Elections
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...
On the morning of February 9, a large crowd gathered near the Mirpur-1 Eidgah field.
The air was filled with commotion and the festive rhythm of a band party. Rickshaws and cars came to a halt, and pedestrians stopped to watch.
Suddenly, an open-top vehicle emerged from the crowd. A woman stood inside, waving to people lining both sides of the road.
A five-year-old girl standing with her mother on the sidewalk waved back.
The mother, Swapna Akhtar, said their house was nearby. Her daughter insisted on coming out after hearing the band. When they arrived, they realised it was an election campaign procession for Sanjida Islam Tulee.
With an eye on attracting sectors considered decisive for the elections, President Lula has concluded that he needs to further calibrate his rhetoric and actions aimed at women in order to reverse disapproval of his administration among this electorate, which exceeds 40%.
The move comes as the Palácio do Planalto sees a kind of window of opportunity due to the absence, within the far-right camp, of a strong female leadership figure for the 2026 elections. Initially, one of the main bets in that field was former first lady Michelle Bolsonaro. However, her stepson Flávio Bolsonaro (Liberal Party, PL, São Paulo) emerged and was announced as a pre-candidate. Privately, the two disagree over the family’s electoral project for 2026, which, in the government’s view, weakens their presence on certain issues.
On women’s rights, the rift between them is even more evident. Michelle Bolsonaro heads PL Mulher, and on social media the women’s wing of the PL party has ignored Flávio’s pre-candidacy. Posts highlight Michelle and Jair Bolsonaro in particular, without reference to her stepson.
DHAKA – As the dust settles on Bangladesh’s 13th National Parliamentary Election, with the Election Commission (EC) declaring the 297 candidates elected to our parliament, a major source of disappointment remains: the systematic lack of women’s political participation. While a total of 85 women contested the polls last Thursday, including 66 with party nominations and 19 as independent candidates, only seven have been elected. Of the seven candidates, only one is independent; the rest are from BNP. Furthermore, as per pre-election stats from the EC, nearly a third of female candidates were relatives of influential men. Although in the ninth parliament, 21 women were directly elected, the total number of female contestants in this election was the highest on record. These numbers put the low participation of women politicians in perspective.
Myriad factors are cited by those who attempt to deny that a systemic exclusion of women persists in Bangladesh’s politics. But when a party announces outright that it will not include women in roles of leadership in a post-uprising Bangladesh, we must acknowledge the urgency of this problem.
Women played a crucial role in the ousting of the Awami League regime in 2024, yet hardly any female representatives were included in the July National Charter consensus discussions. When male politicians were subjected to enforced disappearance by Sheikh Hasina’s regime, it was the women in their families who led the fight for justice for years. The requirement by the Representation of the People Order, 1972, for political parties to reserve at least 33 percent of committee posts for women, including at the central level, was also not heeded by the major political parties in this election. Unsurprisingly, the recommendation by the Women’s Affairs Reform Commission to increase the number of reserved seats for women to 100 with direct elections was not accepted by political parties. Meanwhile, promises and sentiments about women’s empowerment by contesting politicians sound more like rote than out of a genuine wish to improve the persisting imbalance.
Examining the diversity of first-time candidates in last year’s federal election is a revealing exercise on many levels and serves as a sharper measure of distinct party efforts to recruit visible minority candidates.
By taking this analysis a step further and breaking down first-time visible minority candidates by gender, we find further evidence of a persistent gap in female candidates, whether visible minority or not.
Recent analyses have focused on women being nominated as sacrificial lamb candidates in unwinnable or swing ridings. Some exceptions have focused on visible minorities, either in the form of experimental polling or actual results.
The question we explored was whether visible minority women less likely to be nominated in competitive ridings. The data we found suggests that visible minority women confront compounded biases and discrimination in the political process thatmay work against them in favour of a more traditional view of the ideal politician.
As Bangladesh awaits the result of the 2026 national parliamentary election, one statistic should give us pause. Only 78 women are contesting the election — just under 4% of nearly 2,000 candidates. It is being described as a "record number".
Even in the 2024 national election, 128 women (4.71%) contested among 2,713 total candidates. In 2019, 22 women were elected to general seats. This backsliding says more about how political power is structured in Bangladesh than about women's political capacity.
Recently, at a day-long national conference titled Rupture, Reform, and Reimagining Democracy: Navigating the Agony of Transition, organised by the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD) at BRAC University to reflect on Bangladesh's political transition, a speaker jokingly asked: "Is Bangladesh ready for a male prime minister?"
This year marks the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees women the right to vote. But the United States was hardly the first country to codify women’s suffrage, and barriers to vote persisted for some groups of U.S. women for decades. At least 20 nations preceded the U.S., according to a Pew Research Center analysis of women’s enfranchisement measures in 198 countries and self-administering territories. Today, none of these 198 countries and territories bar women from voting because of their sex; some countries do not hold national elections.
