Parliaments & Representatives
Over 50% of female local assembly members in Japan have been troubled with harassment, more than double the proportion of such male members, according to a Cabinet Office report.
The report on barriers to women's participation in politics, released Friday, said that 53.8% of local assemblywomen answered in the government agency's latest survey that they themselves, their family members, or their supporters have been harassed by others while 23.6% of assemblymen made similar answers.
Specifically, "verbal abuse" was cited by both male and female members as the leading form of harassment. "Insulting behavior and remarks based on unconscious gender bias" and "physical contact and stalking" were complained much more strongly by women than men.
On harassers, 65.7% of female members pointed the finger at election rivals and their supporters as well as peer assembly members, while 64.0% mentioned voters.
Full article published by The Japan Times here.
Image by The Japan Times
ABSTRACT
While gender quotas in politics have received considerable scholarly debate, much of the focus remains on whether quota-elected women are less qualified due to their pre-election background. Far less attention has been given to their actual parliamentary performance and how it compares to their non-quota peers. This study uses UK parliamentary records between 2005 and 2017 to compare the parliamentary activity of Labour women selected via All-Women Shortlists (AWS) with those selected via the traditional Open-List. Parliamentary activity is measured through contributions in spoken debate, rebellion rates, submission of written questions, and vote attendance, alongside an examination of AWS women’s commitment to women’s substantive representation. The results show that AWS women were equally active in most parliamentary channels, but they were more active in submitting written questions and speaking about women’s issues during debates compared to their Open-List counterparts. Consequently, the findings refute claims that AWS women are less active or underperform in Parliament, demonstrating that they perform as well as, or better than, their Open-List counterparts across all measures. These results should encourage the broader adoption of quotas in other UK political parties.
Full article published by Taylor & Francis here.
The 2025 report from the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) paints a chilling portrait of political life for women in the Asia-Pacific: Three in four women parliamentarians have endured psychological violence, and one in four has been subjected to sexual violence. Far from isolated incidents, these acts form a disturbing pattern of abuse targeting women for daring to lead. Violence, both online and offline, has become an entrenched feature of public life for women in politics.
More than 60 percent of women in political office have been victims of online hate, threats and disinformation campaigns. Parliamentary staff, especially young women, are similarly vulnerable. These attacks are not random: They are deliberate, systematic efforts to degrade, silence and push women out of politics.
This is not just a gendered struggle; it is a profound democratic crisis that erodes the very foundations of inclusive governance.
Full article by The Jakarta Post.
Image by The Jakarta Post
Theresa May, Britain’s ex-prime minister, says that rather than reaching for social media the second major news breaks, former world leaders would be better off taking a step back and bringing a “measured voice” to the table. For female leaders in particular, she advises: “Don’t react in the way you think other people think you should react.”
“Be a measured voice.” That is the advice former U.K. prime minister Theresa May has for fellow ex-world leaders.
Speaking on stage in Riyadh at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women International summit, the British politician—who served as premier from July 2016 to July 2019—said that instead of reacting to live events on social media, her peers should sit back and be more picky about what they comment on.
“It’s important for former world leaders to not feel that they have to constantly be saying something about what is happening,” May stressed. “Be a voice, a measured voice, perhaps in the background. Sometimes you can work with people who are in leadership positions.”
“As a former leader you can, from time to time, raise your voice and make points about things that are happening,” she said. One time she did that was during the pandemic. “I actually wrote about what I thought we should have seen, which was a greater international coming together to deal with this, rather than this retreating behind country borders.”
“So it’s about raising your voice from time to time, not feeling you’re constantly commenting on everything.”
Read full article published by Fortune on 21 May 2025.
Image by Fortune
Americans are deeply divided about the use of quotas in hiring and education, but quotas are used in many countries to assure a balance of power between men and women in legislative bodies. New research co-authored at UC Berkeley finds that when governments are gender-balanced, people believe the political process and policy outcomes are more fair and democratic.
In a major study that included 17,000 people in a dozen countries—in Europe, the Pacific and the Americas—researchers found overwhelming support for a balance of representation between men and women, even when quotas are needed to achieve it. The U.S. and the U.K. don't use such quotas for national office, but even so, respondents in the study saw strong benefit, said Berkeley political scientist Amanda Clayton, the lead author.
The most important finding "is that citizens in democracies around the world strongly prefer women's equality to women's exclusion, regardless of how the equality is achieved," Clayton said in an interview.
Full article published by Phys on 22 May 2025.
