Parliaments & Representatives
Iraq’s Council of Representatives published a list of 81 candidates for the country’s presidency on Monday after nominations closed, including four women, as Kurdish parties put forward nominees for the largely ceremonial post.
Under Iraq’s power-sharing system, in place since the first multiparty elections in 2005, two years after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein’s rule, the premiership, the most powerful executive post, is held by a Shiite politician, while the speakership of parliament goes to a Sunni and the presidency is occupied by a Kurdish politician.
New research from the University of St Andrews has found that increases in women’s parliamentary representation within a country are related to enhanced public trust in the national parliament.
Published in the Routledge Handbook of Gender and Corruption, researchers from the University of St Andrews Business School analysed data on trust in parliament from the Integrated Values Surveys, a uniquely comprehensive dataset covering 107 countries from 1990 to 2022 and more than 492,000 individual responses.
The results show a link between greater women’s representation and trust in parliament within countries. This relationship is statistically significant and takes account of variation in corruption levels, democratic quality, electoral systems, economic development, and key individual characteristics such as sex, age, education, and employment status.
The Women’s Parliamentary Rights Act became law on 29 October 1919, allowing women to stand for election to the House of Representatives. This was just in time for the general election on 16 - 17 December 1919.
Three women stood for election – Rosetta Baume in Parnell, Aileen Cooke in Thames, and Ellen Melville in Grey Lynn. None were successful, though Ellen Melville came second in Grey Lynn.
Melville stood in a total of seven elections – polling well, but never winning a seat. She often faced discrimination because of her gender, even from her own party. She firmly believed that ‘women would get nothing done for them in legislation unless they had women in parliament.’
Melville did have success in becoming the first women in NZ elected to a city council however – sitting on the Auckland City Council from 1913 to 1946.
Ten more women candidates were also unsuccessful before Elizabeth McCombs finally became New Zealand’s first female MP in a by-election in 1933.
Appointment to the Legislative Council was not open to women until 1941, and the first two were admitted in 1946. The Legislative Council was abolished in 1950.
By 1980 only 16 women had succeeded in parliamentary elections, but from then onwards women began to have more success. At the first MMP election in 1996, 19 of the new MPs were women. Today we have 49 women MPs, making up 40.8% of the New Zealand Parliament.
The Commons women and equalities committee has decided to stop using X after the social media site’s AI tool began generating thousands of digitally altered images of women and children with their clothes removed.
The move by the cross-party committee places renewed pressure on ministers to take decisive action after the site was flooded with images including sexualised and unclothed pictures of children generated by its AI tool, Grok.
Sarah Owen, the Labour MP who chairs the committee, said that given preventing violence against women and girls was among its key policy areas, “it has become increasingly clear that X is not an appropriate platform to be using for our communications”.
In January, three women new to local politics will take leadership positions on Whatcom County Council and at the Port of Bellingham. Each has their own ideas for what they bring to the table. All agree stepping into leadership has been like standing in front of a firehose of information, but said they’re excited to learn.
“It’s pretty humbling,” said Whatcom County Council member-elect Jessica Rienstra.
Cascadia Daily News spoke with Elizabeth Boyle, Carly James and Rienstra about their hopes for their first year in office, the challenges they may face and how they view women in leadership.
These interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.
Women in Ghana remain significantly underrepresented in political leadership and public decision-making, despite the passage of the Affirmative Action Gender Equity Act in 2024, the 2025 Status of Women Report has said.
The Affirmative Action Gender Equity Act, passed by Parliament in July 2024 and assented to in September 2024, required a minimum of 30 per cent representation of women in public appointments between 2024 and 2026, with a gradual increase to 50 per cent by 2034.
However, the report found that Ghana is already falling behind on these early targets and that as of the end of 2025, women make up 41 of the 276 Members of Parliament, representing 14.9 per cent.
“This is an increase of just one seat from the previous Parliament. Women’s representation in local assemblies stands at about 4.1 per cent, while women appointed to substantive ministerial positions account for less than 20 per cent,” the report added.
These figures, the report said, fall far below both international benchmarks and the requirements set out in the new law.
