Elections
COLOMBO, Sept 11 (Reuters) - Not one of the 38 contenders in Sri Lanka's presidential election this month is a woman, a stark contrast in the Indian Ocean island where women make up more than half the voters and the workforce.
Well before more familiar figures such as Britain's Margaret Thatcher or India's Indira Gandhi, Sri Lanka gave the world its first female prime minister in 1960, electing Sirimavo Bandaranaike to a job her daughter also held 30 years later.
Women make up 52% of the more than 17 million Sri Lankans set to vote for a new president on Sept. 21, hoping to boost political stability and economic growth as the country grapples with its worst financial crisis in more than seven decades.
But since Sri Lanka introduced the universal franchise in 1931, the number of women in parliament has never crossed a threshold of 7%. Today, they are just 5.3% of its 225 members, and historically held only a fraction of cabinet positions.
Yet merely setting a quota of 25% among lawmakers, as was done in 2016, cannot be the only answer, said Harini Amarasuriya, a woman parliamentarian who called for a wider effort to bring more women into political life.
Read here the full article published by Reuters on 11 September 2024.
Image by Reuters
In the mid-1990s, Arizona State University political scientist Kim Fridkin dubbed U.S. press coverage of male and female candidates vying for state office a “distorted mirror” marked by gender bias that failed to accurately reflect the political landscape.
“In senatorial races, women receive less campaign coverage than their male counterparts and the coverage they receive is more negative — emphasizing their unlikely chances of victory,” Fridkin wrote in 1994 in The Journal of Politics, based on her analysis of news stories about 47 statewide campaigns from 1982 to 1988. “In both senatorial and gubernatorial races, women receive consistently less issue attention than their male counterparts.”
When the paper was published, 6% of U.S. senators were women, while women made up about 11% of members of Congress, according to a 2023 report on women leaders in U.S. politics by the Pew Research Center. About 21% of state legislators were women in the mid-1990s, as were 6% of governors, according to the Pew report.
By 2023, 25% of U.S. senators, 29% of Congress, 33% of state legislators and 24% of governors were women.
As women have occupied more positions of political power, so has news framing and language used in media coverage become more scrutinized.
Read here the full article published by The Journalist Resource on 11 September 2024.
Image by The Journalist Resource
Despite making up over half the voters and workforce, women are starkly underrepresented in Sri Lanka's political landscape. The 2023 presidential election features no female candidates, highlighting the deep-seated patriarchal structure that impedes women's political participation. Efforts like quota systems and training programs show progress but are not sufficient for lasting change.
In the upcoming Sri Lankan presidential election, none of the 38 contenders is a woman, a glaring disparity in a nation where women constitute more than half the voters and the workforce.
Despite having the world's first female prime minister, Sri Lanka's female political representation has stagnated. Women hold only 5.3% of parliament seats and are underrepresented in cabinet positions. Harini Amarasuriya, a woman parliamentarian, argued that quotas alone are insufficient for meaningful change.
Read here the full article published by DevDiscourse on 11 September 2024.
Image credits: DevDiscourse
It is an enduring stain on Sri Lanka’s democracy and gender equality that only 4.8 percent of parliamentarians are women despite their high literacy rate and educational levels. To correct this imbalance, proactive action is needed by women and men.
Women had the right to vote when universal franchise was granted to all males and females over the age of 21 in 1931. Before that, under the Donoughmore Constitution voting rights were given to a section of the elite but women from these families were excluded. Women had to fight for the right to vote, presenting a memorandum to the Donoughmore Commission demanding their right to vote, which resulted in universal franchise.
Two women members of the State Council were elected in 1931, constituting 4 percent of total members. One woman was elected to State Council in 1934 and until 1947 there were no women in the State Council. The first parliament of the country in 1947 had 95 members of whom three were women representing leftist political parties. The percentage of women in parliament for the 77 years from 1947 to 2024 has increased only by 2.7 percent.
Read here the full article published by Ground Views on 11 September 2024.
