Elections
Thiruvananthapuram, Mar 26 (PTI) The promise of greater political space for women, amplified after the passing of the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, appears distant in Kerala’s April 9 Assembly elections, where candidate lists reflect a familiar pattern of underrepresentation.
Despite women accounting for more than half of the electorate in the state, their presence in the electoral fray remains limited, highlighting a persistent imbalance between participation and representation.
The enthusiasm that followed the passage of the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam in Parliament in 2023 had raised expectations among women leaders across party lines.
THRISSUR: Rani Gouri Lakshmi Bai, Dr Mary Punnen Lukose, Ammu Swaminathan, Kuttimalu Amma, Accamma Cherian, Dakshayani Velayudhan, O Aisha Beevi, K R Gouri Amma…. These are some women luminaries who shaped Kerala’s socio-political trajectory.
Kerala has long been celebrated as a land of strong women, particularly in social reform and education. Yet, when it comes to politics and power, women remain underrepresented. Even within intra-party hierarchies.
Notably, the Women’s Reservation Bill, mandating 33% representation for women in Parliament and state assemblies, is expected to come into force by 2029. This makes the upcoming election in Kerala noteworthy. The scene, however, is dismal.
Women make up only 10.5 % of the candidates — 54 women and one transgender person of 457 across 140 constituencies.
In the 2021–2026 assembly, only 12 of the 140 MLAs were women. In 2016–2021, the number was eight. A social collective for equal representation, Thulya Prathinidhya Prasthanam (TPP), has for years been vocal about the need to address this imbalance.
“We have been boasting about Kerala as a progressive state. But it is nowhere near when it comes to women’s representation,” said TPP convener K M Rema. “This time, the CPI has shown improvement with four women candidates in the 25 constituencies where it is contesting. The IUML has also made some progress by fielding two women, one up from last time. That’s it.”
aura Fernandez, a conservative, populist politician with strong links to outgoing President Rodrigo Chaves, has won nearly half of the votes in Costa Rica's general election with 94% of votes counted, meaning she will become the country's new leader.
Her victory confirms a strong rightward trend in Latin America, where voter anger at corruption and crime has driven recent conservative wins in Chile, Bolivia, Argentina and Honduras.
What were the election results in Costa Rica?
Fernandez had won 48.3% of the vote, the preliminary results from the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) showed, far in excess of the 40% needed to avoid a run-off.
Fernandez's party, the Sovereign People's Party, is also projected to win a majority of 30 seats in the 57-seat Congress, up from its current eight seats.
The other main candidates in the election lagged far behind Fernandez, with economist Alvaro Ramos receiving about one third of the vote, and architect and former first lady Claudia Dobles taking under 5%.
Costa Rica, a country of some 5 million inhabitants, has so far had only one female president in its history, Laura Chinchilla, who served from 2010 to 2014.
When out campaigning, especially in the run up to elections I often encounter women who say they do not vote. This is one area of life where socio-economic status does not seem to be a factor, with mums on council estates and women living in detached mansions all saying the same thing. I frequently hear phrases such as, “I let my husband/partner make the decisions”, “I don’t understand politics”, “they (politicians) are all the same”, and “my vote doesn’t make any difference”.
More than 100 years since women won the vote it’s sad to note that a significant number of women still do not use their hard-won franchise to help shape the decision-making bodies that affect our everyday lives. After all, women are in many cases juggling multiple responsibilities, managing household budgets, trying to make ends meet often in difficult circumstances. Our experience matters and when our voice is not heard the whole of society is worse off.
Beyond the obvious solutions such as quotas and ‘Women Only’ short-lists what else could we do to improve the situation? Changing our electoral system is one option which might contribute to reducing the democratic deficit along with improving the representation of women in politics.
As India moves towards the key state elections of 2026, women leaders across regions such as West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam, and Puducherry are shaping both electoral narratives and representation debates.
While the overall legislative presence of women in India remains uneven, there are several influential and emerging female politicians whose political participation, leadership visibility, and voter mobilisation are back in focus.
West Bengal leadership
While talking of influential women leaders in India, TMC supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's name may often come up first.
CM Banerjee continues to dominate the political landscape of the state and remains one of India’s most powerful regional leaders. Her electoral performance and influence in West Bengal is a rare example of long-term female leadership in Indian politics.
Alongside her, other Trinamool Congress figures such as Mahua Moitra and Sayani Ghosh represent a group of leaders combining grassroots organisation with national visibility.
Bangladesh's new government led by center-right Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) chief Tarique Rahman was sworn in last week after his party's landslide victory in the February 12 general elections.
The 60-year-old Rahman takes over leadership from the interim government headed by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus. This transition concludes an 18-month interim period following a bloody student-led uprising in August 2024, which ousted former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and ended her 15-year rule.
