Elections
For much of her political life, Simone Gbagbo has been known as the combative partner of Côte d’Ivoire’s former president, Laurent Gbagbo. Her sharp rhetoric earned her the nickname “The Iron Lady.” Now, the onetime first lady is charting her own course.
Côte d’Ivoire’s Constitutional Council cleared Gbagbo to run in October’s presidential election, making her one of two women on the ballot in a race long dominated by men. Her candidacy carries weight beyond her party base in a country where just 13.4 percent of lawmakers are women. Her entry into the field is described as both politically consequential and symbolically resonant.
Full article here.
Since April 2024, UNIEAT has delivered 38 BRIDGE training workshops nationwide, in all ten States and the Greater Pibor Administrative Area, to 1,003 participants (637 men and 366 women) representing the National Elections Commission (NEC), State High Election Committees (SHECs), State-level government authorities, women organizations, youth groups, disability persons organizations and media. The workshops, supported by the United Nations Integrated Electoral Assistance Team (UN IEAT), covered topics including Introduction to Electoral Administration, Building Institutional Excellence in Elections, Civic and Voter Education, Operational Planning, Gender Equality, Violence Against Women in Elections, Access to Electoral Processes, Boundary Delimitation and Voter Registration.
BRIDGE (Building Resources in Democracy, Governance and Elections) is an internationally renowned election training curriculum which draws on comparative examples from different countries on all aspects of electoral administration using 17 training modules.
The program stands out for its participatory methods, focusing on inclusion and engagement. Sessions are designed to be practical and interactive, with group work, role plays and energizers to keep everyone involved. The program successfully developed a cadre of 19 South Sudanese facilitators by a group of accrediting workshop facilitators. Of those, 6 facilitators were awarded BRIDGE certification after completing a minimum of 30 hours of module workshop facilitation, placing them as the first cohort of BRIDGE accredited trainers in the country.
Introduction
In several countries, including in Venezuela, El Salvador, Thailand, and Tunisia, electoral contests were indeed manipulated by incumbents to further entrench their power. But the global picture was not uniformly negative. Whether in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Senegal, or Guatemala, citizens mobilized from below to push back against executive overreach and bad governance. Although far-right leaders and parties made gains in several Western democracies, including in Austria, France, Germany, Portugal, and the United States, this same pattern was not evident in many other parts of the world, where politics were shaped by other issues and cleavages.
Despite these varied political outcomes, the past year’s record number of elections brought no uptick in women’s political representation. Globally, women’s parliamentary representation and the number of countries led by women failed to increase.
The barriers to reaching gender parity in politics are mounting, from continuing democratic erosion and rising ethno-nationalism to a widening pushback against progressive gender norms in different parts of the world. Yet looking beyond global and regional averages also reveals surprising bright spots. In countries as diverse as Mongolia, Sri Lanka, and the United Kingdom, more women are serving in political office than ever before. Several countries elected their first-ever female presidents, including Mexico and Namibia.
This report analyzes advances and setbacks in women’s political representation in 2024, building on the mid-year assessment published by the Colmena Fund for Women’s Political Power in October. It begins by examining global trend lines in women’s parliamentary and executive representation, highlighting both progress and backsliding. It then turns to four countries that held significant elections over the past year and interrogates their impact on women’s political power: the Dominican Republic, India, South Africa, and Sri Lanka. To close, the analysis draws attention to several broader themes that emerged from the electoral contests of the past year.
Women have been urged not to take back seats but participate actively in shaping politics in 2027. Women empowerment advocate and entrepreneur, Mrs. Omolara Kafilat Svenson Busari; Oyo State All Progressives Congress (APC) Women Leader, Alhaja Tinuade Adigun; the APC Women Leader in Egbeda local council of the state, Aderonke Adedeji, made the call during the third edition of the Women in Politics Sensitisation programme in Ibadan, Oyo State capital.
The initiative, themed, “Understanding Our Role in Active Politics”, was spearheaded by Mrs. Busari. The programme was a rallying call to empower women, dismantle long-standing barriers, cultivate leadership, and foster inclusive governance.
In her keynote address, Busari decried the continued under-representation of women in Nigeria’s political landscape, particularly in Oyo State. She emphasised that the marginalisation of women in decision-making roles is a critical factor stalling national development.
A record number of 42 female candidates were elected in Sunday’s Upper House election, marking a step forward for gender representation in Japan’s political landscape. Women won 33.6% of the 125 Upper House seats contested on Sunday, up from 35 seats in the last election in 2022.
Among the notable winners was a Democratic Party for the People (DPP) newcomer, Mayu Ushida. The 40-year-old former NHK newsreader won a seat in the highly competitive Tokyo district in which 32 candidates vied for seven seats.
