Parliaments & Representatives
Main navigation
Women have emerged as a significant vote bank in the last few elections in India. Despite that, political speeches of elected representatives or contestants across parties have consistently displayed an aversion to or prejudice against women. Comments have ranged from “How much are you being sold for”, “Worse than a prostitute”, “Kitni jagah leti hai woh, unka to chunao chinh hathi hai (She takes so much space, even her party symbol is that of an elephant)”, “dented-painted women protestors”, “the length of cigarettes she smokes and who she lives with”, “worse than a woman”, “temptress”, “enthral people with ghungroos and thumkas”, to “top khule nachleo vote debo na (Won’t vote for her even if she dances with her top off)”.
The recent remarks by BJP leader Ramesh Bidhuri on Priyanka Gandhi’s “cheeks” and Atishi’s “change of father” add to the miserable trend. Even holding an office as high as the Chief Minister’s does not serve as a deterrent to misogynist remarks attaching derogatory and sexualised meanings concerning the body, character, conduct, and profession.
Read here the full article published by The Indian Express on 14 January 2025.
Image by The Indian Express
In Pakistan’s last general election, in February 2024, Suriya Bibi became the first woman to be elected to the provincial assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwah from Chitral, on the Afghanistan–Pakistan border. She contested the election as an independent candidate with no prior history of contesting elections, though the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI), led by the former prime minister Imran Khan, backed her candidacy. She won with almost 19,000 votes, defeating a male candidate of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F), a party representing the Deobandi brand of Islam, known for its ultra-conservative views on women’s participation in public life. After the election, Suriya Bibi also became the deputy speaker of the provincial assembly.
Read here the full article published by Himal Southasian on 11 January 2025.
Image by the Himal Southasian
From the United States to Italy, Britain, and Pakistan, female politicians are increasingly becoming victims of AI-generated deepfake pornography or sexualised images, in a troubling trend that researchers say threatens women’s participation in public life.
An online boom in non-consensual deepfakes is outpacing efforts to regulate the technology globally, experts say, with a proliferation of cheap artificial intelligence tools including photo apps digitally undressing women.
The intimate imagery is often weaponised to tarnish the reputation of women in the public sphere, jeopardising their careers, undermining public trust, and threatening national security by creating conditions for blackmail or harassment, researchers say.
In the United States, the American Sunlight Project, a disinformation research group, identified more than 35,000 instances of deepfake content depicting 26 members of Congress — 25 of them women — across pornographic sites.
Read here the full article published by The Hindu on 7 January 2025.
Image by The Hindu
When the 119th U.S. Congress is sworn in on Friday, some of the newly elected women members will be making history.
Emily Randall, from Washington’s 6th Congressional District, will be its first out LGBTQ+ Latina. Lisa Blunt Rochester and Angela Alsobrooks will be the first Black senators to represent Delaware and Maryland, respectively — and the first two Black women to ever serve concurrently in the upper chamber. Sarah McBride, from Delaware’s at-large House district, will be the first transgender member of Congress. All are Democrats.
But for the first time since 2011, the number of women serving in the Senate and House of Representatives will decline.
While Democrats sent a record 110 women lawmakers to Congress, Republicans elected just 40 women across both chambers. (On Election Day, 151 women were serving.) In addition, at least one Republican, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, who was also the only woman serving in GOP House leadership, is expected to resign if she is confirmed as ambassador to the United Nations in the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump.
Read here the full article published by The 19th News on 3 January 2025.
Image by The 19th News
More than two dozen members of Congress have been the victims of sexually explicit deepfakes — and an overwhelming majority of those impacted are women, according to a new study that spotlights the stark gender disparity in this technology and the evolving risks for women’s participation in politics and other forms of civic engagement.
The American Sunlight Project (ASP), a think tank that researches disinformation and advocates for policies that promote democracy, released findings on Wednesday that identified more than 35,000 mentions of nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII) depicting 26 members of Congress — 25 women and one man — that were found recently on deepfake websites. Most of the imagery was quickly removed as researchers shared their findings with impacted members of Congress.
“We need to kind of reckon with this new environment and the fact that the internet has opened up so many of these harms that are disproportionately targeting women and marginalized communities,” said Nina Jankowicz, an online disinformation and harassment expert who founded The American Sunlight Project and is an author on the study.
Read here the full article published by The Markup on 11 December 2024.
Image by The Markup
Voters in Ghana elected the country’s first woman vice president, Naana Jane Opoku Agyemang, in early December 2024. Voters also elected John Mahama as president, a man who had served as president before, from 2013 to 2017.
In that first term as president, Mahama had also appointed the most women cabinet ministers ever in Ghana – six out of 19. But in the December parliamentary elections, women candidates barely improved upon the 2020 election result. Whereas 40 women – 20 from each of the two major parties – had been elected in 2020, only 43 women were elected in 2024 – 33 from the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and 10 from the New Patriotic Party (NPP) according to provisional results. There are 276 seats in the country’s parliament.
This won’t change much until the west African nation addresses certain stumbling blocks, notably Ghana’s single member district or “first past the post” electoral system and its lack of a gender quota for parliament.
Read here the full article published by The Conversation on 11 December 2024.
Image by The Conversation