Parliaments & Representatives
Hello, and welcome to the October 2023 edition of #WomenLead!
This month has seen legislative elections in several parts of the world. But alas, in so many of them, women’s representation has seen drops rather than gains. It has already been a tough year, so that is no good news.
In this edition, we bring you updates from Argentina, Iceland, India, Iran, Liberia, New Zealand, Poland, and Switzerland. In case you missed last month’s edition, you can read it here.
Click here to read the full article published by the Women Lead on 29 October 2023.
Are the preferences of women and men unequally represented in public policies? This simple yet fundamental question has remained largely unexplored in the fast-growing fields of women’s representation and inequality in the opinion-policy link. Our study analyzes gender biases in policy representation using an original dataset covering 43 countries and four decades, with citizens’ preferences regarding more than 4,000 country-year policies linked to information about actual policy change. Our analysis reveals clear and robust evidence that women’s policy preferences are underrepresented compared to those of men. While this skew is fairly modest in terms of congruence, women’s representation is driven mostly by the high correlation of preferences with men. When there is disagreement, policy is more likely to align with men’s preferences. Our analyses further suggest that women’s substantive underrepresentation is mitigated in contexts with high levels of female descriptive representation and labor market participation. In sum, our study shows that gender inequality extends to the important realm of policy representation, but there is also meaningful variation in unequal representation across contexts.
Click here to read the full article published by the Cambridge University Press on 26 October 2023.
On 21 September, Indian legislators passed the first legislation considered in the country’s new Parliament building: the Women’s Reservation Bill, 2023. The bill, which passed both houses of Parliament almost unanimously—with just two votes against—will ensure that women occupy at least 33 per cent of the seats in state legislative assemblies and the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament.
Click here to read the full article published by UN Women Asia & the Pacific on 27 October 2023.
Regional and local leaders across the European Union, non-governmental organisations and researchers attending the European Committee of the Regions' (CoR) conference "Local and regional strategies for closing the gender gap in politics: Roads taken and what´s next?" call on decision-makers to introduce concrete solutions like quotas or parity requirements to achieve gender equality in political representation. The introduction of such instruments should be seen not only as respect for women's rights, but also to ensure equal opportunities for democratic participation in political life at all levels. The conference cited positive examples from Finland, France and other countries that have helped close the gender gap in politics, and highlighted the need to apply gender mainstreaming for better policymaking.
Click here to read the full article published by the European Committee of the Regions on 25 October 2023.
A Social Development and Gender Specialist/ Consultant, Dr Miriam Rahinatu Iddrisu, has described as worrying statistics indicating a decline in women’s participation in politics in the country.
She said the statistics did not tally with Ghana’s credentials as a mature and stable democratic country with a well-functioning multi-party system and a strong broadcast media.
Click here to read the full article published by the Graphic Online on 25 October 2023.
In September, history was made with Parliament passing the Women’s Reservation Bill, the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam. A compelling imperative for all political parties to acknowledge the importance of the role of women in an inclusive polity, it is a clarion call to women to recognise their agency, assume equal responsibilities as citizens and define their destinies. It is a significant achievement of the women’s movement in the country.
Click here to read the full article published by The Indian Express on 23 October 2023.
The importance of having women serving in Congress is still not fully appreciated or understood. In order to document women’s contributions to governing and understand how women are navigating the contemporary environment of party polarization, the Center for American Women and Politics, with support from Political Parity, embarked on a major research study of the 114th Congress.
Click here to read the report.
Promoting the participation of young people in political life is becoming a higher priority worldwide. Over one third of the 169 targets established as part of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) relate to young people and the importance of their empowerment, participation and well-being. Twenty targets across six SDGs – relating to hunger, education, gender equality, decent work, inequality and climate change – specifically focus on youth.
In 2014, recognizing the absence of systematic data and information on youth representation in parliaments, the IPU designed a first-of-its-kind database on the subject, to collect the relevant data through parliaments. The result was the first report on youth participation in national parliaments, which was published in October 2014 and updated in 2016. This 2018 report provides updated information on the percentages and genders of parliamentarians under the ages of 30, 40 and 45, as well as the latest information on special mechanisms designed to encourage or enhance the participation of young people in national parliaments.