“In the course of my campaign, especially since the middle of the election period, I have heard many voices from young women, students and young men — some who are 18 years old and just got the right to vote,” she said. “I really felt how anxious many of the young working generation are about their future, and felt their strong desire for something to be done.”
Full article available here.
Posters with the picture of a young woman wearing a faint smile, and her educational qualifications highlighted in bold red, are plastered across the village of Jheepa in Uttarakhand’s Almora district. Though at first glance it looks like any other poster, the message behind the absence of a man in the frame is not lost on anyone.
Sunita Devi, 32, is vying to become the gram pradhan of Jheepa, which votes in the second phase of the panchayat elections on July 28. She is the president of a women’s group called the Rachnatmak Mahila Manch that has thrown its hat in the ring for the first time since its inception in 2013, pledging to abolish the practice of “pradhan pati (husbands of elected women officials running the show as their proxies)”.
The decision to take the electoral plunge was taken at a cluster-level leader meeting of the nine “shram sakhis” — heads of the 11 clusters falling under the group — on Panchayati Raj Diwas on April 24, following which candidate selection was conducted in village-level meetings.
Full article available here.
For decades, a key goal of activists and policymakers has been involving women in politics. Achieving gender parity in the political realm – that is, seeing more women running for and winning political office – is not merely a rhetorical goal. In fact, research has shown that women bring unique perspectives and focuses to lawmaking. A seminal study by Raghabendra Chattopadhyay and Esther Duflo showed that when women are given a seat at the table, they implement policies more relevant to the needs of women generally.
Many countries have implemented targeted electoral laws, known as “gender quotas,” as part of an effort to increase women’s political participation. These laws vary in the size of the quota, whether the quotas are legally enforced, at what stage of the election process they are enforced, which branch of government they are applied to (legislative, executive, judicial) and what level of government they are applied to (local, regional, federal). India reserves a minority of districts for women to lead, while in France, it is mandated in municipal elections that half of the candidates each party nominates must be women. Designing each system requires trade-offs: while a reserved seat system like India’s guarantees that at least some women will be elected, such strict systems could face legal opposition in their implementation.
Read here the full article published by Boston University Global Development Policy Center on 1 October 2024.
Image by Boston University Global Development Policy Center
Introduction
Women, and women of color in particular, face numerous challenges when running for political office in the U.S. These include attacks they are subject to in various online spaces that, like their peers, they must use to campaign and promote their work. These attacks often aim to undermine and prevent women’s participation in politics. Previous research by CDT found that women of color Congressional candidates in the 2020 U.S. election were more likely to be subjected to violent and sexist abuse, and mis- and disinformation on X/Twitter compared to other candidates. These forms of abuse might contribute to the underrepresentation of women of color in politics, and may also undermine the effectiveness of the US democratic system in reflecting the interest and priorities of all voters in policy-making.
In this research brief, we turn to the 2024 U.S. elections to examine the nature of offensive speech and hate speech that candidates running for Congress are subject to on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), which remains an important forum for political candidates. More specifically, we compare the levels of offensive speech and hate speech that different groups of Congressional candidates are targeted with based on race and gender, with a particular emphasis on women of color. We also examine these factors for U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris as a woman of color and presidential candidate.
Read here the full report published by Center for Democracy & Technology on 2 October 2024.
Image credits: Center for Democracy & Technology
2. Global Trends
2.3. Rights
2.3.4. Gender Equality
The Gender Equality subfactor measures power distribution by gender and female participation in civil society organizations, the ratio of female-to-male mean years of schooling and the proportion of lower-chamber legislators who are female. It also measures exclusion by gender, women’s empowerment and women’s political and economic rights.
While Gender Equality has not made notable improvements globally since 2018 (eight countries saw advances, and five saw declines), there have been important markers of progress. These include the passage of a bill to implement a gender quota for the lower house of parliament and state assemblies in India and a landmark bill that would guarantee extra seats for women in provincial assemblies in the Solomon Islands (Brechenmacher 2023; RNZ 2024; Solomon Islands Government 2024).
Mexico is also a noteworthy case, as it sets a high standard in terms of the range of mechanisms it has in place to ensure women’s political participation. In 2024 voters chose Claudia Sheinbaum to be Mexico’s first woman president. Additionally, at the time of the writing of this report, the heads of the Supreme Court and the Electoral Tribunal were both women, as were the presidents of the Senate, the Chamber of Deputies and the National Electoral Institute (INE). Building on previous amendments that had gradually introduced gender parity, a groundbreaking 2019 constitutional reform established ‘parity in everything’ as a permanent principle in all branches of government to guarantee women’s access to politics, government and the administration of justice (Ravel 2024; Piscopo and Vázquez Correa 2023).