Image by Phys
Online Gender-Based Violence (OGBV) has become a pervasive threat in the digital age. It undermines democratic processes, silences marginalised voices, and perpetuates systemic inequality. Harassment, threats, and abuse—both online and offline—have become so common that women and gender-minoritised people often view them as “the cost of doing politics.” As a result, 21 percent of women parliamentarians in Europe said that they did not want to pursue another term in office.
This briefing is part of a series examining OGBV on TikTok in English, German, French and Hungarian. It is part of a project titled ‘Monitoring Online Gender Based Violence Around the European Parliament Election 2024’, funded by the German Federal Foreign Office.
This report summarises ISD’s findings across key issue areas and offers evidence-based recommendations for creating safer, more inclusive online spaces that uphold democratic values. ISD’s findings demonstrate that addressing OGBV requires a holistic approach – one that not only strengthens content moderation but also tackles the underlying social norms and biases that enable online gender-based violence.
Article published by the Institute of Strategic Dialogue on 19 May 2025.
Image by Institute of Strategic Dialogue
Women’s political leadership is important for ensuring that women’s perspectives and experiences are included in political decision-making. Over the past 25 years, the overall percentage of women in parliaments has more than doubled. However, the pace of progress has slowed in the past five years and women still make up less than a quarter of representatives in legislatures worldwide. Whilst theories that explore women’s political recruitment are well developed, we need more research on how women get selected. We need to know more about how they win positions as political representatives and how they adapt to the realities of political life.
This report focuses on women’s experience of candidate selection and elections and their experience of political leadership. It asks:
- How can women political leaders build their profile?
- What factors support and hinder women’s candidate selection and election success?
- How do women cope with, and adapt to, the realities of political leadership?
- How can programmes and policies effectively support women in political leadership roles?
Click here to read the report.
Systemic and legal barriers to equal political participation persist at all levels and take different forms, including unfavourable electoral systems, lack of support from political parties, socio-economic, and cultural.
Women, people with disabilities, indigenous people, LGBT+ individuals, and young people face all of these barriers, particularly insufficient access to political finance. Campaigning has become an expensive affair, and political aspirants and candidates from these groups find it challenging to secure the substantial sums of money usually required to run a campaign and win an election. In order to address these barriers and level the playing field, several targeted political finance measures have been designed and adopted by some governments, political parties, and private initiatives, although they vary in their target and effectiveness.
This paper explores the challenges facing different groups in accessing political finance and it provides a set of recommendations to ensure that the quest for more accessible political finance includes consideration of other important aspects that are indispensable to more inclusive and representative politics.
Although significant progress has been made with regard to the participation of women in political and public decision-making in Europe, such progress is too slow and uneven. In addition, there is still a lack of participation and representation in political and public decision-making of women with disabilities, young women, LBTI women, Roma women, women of colour, women with an immigration background, women belonging to minorities and indigenous women, rural women and women with a lower socio-economic background.
Adopting a draft resolution based on the report prepared by Eglantina Gjermeni, (Albania, SOC), the Equality Committee called on member States to promote the participation of women from under-represented groups in political decision-making by acting at several levels, with particular emphasis on combating stereotypes, access to public decision-making and participation in political party structures. According to the committee, “an intersectional approach to decision-making as well as targeted measures can help to leaving no one behind”. Men are also called upon to further promote gender equality and the fight against violence against women, especially in politics.
Click here to read the full article published by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on 15 March 2021.
African countries are still far from achieving women’s equal and effective participation in political decision-making.
Women constitute only 24 per cent of the 12,113 parliamentarians in Africa, 25 per cent in the lower houses, and 20 per cent in the upper houses of parliament. While local government is often hailed as a training ground for women in politics, women constitute a mere 21 per cent of councillors in the 19 countries for which complete data could be obtained.
The Barometer is a key resource of the consortium Enhancing the Inclusion of Women in Political Participation in Africa (WPP) which aims to provide legislators and policymakers with data to assess progress in women’s political participation over time.
Source: International IDEA
The IPU-UN Women map, which presents global rankings for women in executive and government positions as of 1 January 2021, shows all-time highs for women heads of state and heads of government, women Speakers of parliament and women MPs and ministers.
Source: IPU
Elections in 2020 were profoundly marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in delays and cancellations, logistical challenges for candidates and election administrators and often low turnout. Women’s leadership was frequently in the spotlight during the pandemic. The pandemic raised complex and deeply gendered challenges for citizens and created obstacles for MPs to communicate and engage directly with their constituents. It changed the ways parliaments operate, introducing flexibility and new technologies. A substantial number of MPs across the globe were infected, many lost their lives.
Click here to access the report.
Source: IPU