Some key findings:
- Young people under age 30 constitute just over 2 per cent of the world’s parliamentarians.
- 15.5 per cent of the world’s MPs are under age 40 – up from 14.2 per cent in 2016, an increase of 1.3 percentage points.
- 28.1 per cent of the world’s MPs are under age 45 – up from 26 per cent in 2016, a 2.1 percentage point increase.
- The global proportion of MPs under age 30 has increased by only 0.3 percentage points since 2016 (from 1.9% to 2.2%).
- 2.2 per cent of the world’s MPs are under age 30 – up from 1.9 per cent in 2016, a slight increase of 0.3 percentage points.
- Male MPs continue to outnumber their female counterparts in every age group.
- The gender imbalance is less pronounced among the youngest MPs in each parliament, for whom the male/female ratio is approximately 60:40. Encouraging signs
Click here to see the report.
This regional study seeks to take the initial findings of a 2016 IPU report further, focusing specifically on the situation in parliaments in Europe. It is the result of close collaboration between the IPU and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), and is the first in a series of regional studies that the IPU wishes to conduct on the subject. The study also broadens the scope of the research to include harassment and violence against female parliamentary staff.
Based on interviews with 123 female MPs and parliamentary staff in Council of Europe member States, the survey continues the work already carried out to provide figures and document a range of sexist and violent behavior against women in parliaments. It also seeks to assess the extent and highlight the particular forms of such abuse in Europe. The study therefore aims to break the silence and persistent taboos and to contribute to the fight against gender-based behavior and violence wherever they occur.
Click here to see the report.
IPU launched New Parline, a new version of its online open data platform on national parliaments. The platform is intended for MPs, academics, civil society, the media, and all those interested in parliaments as the core institution of democracy.
The IPU has been collecting data on parliaments since its inception in 1889, including information on women’s participation in politics since 1945. Through New Parline, the IPU has pooled all of its data into one hub, allowing the user to see trends over time, as well as compare progress or regression between different regions of the world.
New Parline contains information on the structures of parliament’s working methods, including the representation of women and youth. Much of the data is unique. Most of the information on the platform comes from national parliaments directly. The IPU updates it regularly to take into account changes that result from elections and other circumstances. The data covers a wide range of themes; for example, the number of chambers, the number of women MPs, the number of laws initiated by parliament and the average age of MPs.
Click here to see the database.
The International Congress of Parliamentary Women's Caucuses took place on 9-10 September 2018 in Dublin Castle, Ireland.
The conference brought together parliamentarians from across the globe to discuss issues facing women and how parliamentarians can work to address them. Parliamentarians came from more than 40 countries, including Argentina, Malawi, Mongolia, New Zealand, Pakistan and the United States. The keynote speaker was the Right Honourable Harriet Harman QC MP, of the UK Labour Party, and the congress also heard from Professor Mary Beard. A panel chaired by author Martina Devlin discussed their vision for women in 2118.
The attendees at the Congress adopted the Dublin Declaration, a proposal for action on women in politics. The declaration includes a commitment to working across party and ideological lines in pursuit of gender equality.
Click here to read the Dublin Declaration.
This paper in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization - Volume 151 examines in what roles women have an impact on corruption by focusing on female labor force participation and their presence in the parliament. Since much of the corruption literature is plagued either by the lack of instruments or weak instruments, this paper makes a methodological contribution by drawing inferences based on Moreira’s (2003) conditional likelihood ratio approach. We provide robust evidence that women’s presence in parliament has a causal and negative impact on corruption while other measures of female participation in economic activities are shown to have no effect. Further, this negative relationship between women’s presence in government and corruption is also found to hold in a regional analysis of 17 European countries alleviating concerns that the relationship is driven by unobservable country-fixed characteristics. Finally, we show that this relationship does not disappear when women gain similarity in social status.
For further information, please click here.