Elections

On June 2, over 60 percent of registered Mexican voters went to the polls for a monumental election, with over 20,000 public offices up for grabs at the federal and local levels. This election was historic, as a woman was elected to hold the highest office in Mexico for the first time. This comes more than 70 years after women gained the right to vote and stand for election. Over the past few years, women in Mexico have gone from being fringe operatives in the political arena to taking center stage. Still, this transformation took time and deliberate action to achieve.

While gender quotas have been used in Mexico since the early 2000s, they were not enough to achieve equality. In 2014, Mexico transitioned from relying on its gender quota system to a “gender parity system,” which mandates equal opportunity based on gender in candidate lists for local and national offices. This transition did not occur naturally; it resulted from consistent, permanent debate at all levels by activists, institutions, academics and women in politics who worked together across party lines to close the political gender gap.

The Impact of Gender Quotas in Mexico

Mexico’s 2002 first legislative quota passed by Congress required that 30 percent of candidates be women, with specific penalties for parties in cases of non-compliance. In 2008, the gender quota was raised to 40 percent, but parties were exempt from complying in cases where candidates were selected in democratic primaries. Six years later, in 2014, gender parity mandates were enshrined in Mexico’s constitution, marking the highest protection standard for women’s political rights. The impact of these hard-fought efforts has been undeniable; women’s participation in Congress has steadily increased with every reform.

Read here the full article published by Ms. Magazine on 11 June 2024.

Image by Ms. Magazine

Today’s Guardian report that online harassment against women politicians is intensifying is unsurprising, but it indicates a serious problem in UK democracy. There are two important factors to consider here. Firstly, online abuse needs to be addressed not as a case of individualised behaviour but as something structural. Online abuse is often facilitated by powerful actors, for example, our research shows how online abuse towards academics during Brexit was staged by right-wing newspapers on their social media pages. The digital media economy means that news organisations and social media companies have an incentive to promote articles that whip up anger or outrage that encourages engagement, and therefore advertising revenue.

Secondly, online abuse of women and other marginalised people needs to be understood not solely as ‘slurs’ or individualised insults but as a denial of a legitimate presence in political life. Our research found that online abuse of women academics and professionals, criticised not only their knowledge and expertise but their very status as academics, or, through threats of violence of death, even their right to exist at all.

Read here the full article published by the University of Birmingham on 11 June 2024.

Image by University of Birmingham

PAKISTAN ranks low on the Gender Gap Index in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, 2023. On women’s political empowerment, it ranked 95th out of 146 countries, with only a handful of women occupying senior, managerial, policy- and decision-making posts. The main factors preventing women from achieving gender parity in politics are a patriarchal system, systemic gender discrimination, socioeconomic disparity, and hidebound cultural norms.

The Constitution is clear that “there shall be no discrimination on the basis of sex alone” and that “steps shall be taken to ensure full participation of women in all spheres of national life”. Besides, Pakistan is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which obligates governments to “take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in political and public life”, including in elections.

Pakistan’s women constitute almost half of the population, but their share in parliament is just 20 per cent. The gender gap also exists among voters.

Women’s participation and representation in the political process is a fundamental principle of democracy, and it is a prerequisite for gender-sensitive and gender-responsive governance. Ensuring the latter is only possible by increasing the number of women in policy- and decision-making positions and providing them with a conducive and women-friendly environment. According to UN Women, “in the last 25 years, women’s political representation has doubled globally. Even then, more than three-quarters of seats in parliament are still held by men”.

Read the full article here.

Image by Dawn

The average age of the candidates standing on Flemish parties’ lists for the federal elections on 9 June is 47. Never before in the past 37 years was the average age of the candidates seeking election to the Chamber of Representatives so high. Meanwhile, the percentage of women with “electable” places, a position on the party’s electoral lists with which they stand a realistic chance of being elected, has fallen for the first time. A study by Leuven University’s (KUL) Instituut voor de Overheid has found that just 45.2% of the Flemish party’s candidates with a place on an electoral list with which that stand a realistic chance of being elected are women.

In light of today's election in Belgium, read (or revisit) here the full article published by flandersnews.be on 26 April 2024

Image by flandersnews.be

In pioneering Lithuania, the first all-women list in the country’s political history has been unveiled. 

The Lithuanian Greens are hoping that this list will help more women get elected to the European Parliament, where men still make up around 60% of the members. 

The candidates are also trying to draw attention to other gender issues, such as the pay gap.

Read here the full article published by France24 on 5 June 2024

Image by France24

In September last year, when the Women’s Reservation Bill was passed in Parliament, it raised hopes of a more gender-equal legislature. The near-unanimous support for a Bill that promised 33 per cent reservation to women in Lok Sabha and state assemblies seemed to frame a political class that had finally accepted an idea whose time had come. Yet, eight months on, with the 18th Lok Sabha set to convene for its first session in a few weeks, the number of women in the lower House has dropped, from 78 out of 543 (an all-time high) in the 17th Lok Sabha to 73. It is clear that greater efforts must be made to break from the boys-club mindset, which continues to dominate politics.

Since the 1991 general election, when the gap between male and female voter turnouts started narrowing, women’s imprint on the political landscape has only become larger and deeper. In the recent elections too, while the number of women who turned out to vote saw a dip in some phases, the overall gender gap was almost non-existent, with both male and female voter turnout pegged at about 66 per cent by the Election Commission. Women have used the power that comes with their participation to shape electoral outcomes, with even political parties recognising the growing importance of the “woman vote”. This recognition has mostly taken the form of targeted welfare schemes that have often taken campaign centrestage, including in the recent Lok Sabha polls: In West Bengal, for instance, the popularity of women-centric schemes such as Lakshmir Bhandar, a monthly cash transfer to over 2 crore women, is believed to have helped in sustaining the dominance of the ruling TMC. Earlier, the impact of Laadli Behna was seen to play a role in the BJP’s return to power in the Madhya Pradesh assembly polls.

Read here the full article published by The Indian Express on 8 June 2024.

Image by The Indian Express