Elections
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.
For a nation that has seen not one but two female prime ministers, the recently concluded elections showed a dismal reality. Although half of Bangladesh’s voters are women, the representation of women in politics continues to be low. Only 78 women candidates contested the February 12 elections, out of 1,981 candidates – a meager 3.93 percent. Just seven women actually won election, out of 300 directly elected seats.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which won the elections handily, accounted for six of those women MPs – but it fielded only 10 women candidates for the elections out of the 300 contested constituencies. Only three women were sworn in as union ministers by the Tarique Rahman Cabinet, out of 50 Cabinet members in total.
The present political landscape of Bangladesh reflects a nation at odds with women’s place in public life. This was most evident in the case of the National Citizen Party (NCP), formed by student leaders who led the uprising against the ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The NCP has few women leaders, although many women participated in the street protests of July-August 2024. The pre-poll alliance between NCP and Jamat-e-Islami (JI) was seen by many women leaders of the NCP as abandoning the cause of gender equality.
This free, non-partisan event will take place on Feb. 24 from 7-8:30 p.m. EST, and is open to participants across the province.
Building on the momentum of the Run Where You Are initiative, Say Yes 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 community. The event focuses on breaking down barriers, addressing self-doubt and offering practical insight from those who have already said ‘yes’ to leadership.
“So many women are already leaders. They just haven’t called it that yet,” Amanda Kingsley Malo of Sudbury, founder of PoliticsNOW, said in a release. “This event is about naming what’s already there, and showing women that they do not have to leap alone. There is a whole ecosystem ready to support them.”
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The virtual panel will feature municipal leaders from across Ontario who will share candid reflections on their paths to public office, including lessons learned, challenges faced, and what they wish they had known before entering public office.
Confirmed panellists include Michelle Boileau, mayor of Timmins; Marilyn Crawford, councillor with the Town of Ajax; Tammy Hwang, councillor for the City of Hamilton; Joan John, councillor in the Township of Southgate; and Melanie Pilon, mayor of Wawa.
“If you have ever thought ‘maybe me,’ that is not random,” Kingsley Malo added. “That thought is information. Say Yes exists to help people take that whisper seriously and connect them with the training and support that makes it real.”
Despite progress in recent years, women and gender-diverse individuals continue to be underrepresented in municipal leadership across Ontario, critics say. Run Where You Are – Say Yes aims to help close that gap by offering accessible, community-driven entry points into politics.
In this In brief, the authors consider lessons learned in the aftermath of women candidates’ defeat in the 18 November 2021 general election. They identify five intractable barriers to women’s election in Tonga: voters’ expectations of reciprocity in exchange for electoral support; deeply entrenched perceptions of men’s legitimacy as political leaders; untimely support for women candidates; an inhospitable political environment for electoral gender quotas; and a lack of accountability on gender equality commitments.
Click here to read the full article.
Electoral management bodies (EMBs) are responsible for ensuring a level playing field for political representation and meaningful participation across the entire electoral cycle. Yet, International IDEA data shows that only 22% of EMBs themselves are chaired by women.
When disaggregated by regions (Figure 1.), data from 242 EMBs in 208 countries and territories shows that the percentages indicating the number of women chairing EMBs are below the global average on three continents, with Asia recording the lowest numbers (10%), followed by Oceania (11%) and Africa (19%).
Click here to read the full article published by International IDEA on 7 November 2021.
Although the landscape for female candidates in U.S. politics has improved, research continues to find that many voters possess sexist attitudes. We rely on a standard political communication framework to help reconcile sexism in the electorate with increasingly favorable outcomes for women in primary elections. Based on two national survey experiments, we first demonstrate that in the absence of gendered campaign rhetoric, sexism is a weak predictor of support for female candidates on both sides of the political aisle. We then show, however, that when a male candidate attempts to activate sexism among voters by attacking a female opponent, gender attitudes become more salient—but not to the woman’s disadvantage. In a Democratic primary, gendered attacks backfire and lead to a significant boost in support for the female candidate. On the Republican side, a male candidate does not face the same backlash, but the attacks do very little to depress his female opponent’s support. While the persistence of hostile attitudes toward women has slowed the march toward gender equality in society, our experimental results suggest that sexism exerts only contingent effects in primary elections and not systematically to female candidates’ detriment.
Click here to download the paper published by Sage Journals on 23 September 2021.
By Roudabeh Kishi
Attacks on women in politics are on the rise around the world. New data and research from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) reveal how physical violence targeting women in politics is creating dangerous – and at times lethal – obstacles to women’s participation in political processes. Even as women are engaging in elections in record numbers around the world – both by seeking office and by voting – they are being met with an increasingly violent backlash.
Over the course of 2020 and 2021, Mexico, Colombia, China, India, Brazil, Burundi, Myanmar, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and Cuba top the list of the most violent countries in the world for women in politics. With rapidly evolving political situations as well as upcoming elections in many of these countries, the threat of violence targeting women in politics may only grow in the new year. Examining key trends from the latest political violence data for these countries will provide a glimpse of what to watch for in 2022 when it comes to the risks facing women in politics.
Click here to read the full article published by GIWPS on 28 January 2022.
According to Palestinian Central Elections Commission data, the first phase of the 2021 local council elections showed the extent of women candidates in competing lists. Results indicated that the percentage of women who won through voting in lists was 20.5% and the overall percentage in all local councils (voting and acclamation) was 21.8%, which reflects a slight increase in the percentage of the women’s quota. This points to the importance of the quota, which maintained the presence of women in local councils, especially since there are many councils in Bethlehem for example, which refused to present a list on the premise of their rejection of women’s participation.
As for youth participation, according to CEC data, the percentage of youth between the ages of 25-35 was 21.7%; between 36-45 the percentage was 27.4%, between 46-55 it was 28.6% and those above 55 was 22.3%. It should be noted that the age of youth, according to the UN, is between 18-29 while the candidacy age in Palestine is still at 25 for local councils. The closest percentage to this was 21.7% up to 35 years of age, which drops to 19.4% in councils where elections were held, followed by 24.5% for the 36-45 age bracket.
Click here to read the full report published by Miftah on 5 January 2022.
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.