Although high levels of violence, particularly against women, have been an issue in this election year (INEGI 2022; Piscopo and Vázquez Correa 2023; Harrison-Cripps 2024; Calderón 2024), strong legislation and policies have facilitated the monitoring and sanctioning of gender-based political violence, including through a National Registry of Sanctioned Persons for Violence against Women in Politics and the INE’s collaboration with platforms regarding digital-based political violence (INE 2024; Meta 2024).
Read here the full report published by International IDEA on 17 September 2024.
The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, The Carter Center, the National Democratic Institute, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, and the Kofi Annan Foundation announced today the release of Model Commitments for Advancing Genuine and Credible Elections.
With democratic elections and institutions facing growing threats globally, it is critical to have actionable commitments that help improve, defend, and expand election integrity. The Model Commitments provides a resource with specific steps government leaders and democracy advocates can take to help strengthen democracy and elections, including ways to expand dialogue on key electoral issues. The Model Commitments are intended to benefit everyone involved in electoral processes and systems, including voters, candidates, election officials, election observers, and others.
The Model Commitments outline five sets of electoral integrity commitments — to protect Genuine Elections, Legal Framework, Election Administration, Electoral Accountability, and Information Integrity.
They draw on existing international norms, standards, and best practices for democratic elections, including most that are catalogued in the Carter Center’s Election Obligations and Standards Database and the Election Obligations and Standards Handbook.
Democratic electoral processes face constant pressures and changing circumstances in countries around the world. To help build public trust in election integrity and democratic governance, the Model Commitments are designed to reflect changing contexts and efforts to strengthen democracy in the face of new and evolving challenges.
This resource lays out ways for governments to affirm efforts to implement these commitments or to pledge an intention to apply them in a timely manner through appropriate electoral reform measures.
The Model Commitments for Advancing Genuine and Credible Elections is supported by like-minded organizations that share a commitment to the principles embodied in the Model Commitments. The organizations listed below have indicated their support for the Model Commitments. Additional supporting organizations will be added annually and announced around each International Day of Democracy.
·Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL)
·Election Watch EU
·Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa (EISA)
·European Partnership for Democracy (EPD)
·European Platform for Democratic Elections (EPDE)
·Experts in Democracy, Governance, and Elections (EDGE)
·Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy (NIMD)
·Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD)
Read here the full Models Commitments published by the NDI on 15 September 2024.
In Congress this term, 25% of senators and 28% of representatives are women, near record highs for both houses, but far below equal representation with men. As Kamala Harris runs for president, will being a woman cost her votes?
To learn more about the role of gender in American politics, we spoke with Brian Schaffner, a political science professor and Newhouse Professor of Civic Studies. He is also a principal investigator of the Cooperative Election Study, the largest academic survey focused on U.S. elections, and is writing a book about how political polarization is defined by social divisions.
How have attitudes toward electing women changed in America in the last 30 years?
People now are much more open to electing women to all levels of office, including to president, although obviously we haven’t seen a woman president yet. The number of women in Congress, for example, has hit historic highs, even though it’s well under parity with men. There are also a lot of women governors throughout the country.
Political science research shows that when women run for office, they are at least as successful as men are. The big problem is not that voters won’t vote for a woman for political office now; it’s that women don’t run as often as men do.
Why don’t women run for office as much as men?
This is not necessarily my area of expertise, but there’s a lot of research that focuses on this. It shows a range of factors, from how women and men are raised differently to the types of things people have to do to run for office, like raising money—having to put yourself out there.
Also, until recently, women weren’t recruited as much as men to run for office. The parties would go out and try to recruit men, because they were the people who were in their networks.
Read here the full article published by the Tufts University on 4 September 2024.
Image credits: Tufts University
Progress toward gender parity in politics slowed in 2024 — a quiet shift after a streak of record-breaking years for women’s political candidacies. While Kamala Harris makes history this year as the first woman of color atop a presidential ticket, some political organizers are hoping her candidacy will pull more women back into power.
After 2018 was dubbed a second “year of the woman,” — the first being in 1992 — marking a record number of women running for the highest offices in the country, women continued to reach new highs in the subsequent elections: 583 women ran for the House in 2020 and 2022, and 70 women ran for the Senate in 2022, according to data from Rutgers’ Center for American Women and Politics.
In 2024, those numbers dropped back down to 466 for the House and 52 for the Senate, a conspicuous decline after years of steady growth.
“Progress for women in politics appears to be slowing, if not stalling,” RepresentWomen warned in its 2024 Gender Parity Index last month, noting that women are still significantly underrepresented at all levels of U.S. government.
Read here the full article published by Politico on 23 August 2024.
Image by Politico