Here is a closer look at the history of women’s suffrage around the world. This analysis focuses on when women in each country won the right to vote in national elections, not regional or local elections.
Click here to read the full article published by the Pew Research Center on 5 October 2020.
RepresentWomen tracks women's representation and leadership in the United States and around the world to identify the "best practices" for creating a more representative government. Our research indicates that even as more women run, electoral rules and systems play a major role in determining electoral outcomes. As seen in both our 2016 and 2020 reports, we find that electoral outcomes for women and people of color are overall better in jurisdictions that have implemented ranked choice voting (RCV).
The 2020 ranked choice voting report, "In Ranked Choice Elections, Women WIN" provides a thorough review of ranked choice voting in the United States and how it is impacting women's representation in the cities that have implemented it. Over the last decade, 19 cities and counties have used ranked choice voting to elect sitting city officials, including 13 mayors and the city councilmembers in 14 jurisdictions. Over the last decade (2010-2019), women have won 45% of all municipal ranked choice elections. As of April 2020, nearly half of all mayors (46%) and 49% of all city council seats decided by RCV are held by women.
Click here to see the report.
Political campaigns online have demonstrated that they can help candidates win elections, include more citizens’ concerns in political debates or allow upcoming parties to gain political exposure.
However, social media can also have a negative effect on political and electoral integrity by attacking an essential principle of democracy: the fundamental right of citizens to access trustable, reliable information to form their political opinions and, ultimately, decide their votes.
In this context of potential manipulation of public opinion through digital information operations, electoral management bodies, monitoring authorities, legislators and political parties face increasing difficulty in protecting the integrity of the political process.
Based on International IDEA’s work in Tunisia, Panama and Bolivia, this Fact sheet seeks to identify some overarching recommendations and a way forward based on how these types of activities may have potentially influenced their recent elections.
Click here to see the fact sheet.
In late 2018 and early 2019 UN Women interviewed 87 per cent of the women who ran for Parliamentary election (75 of the 86 women; of the 113 women who registered to run, 86 made it on to candidate lists). This report summarizes their stories and experiences as candidates and looks at issues of: violence against women in politics, financial constraints and campaign management, media and image portrayal, violence harassment and discrimination.
Click here to see the report.
Introduction
I was targeted because my husband is from a different community that was perceived to hold a differing political opinion from the one of the dominant community we live in.’
Survivor of sexual violence during the 2017 elections interviewed in this research Electoral-related sexual violence (ERSV) is a form of sexual violence, including rape, gang rape, sexual assault and defilement, associated with electoral processes and/or intended to influence or achieve a political end within an electoral process. In Kenya, sexual violence has been a recurrent feature of elections, which have been marred by deadly violence, unrest and serious human rights violations and abuses. Outbreaks of sexual violence during elections have been documented since the 1990s.Following the post-election violence in 2007/2008, the Commission of Inquiry into the Post-Election Violence (CIPEV), known as the ‘Waki Commission’, documented 900 cases of sexual violence perpetrated by security agents, militia groups and civilians against both men, boys, women and girls in a context of large scale violence, mass displacement and more than 1,000 deaths.
CIPEV provided critical recommendations for reform and was followed by the historic adoption in 2010 of a progressive Constitution with a robust Bill of Rights. Since 2010, an impressive set of laws, policies and standard operating procedures have been developed on prevention and response to sexual violence. Yet, during the general elections held in August and October 2017, within a context of localised violence, large numbers of cases of sexual violence perpetrated by persons in uniform and civilians were again documented. According to the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR), at least 201 Kenyans – most of them women and girls — were subjected to rape and other forms of sexual violence; [4] however the actual figure is likely higher due to under-reporting and the fact that KNCHR documented these in 11 of the 47 counties.
Click here to see the report.
The Report on Gender-Sensitive Parliaments is the result of a two-year research project. It follows up on a previous IPU publication, Equality in Politics: A Survey of Women and Men in Parliaments (2008). That Survey had found that women were overwhelmingly the main drivers of progress in gender equality in parliament, but that parliaments, as institutions, must also shoulder their share of the responsibility. This finding begs the questions: What are parliaments doing to foster gender equality? What policies inform gender equality efforts? Are the institutional structures of parliaments around the world mindful of both men and women? In short, are parliaments gender-sensitive?
The Report seeks to provide answers to these questions. Simply put, a gender-sensitive parliament is one that responds to the needs and interests of both men and women in its structures, operations, methods and work. This publication not only provides an important assessment of the gender sensitivity of the world's parliaments, but also identifies key steps parliaments can take to become gender-sensitive institutions that contribute to the achievement of gender equality.
Click here to see the report.