Elections
This week, the Minister of Solidarity, Social Integration and Family, Naïma Ben Yahya, announced the launch of a national campaign to raise awareness about women’s political participation. The initiative aims to strengthen the fight against discrimination and stereotypes in politics and is being rolled out under the Moucharaka program, ahead of the 2026 and 2027 elections.
Answering oral questions in the House of Representatives, the minister said the campaign includes training programs for women members of political parties, carried out in coordination with women’s sections within those parties. It also involves academic research conducted in partnership with universities, with findings to be published in order to identify avenues for improvement.
A total of 2,568 candidates have submitted nomination papers to contest the upcoming 13th Jatiya Sangsad elections. Of them, only 109 are women accounting for slightly over 4 per cent. Women’s rights activists have demanded that political parties give explanation before the public and be held accountable for nominating so few female candidates.
The demand was raised yesterday, Monday at a press conference organised by the Forum for Women’s Political Rights. The speakers also called for accountability from both the Election Commission and the political parties.
A written statement titled ‘The crisis of women’s nominations: The gap between political parties’ commitments and implementation, and the accountability of the Election Commission’ was read out at the press conference, held at the Sagar-Runi Auditorium of the Dhaka Reporters Unity (DRU) in Segunbagicha of Dhaka.
Speakers at a press conference on Monday said women’s participation in the upcoming election is extremely disappointing, despite some independent female candidates joining the race at the last moment.
Forum leaders made the remarks at a press conference titled “Nomination Crisis of Women Candidates: Gap between Parties’ Commitments and Implementation and the Accountability of the Election Commission”, held at the Sagar-Runi Auditorium of the Dhaka Reporters’ Unity.
Representatives from Gonoshasthaya Abhijan, Durbaar Network Foundation, Nagorik Coalition, Nari Udyog Kendra (NUK), Narigrantha Probortona, Nari Sanghati, Nari Pokkho, Narir Dake Rajniti, Feminist Alliance of Bangladesh (FAB), Bangladesh Nari Mukti Kendra, and Voice for Reform were present at the event.
They alleged that although the Election Commission frequently talks about a “gender-inclusive election,” there is little reflection of that commitment in reality.
The upcoming national election in Bangladesh is significant for a number of reasons, one of the more significant of which is the issue of higher female representation and inclusiveness in Bangladeshi politics.
As the signatories to the July Charter have pledged to uphold clauses related to female empowerment from this election, the nomination lists of political parties have become the first real measure of whether the Charter represents a political turning point or merely a reformist document with limited practical consequence.
Regrettably, most parties have already fallen short.
The July Charter set a clear benchmark: political parties would begin with at least 5% women candidates in parliamentary nominations and gradually increase this figure by five percentage points in each election cycle until reaching 33% direct representation. All major parties signed it.
The transition process in Haiti, underway since July 2021, is progressing toward the elections scheduled for 2026 under a new electoral calendar (https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-46492-haiti-flash-the-cep-has-just-published-the-revised-electoral-calendar-in-the-moniteur.html).
Despite some progress, Women's participation in governance in Haiti remains limited. Female representation in key bodies, such as the Presidential Transitional Council (CPT) and the Government, remains below the minimum constitutional quota of 30%. Women hold 22.22% of government positions and 11.11% within the CPT, where they do not have voting rights (observer status). They represent 27% of electoral staff at the departmental (BED) and municipal (BEC) levels. This underrepresentation highlights the persistent challenges to achieving gender equality in leadership roles.
As Bangladesh moves towards its 13th national parliamentary election, the issue of women's political representation has once again come into sharp focus. Despite repeating promises by political parties to increase women's participation in direct electoral contests, the nomination lists released ahead of the election reveal that women continue to be vastly underrepresented among candidates for general seats. This pattern raises fundamental questions about the role political parties play in shaping democratic inclusion and whether the symbolic rhetoric surrounding gender equality is being matched by substantive action. The composition of nomination lists from major political parties such as the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Jatiya Party, National Citizen Party (NCP) and others provides an illuminating snapshot of the current state of women's electoral inclusion and the deeper challenges that persist.
The most striking feature of the data on nominations for the 13th national election is the persistently low number of women candidates. According to official figures from the Election Commission, women make up a tiny fraction of those contesting general seats: only 65 women out of 1,842 validly nominated candidates, amounting to just 3.53 per cent of the total list. This percentage is far below even modest thresholds proposed in some political discussions, which suggested that parties should nominate at least 5 per cent women candidates across constituencies. In many ways, the lack of women nominees underscores the structural barriers that women face within party nomination processes in Bangladesh.
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