Image credits: Ground Views
Sri Lanka is gearing up for its ninth presidential election on September 21, but notably no women candidates are running for the highest office in the country. While having a woman candidate does not necessarily guarantee the prioritization of women’s issues, it is important to consider how the leading contestants plan to address these concerns. With women making up 51.6 percent of the population and 56 percent of registered voters, their votes hold the power to significantly influence the outcome of this election.
A candidate’s manifesto is a reflection of their understanding of the issues faced by their electorate. This analysis looks into the promises made in the manifestoes of the leading candidates – Anura Kumara Dissanayake of the National People’s Power party, current Leader of the Opposition Sajith Premadasa of the Samagi Jana Balawegaya, and current President Ranil Wickremesinghe of the United National Party – specifically regarding issues affecting women and girls. These reflect their respective stances on gender-based violence, women’s empowerment, support for women-headed households, maternal health, and other issues faced by women. However, a close look at their proposals reveals varying degrees of commitment, specificity, and understanding of the issues faced by women.
Read here the full article published by The Diplomat on 6 September 2024.
Image credits: The Diplomat
It’s the big question that has loomed over Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign from the start: is the United States ready for a Black woman president?
I get asked this almost every time I speak about American politics. And it’s a question that pundits, observers and experts keep asking, without ever landing on an answer.
That’s because the question is, in the end, unanswerable. It’s so heavily loaded that answering it requires too much history, cultural knowledge, judgment and speculation.
While the question hints at the deeply ingrained racism and sexism that is built into the structures of American politics and culture, it doesn’t directly address these things, leaving assumptions about just how sexist and racist the country might be unresolved.
Asking if America is “ready” also assumes that history is progress – that things move forward in a relatively straight line. It assumes that in the past America was not ready for a Black woman president, but at some point in the future it might be. It assumes, as Martin Luther King junior once said so beautifully, that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”.
Like much of King’s teachings, this idea has been flattened into an assumption that “progress” is inevitable – that women and people of colour will eventually get equal representation and treatment as society learns, gradually, to become more just, tolerant and accepting.
It assumes that, one day, the United States will live up to its own foundational ideal that “all men are created equal”.
Read here the full article published The Conservation on 8 September 2024.
Image credits: The Conversation
This policy paper aims to reconsider the concept of parity democracy in the current context of the EU and focusing on the elections to the EP in May 2019. As developed in the Athens Declaration, adopted at the European Summit of Women in Power in 1992, parity democracy stands on 5 basic arguments (equality, democracy, good use of human resources, needs and interests of women and quality of policy-making) which are recalled and updated with a view to provide stakeholders, including democrats standing for gender equality and feminist movements, with useful ammunitions to inform and convince EU citizens (women and men) to vote and to vote for women defending equality. This policy paper is, therefore, part of broader Gender Five Plus’ efforts to inform EU citizens and influence stakeholders for greater gender balance in the EU. The analysis in this policy paper is based on desk research, literature review and includes diverse forms of experience in EU policy-making. It is divided into four different parts and a list of recommendations. Part I tries to answer the question of why parity democracy is important to the EU; Part II focuses on why the EU and parity democracy are important to women; Part III analyses gender balance in the EU decision-making (focusing in the EP); Part IV examines the possible challenges and opportunities for fostering parity democracy in the current EU context and the conclusion provides space for a reflection on the EU that we want and need to build. Finally, derived from the analysis of the whole policy paper, a noncomprehensive list of recommendations is provided.
Click here to see the report.
IMF examines the impact of gender equality on electoral violence in Africa using micro-level data from the sixth round of Afrobarometer surveys. The sample covers 30 countries. IMF finds that gender equality is associated with lower electoral violence. Quantitatively, their estimates show that an increase in female-to-male labor force participation ratio by 1 percentage point is correlated with a reduction of the probability of electoral violence across the continent by around 4.2 percentage points. Their results are robust to alternative ways to measure electoral violence and gender equality, as well as to alternative specifications. The findings of this paper support the long-standing view that women empowerment contributes to the reduction of violence and underscore the urgency of addressing gender inequality in Africa.
Click here to see the report.
