — state Attorney General — and was raised by immigrant parents in the San Francisco Bay Area.
In speeches and in her memoir, the 59-year-old Harris has often cast herself as a prosecutor who fought from the inside for progressive change. Some, however, have criticized her for upholding the status quo, saying she remained silent on state initiatives to legalize marijuana and reduce penalties for certain crimes.
Despite this, in 2016, Harris was elected as California’s U.S. Senator just four years before she was picked as Joe Biden’s vice president. She made history as the first woman, Black person and person of South Asian descent to serve in the position.
If she’s selected as the Democratic nominee and beats former President Donald Trump in November, she would be the first female president.
CapRadio’s Politics Editor Chris Nichols spoke with Kelly Dittmar of the nonpartisan Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University about the significance of Harris’ rise in national politics.
Read here the full article published by Capradio on 22 July 2024.
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As the 2024 US presidential election looms, Kamala Harris is emerging as a likely candidate for the Democratic Party after President Joe Biden announced his decision to drop out of the race. Harris’s potential candidacy is set to let loose an unprecedented wave of misogyny upon the American political landscape. Despite her qualifications and historic achievements, Harris will face a unique convergence of gender and racial prejudice.
Harris potential presidential candidacy can be contextualised by examining the experiences of previous female candidates, who have faced a great deal of overt and covert misogyny from across the media and political spectrum.
Bias in media reporting of women candidates
Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, for example, encountered relentless misogynistic attacks, ranging from media scrutiny of her appearance to baseless accusations about her health and integrity. Throughout 2016, Clinton was frequently criticised for traits that were praised in her male counterparts, such as ambition and assertiveness.
Another prominent example is Sarah Palin who endured sexist commentary that often overshadowed her political stances during the 2008 race. As the Republican vice-presidential nominee running alongside John McCain, Palin was frequently subjected to derogatory remarks about her appearance and intelligence, and her qualifications were questioned in a way that male candidates rarely experienced.
The media’s focus on Palin’s looks, wardrobe, and personal life diverted attention from her policy positions and political record. Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that the focus on her appearance led to reduced intentions to vote for the McCain–Palin ticket in the 2008 US presidential election. Moreover, an analysis of her debate with the Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden later revealed that coverage of Palin was more likely to include references to her family, physical appearance, and social issues — particularly in newspapers and political blogs — while coverage of Biden focused more on foreign policy and the economy.
Read here the full article published by ABC Australia on 23 July 2024.
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Last week saw a change of Government and a brand-new cohort of MPs (335 new MPs) elected; but with all this churn how representative is our new House of Commons? Before the election we published analysis of the candidates standing for election showing that only 31% of selected candidates were women. Let’s see how many were elected…
At the end of the last parliament, the UK had only ever had 564 women MPs, not enough to fill the House of Commons once over. But, with the 129 new women MPs elected on Thursday 4th July we have finally managed to fill the chamber once over (with 43 extra!).
The House of Commons is slowly creeping towards gender parity; however we are still lackadaisical in our approach to achieving gender parity in our elected bodies, leaving it up to parties to field women candidates rather than ensuring that women are on the ballot paper via other mechanisms such as gender quotas.
Read here the full article published by the Electoral Reform Society on 10 July 2024.
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Conventional knowledge on the effectiveness of gender quotas for enhancing women’s political participation has, to date, been unanimous on the superiority of quotas in proportional representation (PR) systems. Yet this view overlooks the many possible alternatives to implementing gender quotas in single-member district (SMD) systems. This paper studies gender quotas (or temporary special measures, TSMs) in SMD electoral systems. Drawing on case examples from Uganda, France, India and elsewhere, we refute the myth of the incompatibility of quotas in SMDs. Our research investigates and presents multiple ways in which quotas can be successfully implemented in SMDs.