Elections

In Bhutan’s 2023 National Council elections, only one woman was elected to the NC from a female population of around 360,000. Despite progress in recent years, women still face challenges to political participation.

“Of course, it was also because they trusted my capability, but I have seen that the majority went by the party’s popularity in the particular constituency,” Norbu Wangzom, a 41-year-old former member of parliament representing Bhutan’s opposition party, the Druk Phuensum Tshogpa (DPT), said. Wangzom was elected to represent the Jomotshangkha Martshala constituency, located in the south-east of Bhutan, for the second time in 2018. “As long as they like the party, they did not mind voting for a woman,” she added, but they voted for her “not necessarily because they believed in a woman candidate.”  Regardless, Wangzom is committed to serving her constituents to the best of her ability.

Encouraged by her local community, Wangzom first contested and won a seat in Bhutan’s National Council elections in 2008. As a newcomer to politics, she recalled, her initial experience was quite positive. When she contested again in 2013, she lost her seat.

Click here to read the full article published by Himal Mag on 8 May 2023.

The commission will give political parties until May 14 to revise their lists of candidates for the 2024 legislative election to accommodate the rule change.

JAKARTA – In response to protests from rights groups fearing a lack of women’s representation in the legislature, the General Elections Commission (KPU) has undone a recent rule change that would have decreased the minimum number of women candidates in electoral districts under some circumstances.

The commission returned to its previous policy, in place during the 2019 legislative election, of rounding up the minimum number of women candidates in an electoral district if the calculation resulted in a decimal, revoking a recently passed rule that involved rounding down in some cases.

Click here to read the full article published by Asian News on 15 May 2023.

Polling shows that most Turks want more women involved in politics, but their underrepresentation continues.

Istanbul, Turkey – A nondescript apartment in Istanbul’s business district is the nerve centre of a drive to propel more women into Turkish politics.

But with some 60 million voters due to cast their ballots in presidential and parliamentary elections on Sunday, the mood at the office of Ben Secerim, or I Choose, is one of disappointment.

Earlier this month, Ben Secerim unveiled 20 women who will stand for four parties in the May 14 legislative election. However, due to the nature of the election process – votes for parties are allocated to candidates according to their placement on ranked party lists – just four stand any real hope of entering the Turkish Grand National Assembly.

Click here to read the full article published by Al Jazeera on 10 May 2023.

Women’s representation in political offices continued to decline in the 2023 elections. Four main factors help explain why Africa’s largest economy is such a difficult space for women candidates.

Women’s representation in Nigerian politics has been on a downward slide since 2011, and the 2023 elections in Africa’s largest economy confirmed the expectations of poor outcomes for women. The number of women in Nigeria’s National Assembly has fallen by 19 percent compared to the last assembly, with women now occupying 3 percent of seats in the Senate and 4 percent in the House of Representatives.

To understand why Nigerian women performed so poorly in the recent elections, the 2022 primary elections provided insight into the challenges and barriers faced by women aspirants and candidates. The results of the various parties’ primary elections highlight enduring limitations to women’s representation in competitive politics in Nigeria. The country ranks in the bottom ten globally in women’s representation in national parliaments, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). This challenge of representation persists in spite of the near parity of voter registration between men and women in past election cycles.

Click here to read the full article published by Carnegie Endowment For Peace on 09 May 2023.

As the country gears up for polls in June, women in politics speak out about refusing to be silenced despite the abuse and intimidation they face

When Femi Claudius Cole decided to form a political party, to address what she saw as Sierra Leone’s slow economic development and poor governance, she knew it would be tough. A former nurse, she had no experience in politics and people told her no one would vote for an unknown. But she could not have predicted quite how gruelling it would be: leaving her spending time in jail and fighting for her reputation.

The Unity party, registered by Cole in 2017, failed to win any seats in the 2018 general election. But she persevered, travelling around the country offering medical treatment with a surgeon, giving interviews and building up a social media following.

Click here to read the full article published by The Guardian on 1 May 2023.

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Alarmed by the abysmal scarcity of women in politics, a university professor and others held the first-ever series of seminars in the spring of 2018 to train women considering a political career.

At the time, female lawmakers accounted for only a little over 10 percent of local assemblies.

The inaugural seminar, which called for gender equality in politics, was attended by 27 women, mostly in their 20s and 30s.

Click here to read the full article published by The Asahi Shimbun on 2 May 2023.