Elections
As Timor-Leste looks to its presidential elections on Saturday, several female candidates are standing. Will they persuade the new generation of voters of a need for a greater voice in politics?
Women are increasingly taking up more leadership roles in the 2022 Timor-Leste presidential election, with the number of contenders doubling on previous years.
Four women will compete for the presidency against 12 male contenders, a sign that the young nation is forging a more inclusive political landscape.
Men have been dominating politics in the southeast Asian country but that is fast becoming a thing of the past.
Click here to read the full article published by SBS on 18 March 2022.
The general political context in 2022 is definitely different from that of 2018. But will the new Lebanese Parliament consist of more than six women following the May 15 elections?
While the deadline for the Lebanese interested in applying for candidacy in the 2022 parliamentary elections, which is March 15, 2022, arrives in a few days, only 47 women number among the 419 candidates who have so far officially submitted their applications.
This figure, which is equivalent to about 11.2 percent of the total number of candidates, may seem abysmally low. It is below women’s participation rate in previous legislative elections, which was 14 percent.
In 2018, 111 women out of 976 candidates applied within the deadline. This number dropped to 86 women of a total of 597 candidates following the formation of the lists. One must wait until April 4, which is the deadline for the formation of the lists, to see women’s participation rate in the legislative elections. This rate, however, does not affect women’s access to Parliament.
Click here to read the full article published by L’Orient-Le Jour on 10 March 2022.
Next week’s election will feature more female candidates than ever, but their impact on the country’s patriarchal cultural norms remains to be seen.
Next week, Timor-Leste will hold the seventh presidential election that the country has conducted on its own since gaining its independence two decades ago. The March 19 poll is the first to take place since the COVID-19 pandemic, and will feature the largest-ever pool of candidates running for president, including four women, an apparent sign that the country is forging a more inclusive politics and moving beyond consensus politics and big man rule.
Click here to read the full article published by The Diplomat on 11 March 2022.
The environmental leader won more votes than the center candidate Sergio Fajardo without having held public office and with a campaign that began only three months ago.
Following this unprecedented primary, Francia Márquez has done nothing but smile. Although she did not win the leftist coalition El Pacto Historico [Historic Pact]’s election, where Gustavo Petro swept the board as expected, in her campaign headquarters it has been all celebration: “The people do not give up, damn it”, they sing and dance to a chorus that was sung during the social protests of 2021 and has made her well known. It is no wonder the environmentalist leader has become a Colombian electoral phenomenon.
With almost 97% of the ballot counted, Márquez obtained 757,000 votes and became the third-place candidate, behind Gustavo Petro and Federico Gutiérrez, on the right. Márquez not only surpassed the number of votes for three times presidential candidate and former mayor of Medellín Sergio Fajardo (who obtained 701,000 in the center election), and left behind well-known politicians such as the former minister Alejandro Gaviria and the former governor of Boyaca Carlos Amaya, but she also managed to grow a campaign in just three months without being a recognized figure in the country as a whole.
Click here to read the full article published by El País on 15 Mars 2022.
International IDEA has made women's participation one of its main axes in improving the inclusiveness of electoral processes in the Arab region.
To combat inequitable attitudes towards women in the effective exercise of their civic and political rights, International IDEA has supported the Arab network for women in elections in the design[1] , the launch of a regional campaign to promote women's participation. The first workshop was held in hybrid face-to-face and virtual mode in Istanbul, August 2021.
This workshop brought together EMBs representatives, experts, journalists, regional organizations and civil society organizations to discuss an action plan and design of a regional campaign for the participation of women. In October 2021, International IDEA brought together 20 participants, in a second workshop, where the working group finalized the campaign launch plan: Videos, logos, visual tools, testimonials and key messages were presented and discussed.
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On 21 December 2021, International IDEA launched the campaign in Amman, 12 Arab EMBs took part, CSOs, and regional organizations. New means of sensitization have been adopted to combat discriminatory attitudes towards women in the Arab region: family voting, violence and limitation of the right to candidacy. To this end, a play, a traditional dance, testimonies of Arab women were broadcast at the Media Center of the Independent Election Commission, Jordan.
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This was accompanied by TV shows. This campaign will last one year and will be duplicated at the national level, especially during the electoral processes of the Member Countries of the Network: Jordan, , Libya, Palestine[2] and Tunisia.
The regional campaign will last one year and will be implemented at the national level.
[1] In partnership with the Arab EMBs Organization, the electoral project of UNDP.
[2] Palestine has launched the campaign at the regional level on 25 November 2021 with the support of International IDEA.
Source: International IDEA
Two women frontrunners seek to unseat Macron as feminist issues move up the agenda.
Presidential candidate Valérie Pécresse began a live interview with one of France’s most popular television hosts by going on the offensive, declaring she nearly cancelled the appearance because of sexual assault allegations against him. “I want to say very clearly that if these accusations are true they’re serious and must be condemned,” Pécresse said to veteran presenter Jean-Jacques Bourdin, surrounded by an audience of voters. The BFMTV journalist, 72, was accused publicly of assaulting a younger female colleague, although he denied wrongdoing.
Click here to read the full article published by The Financial Times on 10 February 2022.