The Convenor of the Women’s Manifesto Coalition, Hamida Harrison, presented the report during Network for Women’s Rights in Ghana (NETRIGHT)’s End of Year review of the ‘Status of Women in Ghana’ at an event held in Accra last Friday.
The number of women in parliament is consistently low throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Many factors contribute to this situation, but studies suggest that one major factor relates to the way that women are treated on social media. This report aims to identify how women politicians fare against their male counterparts on social media and to evaluate whether women in politics face a greater challenge than men.
Overall, there were four times as much problematic content related to the Facebook pages of male politicians compared to their female counterparts. It is important to note that the vast majority of the problematic comments aimed at women politicians were in the sexist category. Compared to their male colleagues, female politicians are treated in a less serious manner on Facebook. Comments on their posts touch on their appearance and personal qualities rather than their politics.
Click here to access the report.
The world walked into 2021 with the shadow of COVID-19 looming large over its head. As well as posing a major health risk, the pandemic had also caused economic and social upheaval. Political life had been affected too, from the challenge of holding elections safely to ensuring the smooth working of parliaments. Though many of these difficulties endured in 2021, and in some cases were compounded, there were fewer delays1 in elections when compared with the previous year.
Click here to access the report.
By Akshi Chawla
As women elected officials move from local politics towards the subnational and national levels, they begin to be replaced by more and more men.
Women comprise just over one-third (36 percent) of the over 6 million elected members in deliberative bodies of local governments globally, according to a new working paper released by U.N. Women last month. Although far from parity, this is the best representation women seem to get across levels of government: As they move towards the subnational and national levels, they begin to be replaced by more and more men, data shows.
Click here to read the full article published by Ms Magazine on 15 February 2022.
One potential consequence of increasing women’s numeric representation is that women elected officials will behave differently than their men counterparts and improve women’s substantive representation. This study examines whether electing women to local offices changes how local government expenditures are allocated in ways that benefit women. Using compositional expenditure data from more than 5,400 Brazilian municipalities over eight years, we find significant differences in the ways men and women mayors allocate government expenditures. Our findings indicate that women mayors spend more on traditionally feminine issues, and less on traditionally masculine issues, relative to men mayors. In regard to specific policy areas, we find that women spend more on women’s issues, including education, health care, and social assistance, and less on masculine issues, including transportation and urban development, relative to men mayors. We further find that women’s legislative representation significantly influences the allocation of expenditures as a larger percentage of women councilors increases spending on traditionally feminine issues, as well as education, health care, and social assistance, relative to other policy issues. These findings indicate that women local elected officials improve women’s substantive representation by allocating a larger percentage of expenditures to issues that have historically and continue to concern women in Brazil.
Click here to read the full article published by Sage Journals on 16 May 2018.
Pakistan’s constitution makes no distinction between genders but women in parliament know that’s not the reality in politics. Despite impressive records of women in the legislative assembly, female parliamentarians still face barriers to entry that their male colleagues don’t - keeping many women, save for a few with family members in politics, out of these positions.
The current makeup of Pakistan’s parliament is only 21 percent female. In the National Assembly, which consists of 342 members, female representation is only around 3 percent if reserved seats are excluded; There are 60 seats reserved for women. These numbers are emblematic of a male-dominated political culture which - along with other socio-economic factors - creates a glass ceiling for women’s political advancement.
Click here to read the full article published by the Tribune Magazine on 6 February 2022.
How do quotas for women in Sri Lanka’s local government institutions affect key governance indicators such as perceived fairness, institutional trust, and perceived performance? These dimensions of governance are underexplored in the context of gender quota policies in patriarchal societies like that of Sri Lanka. The study hypothetically varied the quota provision for women (decrease to 10%, increase to 45%, or keep at the current 25%) in local government, and then tried to understand people’s opinions about the three governance indicators. When examining the results of the experiment (around 1,200 samples), it was found that perceived fairness, institutional trust, and perceived performance increased along with the greater quota provision. Possible mechanisms for the increases in institutional trust and perceived performance may be associated with the signal of fairness generated by the increase of quota provision for women.
Click here to download the report.