Elections

On Thursday night, the Craven County GOP elected Sarah Benischek as the party's new chairman. The announcement marked a victory for women in local politics after a recent report found women are not represented equally to their male counterparts. 

Women currently make up 51% of the population in North Carolina and 50.3% of the registered voters. The disparity is that women are not being voted into office at the same rate a male candidate is, according to the 2021 Annual Status of Women in NC Politics Report from Meredith College. 

Click here to read the full article published by The Sun on October 2021.

Jaha Dukureh was a young mother of three with little campaigning experience when she started a movement in the Gambia to end female genital mutilation, backed by the Guardian.

In the seven years that followed she advised Barack Obama in the US, where she was then living, helped have FGM banned in her home country, was nominated for a Nobel peace prize and became a UN ambassador.Now 31, she wants to defy expectations again, standing for president in the west African nation on 4 December, despite being a relative unknown on the political scene.

Click here to read the full article published by the Guardian on 4 November 2021.

New York City’s legislative branch will be packed with newcomers in 2022 and will have its first female majority. Meanwhile, the GOP gained at least one more Council seat.

As voters chose moderate Democrat Eric Adams as mayor, the City Council replenished its ranks of progressives in an election that turned over most of its seats on Tuesday, while potentially adding some Republican newcomers. Three races were too close to call as of early Wednesday morning — including a re-election bid by Brooklyn Democrat Justin Brannan, who wants to become the Council’s speaker.

The coming class of 51 City Council members includes many first-time candidates and more women serving than in any time in its history. The 31 women who won or are favored to win will more than double the current Council’s class of female leaders.

Click here to read the full article published by The City on 3 November 2021.

Michelle Wu has made history after being elected as mayor of Boston, becoming the first woman and person of color elected to the position in almost 200 years.

“From every corner of our city, Boston has spoken. We are ready to meet this moment. We are ready to become a Boston for everyone,” said Wu to her supporters on Tuesday night. “I want to be clear, it wasn’t my vision on the ballot, it was ours, together.”

Click here to read the full article published by The Guardian on 3 November 2021.

Abstract

Although female political representation in the Arab world has nearly doubled in the last decade, little is known about how voters in the region view female politicians and their political platforms, particularly in a new democracy like Tunisia. We conduct original conjoint and vignette survey experiments to examine the effects of candidate gender and gender- and leadership-congruent political platforms on voter support. Building on role congruity theory, we find evidence of bias against female candidates among voters, particularly among respondents who hold patriarchal gender norms. Additionally, we find that all respondents are more likely to prefer candidates who emphasize security issues rather than women’s rights. Overall, our study suggests that female candidates who emphasize issues congruent with stereotypes of political leadership, such as security, can increase voter support, though respondents also reward male candidates who appeal to leadership congruent issues.

Click here to access the paper published by Springer.

Abstract

Research on election violence often does not capture its psychological and gendered dimensions. Gender differences on the continuum of violence, as acknowledged in other fields, are applied here to election violence. Specifically, this article explores ways to unveil the forms of election violence that are hidden from the view of an external observer because they are either not carried out in public or not recognized as violence. Survey data and interview material was collected from men and women political candidates participating in the 2014 national elections in the Maldives. The study concludes that the continuum of violence is relevant for adequately assessing the full range of illegitimate acts used against men and women candidates to affect electoral races. Women candidates in the Maldives were more exposed than men candidates to threats and to verbal and figurative sexualized aggression.

Click here to read the full article published by Sage Journals on 12 March 2021.