Elections
Only 208 women will sit in the Assemblée Nationale, representing just over a third of all MPs. This is the second time in two years that the proportion of women in the Assemblée has fallen.
Less than two years after the previous legislative elections, France voted to elect the 577 members of the Assemblée Nationale in snap parliamentary elections that followed French President Emmanuel Macron's decision to dissolve the chamber. The new MPs will meet on July 18 for their first session. While this Assemblée stands out for not having a clear political majority, its profile remains similar to that of the previous legislature: Women are poorly represented.
With 36% of women, parity is even further behind
Only 208 women, compared with 369 men, will sit in the next Assemblée, representing just over a third (36%) of all MPs. This is the second time in a row that the proportion of women in parliament has fallen: There were 224 female MPs in 2017, but just 215 in 2022.
Read here the full article published by Le Monde on 9 July 2024.
Image by Le Monde
The first woman governor of Tokyo, Yuriko Koike, has won a third term – against another woman candidate. The race between multiple women signifies a push for greater female representation in Japanese politics, which is still overwhelmingly dominated by men.
Eight years ago, Yuriko Koike became the first woman to lead Tokyo, beating her male predecessor. She won her third term as governor July 7, and one of her closest rivals was a woman.
Multiple women competing for a top political office is still rare in Japan, which has a terrible global gender-equality ranking, but Ms. Koike’s win highlights a gradual rise in powerful female officials and a society more open to gender balance in politics. That said, even if a woman eventually becomes prime minister, politics here is still overwhelmingly dominated by men, and experts see a huge effort needed for equal representation.
“There are growing expectations for women to play a greater role in politics,” said parliamentarian Chinami Nishimura, a senior official with the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan. “In politics or parliament, which are still largely considered men’s work, it is extremely meaningful for women to show their presence and have our voices heard.”
Read here the full article published by The Christian Science Monitor on 9 July 2024.
Image by The Christian Science Monitor
Following an intense week of elections, the IPU’s two founding members, France and the United Kingdom, have just completed their parliamentary elections.
How have both parliaments fared in terms of gender equality? How do they compare to previous chambers and the IPU’s global average of women in parliament which stood at 26.9% before these latest elections?
In the United Kingdom, provisional numbers show that a record number of women lawmakers were elected to the British lower chamber on 4 July, constituting 41% of MPs overall (263 out of 650). This marks a significant increase from the previous chamber elected in 2019, where women made up 34.8% of the total, according to the IPU’s ranking of women in parliament.
This significant increase can be partly attributed to the winning Labour Party's electoral success, as they fielded a higher number of female candidates and won a majority of seats. Some 46% of Labour seats are now held by women (188 out of 411), a proportion similar to the Liberal Democrats (33 out of 72). Both parties have voluntary party quotas. In contrast, the Conservative Party has only 24% of female MPs (29 out of 121).
However, across the channel in France, preliminary results from the second round of parliamentary elections on 7 July show a slight decrease in the number of women MPs. Out of the 577 members of the National Assembly, 208 are women, representing around 36%. This is a decline compared to the 2022 chamber, which had 37.3% women, and the 2017 election, which saw a record 38.8% of French lawmakers in the Assembly who were women according to IPU data.
Read here the full article published by the Inter-Parliamentary Union on 8 July 2024.
It’s a good day for women’s representation in politics. The proportion of women MPs has reached a record high of 40.6%. Women are expected to hold a number of prominent positions in the new government, including the UK’s first female chancellor. Labour also has a stronger track record of women-friendly policies than the other parties. However, the picture is not entirely rosy.
The newly elected parliament includes 264 women. This figure surpasses the threshold of 40% for the first time – and is a big jump from the previous record of 34.2% in 2019. And women are not just on the backbenches, a number also hold senior frontbench roles, including Angela Rayner as deputy prime minister and levelling up secretary.
Women hold numerous positions in Starmer’s first cabinet, including home secretary and education and justice secretaries.
Perhaps most importantly, Rachel Reeves is the new chancellor of the exchequer, surrounded by a team of women advisers. This is a big deal, and not just because of policies explicitly targeted at women. As has been pointed out elsewhere, the general direction of Reeves’s economic policy should help many women in low-paid and part-time jobs.
Read here the full article published by The Conversation on 5 July 2024.
Image by The Conversation
Ahead of the general election, the End Violence Against Women Coalition and 70 other leading organisations published a joint manifesto calling on all political parties to adopt its recommendations for ending this abuse.
The manifesto sets out our priorities for the next government; calling for a comprehensive, whole-society approach to tackling VAWG. We framed this manifesto around ten key areas:
- Rights and inequalities
- Prevention
- Funding and commissioning of specialist VAWG services, including ‘by and for’ provision
- Economic barriers
- Partnerships and multi-agency working
- Health and adult social care
- Housing
- Family courts and children’s social care
- Criminal justice reform
- Perpetrators
After a disappointing round of political debates in which VAWG was glaringly absent, EVAW wrote to political party leaders setting out our key priorities for ending VAWG. We now review: How do the political party manifestos of 2024 match up with our own?
Our polling found that 76% of people do not trust politicians generally to tackle violence against women and girls, and it is up to political party leaders to change this.
Access here the full manifesto published by the End Violence Against Women Coalition on 28 June 2024.
Image source: EVAW Coalition
Around the world, the far-right is using anti-immigrant rhetoric around protecting women to woo female voters. Men tend to vote more conservatively than women do, but this tactic is starting to gain some traction among women, potentially closing the political gender gap.
In France, where far-right politicians have sought to link women’s rights and safety to immigration, that’s proving to be an effective strategy. Earlier this month, Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella’s National Rally party won 33 percent of the women’s vote in this year’s Parliamentary election, outpacing 30 percent of men — a 12 percentage point increase from women voters over five years, according to an election day poll by OpinionWay.
On Sunday, French citizens will cast their ballots in the first round of voting in the snap election that will determine whether Le Pen’s party takes control of Parliament. (There will be another round of voting next month.) If the National Rally wins, Bardella, a protégé of Le Pen, could become prime minister of France, making him the leader of Parliament with Macron as president until 2027. Le Pen then could run for president against Macron in 2027.
There are parallels across the pond. Le Pen’s populist, anti-immigration rhetoric is often compared to that of former President Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the approval rating for incumbent President Emmanuel Macron is at 26 percent, mirroring that of President Joe Biden’s, at 36 percent.
Will France’s election serve as a preview for the U.S. in November?
Read here the full article published by Politico on 28June 2024.
Image by Politico