Elections
Gujarat Assembly Election: The sexist rant by the Shahi Imam of the Jama Masjid in Ahmedabad comes a day before voting in 93 constituencies in Gujarat, the second phase of a closely watched state election.
Ahmedabad: Those who select Muslim women to run for office are against Islam and are weakening the religion, the chief cleric of the Jama Masjid in Ahmedabad said on Sunday, in a stunningly misogynistic comment, a day before the second phase of voting for the Gujarat elections.
"If you talk about Islam, see there's nothing more important in this religion than namaz. Did you see any women here reading the namaz? If it were okay for women in Islam to come in front of everyone, they wouldn't have been stopped from doing so," Shabbir Ahmed Siddiqui told news agency ANI.
Click here to read the full article published by NDTV on 5 December 2022.
SACRAMENTO — The California Legislature that will be sworn in Monday will include more women than ever before, accounting for about 42% of state lawmakers.
That might not sound like much for a progressive state like California — home to a roster of powerful female politicians who have smashed down barriers in Washington, D.C., including the first woman vice president, Kamala Harris; first woman House speaker, Nancy Pelosi; and the longest-serving woman senator, Dianne Feinstein.
But compared with the paltry representation women have had in Sacramento in recent years, the coming change amounts to a huge jump. Five years ago, just 22% of state lawmakers were women. In 2017, as my former colleagues at CalMatters pointed out, the Legislature included more white men named Jim than Black and Asian American women combined.
Click here to read the full article published by Los Angeles Times on 2 December 2022.
As proportional representation votes are scattered among parties, women, Dalits, Janajatis will be underrepresented.
With most Dalit, Janajati and women candiates across parties failing to win the first-past-the-post (FPTP) elections for the House of Representatives, the upcoming parliament is set to become less inclusive than the last one.
As many as 35 Janajatis, eight women and only one Dalit have won parliament seats under the FPTP system of elections with almost all results from the November 20 elections already in.
Click here to read the full article published by The Kathmandu Post on 30 November 2022.
Gender quotas should be extended from national elections to the 2024 local government elections to ensure Ireland is in line with other European countries, new research has recommended.
It also found that some female elected members believe local government to be “a boys’ club”, while others spoke of being the target of misogynistic slurs at public council meetings.
Others said they suffered significant abuse and threats while canvassing on doorsteps and through social media, often linked to family and gender circumstances, with the report showing female councillors receiving more ‘personalised’ slurs than male politicians.
Click here to read the full article published by The Irish Examiner on 22 November 2022.
A record number of Black women ran for office this year for U.S. House, Senate and governor. And while some made history with their wins, Black women are still underrepresented in public office. Nadia Brown, the Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Georgetown University, joined Lisa Desjardins to discuss the issue.
Click here to access the video.
Recent media reports highlighted the worrying level of online harassment against poll workers around the 2022 United States mid-term elections. Ongoing work by International IDEA confirms that this phenomenon is not limited to the US. Disinformation and various forms of aggression and harassment targeting electoral officials in the information environment is a global phenomenon and poses a serious threat to democracy.
The amplitude and devastating impact of these practices were acknowledged by electoral officials in high visibility roles, from 21 countries from all regions, who participated in a two-day practitioner round table on Protecting electoral officials in the information environment organized by International IDEA.
Discussions confirmed preliminary research and cases documented by International IDEA indicating that electoral officials are targeted by disinformation and other forms of aggression in the information space, which is frequently gender-based. These attacks are part of wider strategies to undermine the credibility of the processes they manage and challenge the functional independence of the institutions they represent (electoral management bodies - EMBs). This may eventually weaken the pillars of trust in critical democratic structures, destabilize democracies and contribute to backsliding. In most cases, domestic political actors or even state leadership figures initiate or perpetuate these malign behaviours.
Click here to read the full article published by International IDEA on 24 November 2022.