Understanding and explaining outbreaks of election-related violence is a complex task; predicting whether forthcoming elections will turn violent, which factors may underlie or trigger violence, and what can be done to prevent violence is even more difficult. One way to address the problem is to empower those who have immediate responsibility to prevent and mitigate election-related violence, such as electoral management bodies, security sector agencies and other state and non-state agencies.
The Electoral Risk Management Tool (ERM Tool) is designed to empower people to ensure peaceful and credible elections. The software aims to build the capacities of users to understand, analyse and mitigate electoral risks. Specifically, the ERM Tool can build users’ capacity to understand electoral risk factors; collect and analyse risk data; design prevention and mitigation strategies; and record the results of actions.
The software is accompanied by three Guides. This Prevention and Mitigation Guide aims to assist and inspire users to tailor strategies and actions for the prevention and mitigation of election-related violence. It is complemented by an Internal Factors Guide and an External Factors Guide which provide guidance to the users of the ERM Tool in identifying electoral risks in a given country and electoral context.
Click here to see the academic article.
Women around the world are playing increasingly visible roles in the political processes of their countries as voters, candidates, representatives, protesters, journalists and as civic educators in the home, the community and beyond. However, as emerging democracies struggle to consolidate, overcome violent pasts and address crippling poverty, they often falter and breed disillusionment. Religious and ethnic divisions may appear or intensify. In these complex contexts, electoral violence threatens – or beckons – women in new ways.
In Breaking the Mold: Understanding Gender and Electoral Violence, IFES introduces the concept of gendered electoral violence in transitional democracies and presents a new framework which accounts for all forms of public and private violence committed by and against women. Where current frameworks fail to fully take women into account by neglecting or stereotyping gender-specific forms of violence, IFES’ new framework draws on research in domestic violence and feminist security studies to expand our understanding of types of violence and victim and perpetrator roles. This framework can help ensure that practitioners meet short and long-term needs, such as the protection and education of women candidates and voters in the short term, and better documentation and therefore responses to gendered electoral violence in the long-term.
Click here to see the white paper.
By Ruth Igielnik and Kim Parker,
As moms across the United States celebrate Mother’s Day this weekend, five of the six women vying for the Democratic residential nomination are themselves mothers.
These women, all seeking the same high political office, became mothers at different points in their careers – some while they were starting out in politics and others long before that.
Roughly half of Americans (51%) say it’s better for a woman who wants to reach high political office to have children before entering politics, according to a 2018 Pew Research Center survey on gender and leadership. About a quarter (26%) say it would be better to wait until she is well-established in her political career, while 19% say it would be better for a woman not to have children at all if she plans to seek higher office.
Click here to read the full article published by the PEW Research Center on 9 May 2019.
May 3: A preliminary gender audit of the South African elections due to be held on 8 May shows that while there will be a slight increase in women’s representation, women are still missing from the top echelons of political parties and from the media.
“On World Press Freedom Day it is an indictment on South Africa that women still constitute just one fifth of those whose views and voices are heard,” said GL CEO Colleen Lowe Morna at the launch of Gender Links report.
At 55% women will constitute the majority of voters in the 2019 South African elections. Gender Links predicts using available data that the proportion of women in the House of Assembly will increase from 40% in 2014 to 44% in 2019.
But, without a legislated quota, and with vacillating commitment by political parties to gender parity, South Africa will again miss the 50% mark. Apart from Agang, the political party formed by anti-apartheid activist Mamphela Ramphele that is expected to garner less than 1% of the vote, none of the political parties contesting has achieved gender parity in its top five.
“Male leaders either oppose quotas; fail to implement them; or backslide into misogynistic slurs despite the lofty language in their political manifestos,” noted GL advisor Kubi Rama who authored the report.
A further measure of women’s lack of #Voiceandchoice in our society is the fact that women sources in news coverage persists at 22% or about one fifth of those whose views and voices are heard in the elections. Despite being one of the most pressing social justice issues of our time, gender equality represents less than one percent of media coverage, according to Media Monitoring Africa.
“The message as South African go to the polls next week are clear,” says Rama. “Political parties need to engage with the fact the women constitute 55% of the electorate and address their concerns in manifestos, party lists and in leadership. The media must do better. Women sources are available but barely accessed.”
Click here to see the report.