Elections
Encouraging more women to seek public office — and helping them achieve that goal — is the focus of an upcoming virtual training event.
Set for Feb. 24, Run Where You Are – Say Yes “is calling on women and gender-diverse people to take the next step toward public leadership” by attending the free, non-partisan virtual event next week.
The news release about the event states women and gender-diverse people are still underrepresented in municipal leadership. One way to counter that underrepresentation is by supporting and encouraging women who are curious and interested but unsure.
The training “is designed for those who are curious about running for office, actively considering a campaign, or seeking clarity on what leadership could look like in their own community. The event focuses on breaking down barriers, addressing self-doubt, and offering practical insight from those who have already said ‘yes’ to leadership.
With the first primary elections of the 2026 midterms just two weeks away, the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), a unit of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, shares resources for covering women in this year’s elections and understanding their place in American politics.
These resources are available on CAWP’s newly-redesigned website. The most recent iteration of the CAWP website makes our research and data more accessible, refreshes the site’s visual identity, and makes it easier to navigate for all visitors.
Seven women candidates, majority of them from the BNP, have been elected to Bangladesh parliament in the 13th national election, a media report said on Friday. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which is set to form the Government with an absolute majority, has seen six of its female nominees win their respective seats, The Dhaka Tribune said quoting unofficial results.
The BNP women candidates are Afroza Khan Rita from Manikganj-3, Israt Sultana Elen Bhutto from Jhalokati-2, Tahsina Rushdir Luna from Sylhet-2, Shama Obaid from Faridpur-2, Nayab Yusuf Kamal from Faridpur-3, and Farzana Sharmin Putul from Natore-1, it said. In addition, Barrister Rumin Farhana, who had previously been expelled from the BNP, has been elected as an independent candidate from Brahmanbaria-2.
The results are based on unofficial tallies announced after the conclusion of voting and counting across the country, the newspaper said. The BNP had fielded only 10 female candidates among 300 constituencies in the polls. With more than 151 seats in the 300-seat parliament, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) is cruising towards a sweeping victory in the landmark parliamentary polls held on Thursday, local media reports said.
It is a striking paradox. For more than three decades, Bangladesh has been led by women—an exceptional continuity across the globe. Yet the outcome of the 13th national election tells a different story. Even with women at the top position, women's presence in Parliament has declined significantly day by day.
In the elections of 1991, 1996 and 2001, women's participation was gradually increasing. The 2008 election is often seen as a milestone in terms of women's representation in the National Parliament. That year, 5.9 percent of all candidates were women, and 19 women won in directly contested seats—a record that still stands.
But in the 2026 election—widely regarded as relatively free and competitive after a long period—the share of women candidates fell to 4.08 percent. Out of more than two thousand candidates, only 84 were women. In a 300-seat Parliament, just 7 women were directly elected—the lowest number since 2001.
As Assam, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and Kerala prepare for Assembly elections, two decades of electoral data reveal a clear pattern: more women are entering the fray, but they are not winning in proportion to their participation. In contrast, men’s win percentages have remained relatively steady over the last 20 years.
Let’s look at this state by state.
West Bengal
While Mamata Banerjee, one of India’s most prominent women leaders, has been chief minister since 2011, women’s overall electoral performance in West Bengal has been bad. While more women contested elections, the number of women victors has only declined. They did not win proportionally to the increase in participation.
From 2001 to 2006, women’s victory rate increased. But after 2006, it began to decline steadily. By 2021, only 16.7 per cent of women contesting the election won seats — quite a fall from 24.6 per cent in 2001.
Despite this decline over the past two decades, women in West Bengal have consistently recorded higher winning percentages than men. In 2001, 17 per cent of male candidates won their seats, compared to 24.6 per cent of women candidates. This pattern has largely continued. In 2021, 13.4 per cent of men won, while that figure stood at 16.7 per cent for women.
Concerns Over Women's Political Representation
Member of the Forum for Women's Political Rights and Research Fellow at Aarshi Trust, Nafisa Raihana, on Sunday, expressed concerns about women's political representation following the 13th national parliamentary elections in Bangladesh. She alleged the existence of systemic barriers to women's participation in political parties. Speaking to ANI after the results were announced, Raihana said many women were unable to secure party nominations despite being politically active. "Many women could not get nominated this time, and many of the male members of their political parties did not or could not give their nomination. We met various women politicians, and all said that they are active, but it is difficult for them to reach a higher level or even talk to a higher authority," she told ANI...