Rahman plans to lead a 50-member Cabinet over the next five years, promising reforms that the BNP agreed to during the interim period. These were approved by a referendum alongside the election.
Among those reforms are initiatives to empower women, who comprise around half of Bangladesh's 130 million voters.
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
Last week, all UK political parties confirmed which candidates they were standing in each constituency for the 2024 general election. Including independents, a total of 4,515 candidates will be fighting for a seat in the next government.
If you’ve already tried out our candidate name game, you’d have seen how the most common name was David, owned by a whopping 104 candidates. The Johns came in second with 84 candidates called by this name, and the Pauls a close third with a total of 79.
In fact, when tallying up the most common candidate names, we noticed the top 10 in the list are all male names. It is not until reaching position 11 that you come across the female name Sarah, owned by 43 candidates. Of course, this could be due to women having more diversity in their names. However, it is less easy to dismiss that out of the 4,515 candidates standing, only 31% are women.
Read here the full article published by the Electoral Reform Society on 20 June 2024.
Image by Electoral Reform Society
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
In India, as in many democracies around the world, there has long been a discernible gender gap in citizens’ political participation. For decades, Indian men were significantly more likely to cast their ballots on election day compared to women. It is noteworthy, therefore, that in the country’s 2019 general election, the historic gap between male and female turnout came to an end; for the first time on record, women voters turned out to vote at higher rates than men (see figure 1). Predictions for India’s upcoming 2024 general election suggest that this trend is likely to continue.
Although the gap between male and female voter turnout in India has been gradually shrinking in recent years, the convergence in electoral participation is nevertheless surprising for multiple reasons. First, as noted by Franziska Roscher, the increase in female turnout in India is occurring while female labor force participation—an important driver of women’s political participation—remains low compared to peer economies. Second, national-level data from the National Election Study (NES), conducted by the Lokniti Program of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, and other smaller studies confirm that women lag men across all measures of nonelectoral political engagement. For instance, data from two separate primary surveys—conducted in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh by political scientists Soledad Prillaman and Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner, respectively—demonstrate that while the gender gap in voter turnout has closed, gaps are all too visible in other forms of sustained political engagement, such as contacting elected representatives, attending public meetings, and participating in campaign activities. Third, women continue to be underrepresented in India’s national parliament and its state assemblies.
Read here the full article published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on 5 April 2024.
Image source: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Introduction
Over the last twenty years, the world has witnessed significant shifts towards greater gender equality in politics, which in turn has had positive implications for democracy and society at large.
Mexico has witnessed a systematic incorporation of gender perspective, equality, and parity in public life, signifying a transformation of women's ability to participate in the country's future. The prime example is the National Electoral Institute (INE) mandate, later ratified by the Electoral Tribunal (TEPJF), for political parties to guarantee gender parity in all upcoming gubernatorial elections of 2024: Chiapas, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Morelos, Puebla, Tabasco, Veracruz, Yucatán, and Mexico City.
Unfortunately, as women's participation in politics rises, an increase in political violence that explicitly targets women has also occurred. The 2020-2021 electoral process was the most violent against Mexican women.
Mexico´s political system is awash with political violence that explicitly targets and affects women, obstructs social justice, and hinders democracy. The advances in female political participation have been met with resistance as men, territorial interest groups, and political elites seemingly feel threatened by increasing female power and respond with violent actions to uphold the traditional system of politics to deter women’s independent participation.
Read here the full article published by the Wilson Center on 13 March 2024.
Image source: Wilson Center
In 1906, Finland became the first country in Europe to grant women the right to vote, with the adoption of universal suffrage, at the same time as it won its autonomy from the Russian Empire. The following year, Finnish women were able to exercise this right in the general elections. Throughout the twentieth century, women in Europe and around the world fought long and hard to gain the right to vote without any additional conditions to those required of men. In some countries, only widows were allowed to vote as a first step towards electoral emancipation (in Belgium, for example, until 1921). In other countries, such as Bulgaria, the right to vote was initially reserved for mothers of legitimate children and exclusively for local elections. In Portugal, only women with a university degree were allowed to vote from 1931 on. In Spain it was not until post-Franco democratisation and the 1976 elections that Spanish women regained the right to vote, initially acquired in 1931 before the civil war. This year France is celebrating the 80th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote. Cypriot women won the right to vote at the same time as their male counterparts when the Republic was created in 1960. This can be explained quite simply by the fact that, at that time, such discrimination could no longer be justified. So, it took a good part of the twentieth century to get there...
Read here the full article published by the Foundation Robert Schuman on 5 March 2024.
Image source: Foundation Robert Schuman