Elections
The Liberal Democratic Party’s lopsided victory was not the only record set in the Feb. 8 Lower House election.
A total of 313 women ran as candidates, accounting for 24.4 percent of the 1,284 contenders and surpassing the previous high of 23.4 percent.
Sixty-eight women were elected on Feb. 8, representing 14.6 percent of all winners. Twenty-eight of the female candidates won in single-seat districts and 40 gained seats through proportional representation.
Only the 2024 Lower House election had more female winners, at 73.
By party, the LDP endorsed the most successful female candidates, with 39, followed by eight each with the Centrist Reform Alliance (Chudo), the Democratic Party for the People (DPP) and Sanseito.
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As the clock hit midnight, the women held their flame torches aloft and marched into the Dhaka night. “The people have given their blood, now we want equality,” they shouted above the roar of the traffic.
For many in Bangladesh, the past few weeks have been a cause for jubilation. The first free and fair elections in 17 years have been promised for Thursday, after the toppling of the regime of Sheikh Hasina in a bloody student-led uprising in August 2024 in which more than 1,000 people died.
Opposition figures long persecuted and jailed are now running as candidates, freely holding rallies for the first time in years. The former prime minister is languishing in exile in India and facing a death sentence for crimes against humanity in Bangladesh, and her Awami League party is banned from contesting the election.
Yet for swathes of women in the country, including those who were at the forefront of the revolution, the hope of the election has become tinged with disappointment and fear, amid a resurgence of regressive Islamist politics that it is feared will impinge upon women’s rights and a dearth of female candidates in the running.
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More than 300 participants at a public dialogue highlight barriers to women's political participation and sign petitions demanding equal representation in decision-making roles.
Women leaders, activists and youth representative have demanded and end to the systemic exclusion of women from politics in Nepal. Speaking at a public dialogue 'Excluded by Design: Women, Politics and Ethical Failure' they said the political mindset remains the same even after the Gen Z movement.
The Dialogue also highlighted that women make up 52 per cent of Nepal's population only 396 of the 3,486 candidate in the upcoming House of Representatives elections are women. Speakers emphasized that this indicates not a failure on the part of women, but of the system.RT
Read more here.
During Nigeria’s election cycles, a particular kind of misinformation circulates alongside the usual false claims about candidates and voting procedures. These are narratives that target women specifically—fabricated scandals, manipulated images, and rumours designed to discredit female politicians and discourage women’s civic participation.
This gendered disinformation operates daily across Nigerian social media and WhatsApp groups, often going unchallenged because the tools to counter it rarely reach the women most affected.
On Friday, Brain Builders Youth Development Initiative launched MyAIFactChecker, a WhatsApp chatbot that allows users to verify information in English, Yoruba, Hausa, and Igbo. What distinguishes this tool from other fact-checking initiatives is not just its technology but its design philosophy: inclusion was treated as foundational rather than optional.
“Technology is only inclusive if inclusion is intentional,” said Sanni Alausa Issa, Communications Director of Brain Builders, at the launch event.
KATHMANDU, Jan 22: Amid the buzz of election fever in the chilly January air, candidates for the House of Representatives (HoR) election on March 5 have been enthusiastically filing their nominations. Yet, a closer look at the numbers tells a striking story: women candidates remain far too few.
Kul Bahadur GC, assistant spokesperson of the Election Commission (EC), says both new and established parties have failed to ensure gender inclusivity in this election. Women’s presence in national politics is still weak, and within parties, female members often lack influence. As a result, women make up only 11.35% of all candidates—a small rise from 9.3% in the 2079 BS election.
Out of 3,486 candidates for the 165 first-past-the-post, or direct, seats, 3,089 are men, 396 women, and 1 from another gender. Experts point to societal patriarchy and male-dominated political culture as key reasons, with men favored in election strategies and campaign resources.
Political parties were failing to reach a consensus on increasing women’s representation in parliament during discussions with the National Consensus Commission. At one stage, a proposal to nominate at least 5 per cent women candidates was tabled, to which most parties agreed.
Despite opposition from women’s rights activists, the July National Charter was finalised with the provision that 5 per cent of nominations would be allocated to women in the 13th Jatiya Sangsad (national parliament) election.
Although Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) agreed to the 5 per cent proposal during discussions with the consensus commission, the party has not adhered to this in this election. Jamaat-e-Islami has not nominated a single woman candidate in any constituency.
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.