Independent states in the Pacific region have the lowest levels of women’s political representation in the world. Fewer than 7% of Pacific politicians are women, compared with 27% globally. The absence of women’s voices in political decision-making has been consistently raised in regional forums, although progress has been slow. Yet, in November 2022, a milestone was reached: for the first time, there was at least one elected woman in every Pacific parliament.
Click here to read the full article published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute on 17 October 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.
Online abuse has a profound impact on the health of democratic societies, threatening progress on diversity and representation in politics. Research has shown that abuse can deter women and individuals from minority groups from pursuing careers in politics, and drive those already engaged to step down from political life. The 2022 midterm elections in the US saw a growing number of candidates from minority backgrounds running for office. Faced with growing public pressure, social media companies took steps to amend their policies and community standards to address illegal and harmful content and behavior on their platforms. Evidence has shown, however, that abusive image and video-based content can fall through the cracks of content moderation, pointing to a lack of adequate response from social media platforms. In the run-up to the November 2022 midterm elections, ISD investigated abusive content on Instagram and TikTok targeting prominent women in US politics. Researchers analyzed hashtag recommendations served to users on both platforms when searching for content related to several key women in US politics in the days before the election. This report finds that platforms recommend abusive hashtags when people search for the names of these female political figures, and also promote abusive content that violate their own terms of service, showing that harmful and abusive content targeting women running for, and in-, office remains in plain sight of the platforms.
Click here to access the report.
Diagnosing women’s under-representation in electoral politics often involves a “blame game,” seeking to identify the primary factor responsible for depressing the share of women among candidates as well as elected officials. The Danish electoral system – in which parties present ordered lists of candidates but voters have the option to cast preference votes that can rearrange the list order – provides an opportunity to assess the relative role of elite versus voter bias in shaping women’s electoral fortunes. Using data from local elections in 2009, we find greater evidence for elite bias against women. We also observe, however, that voters do not widely exploit their preference votes. In an original post-election survey, we discover that “candidate gender” is less important for male and female voters than a host of other characteristics when deciding for which candidate to cast a preference vote.
Click here to access the article.
From a gender perspective, three main lessons can be learnt from the general election. First, gender issues are on the rise, a fact shown not least by the appointment of the first-ever women running mate for one of the two main presidential candidates. Second, although the ratios of women representatives at all levels are slowly but steadily increasing, the gender quota is just window dressing, which the parties blatantly ignore or work around by nominating women candidates to top-up lists. Third, violence against women in politics poses a serious threat to women’s political inclusion and citizenship.
On 9 August, Kenyans headed to the polls to elect the country’s president. In addition to the executive, Kenyans also elected 290 members of parliament, 47 governors, 47 senators, 47 women representatives and 1,450 members of county assemblies in the elections. However, the executive race was the focus of attention. Both online and offline, the two presidential contenders William Ruto and Raila Odinga engaged in rhetoric to disparage the other, a tactic that succeeded because of – and was perpetuated by – the spread of misinformation.
Click here to access the report.
A nascent body of literature has highlighter the violence (broadly defined) that women sometimes face as they enter politics. Some interpretations depict this violence as primarily gender motivated: women politicians are targeted because they are women. Another interpretation is that violence in some contexts is an everyday political practice targeting men and women alike. However, because we lack large-scale, systematic comparisons of men’s and women’s exposure to election violence, we know little about the extent to which – and how – candidate sex shape this form of violence- We address candidates in the 2018 Sri Lanka local elections. Sri Lanka is a suitable case for analysis because it is a postconflict country in which political violence has been endemic and the number of women candidates has increased rapidly due to gender quota adoption. Overall, we find large similarities in men’s and women’s exposure to violence, suggesting that violence sometimes is part of a larger political practice. However, we find that women are exposed to forms of intimidation of sexual nature more often than men. This finding demonstrated the need for gender-sensitive analyses of election violence.
Click here to access the article.