Parliaments & Representatives
Women in Nigeria have called for more opportunities to encourage their active participation in policymaking and to support female candidates during elections.
In a survey conducted in Oyo, Ogun, and Kwara, the women also unanimously supported the call for a Bill for Special Legislative Seats for Women in Parliament.
Folasade Aladeniyi, a former chairwoman of the Nigerian Bar Association, Ibadan branch, said women’s participation in politics was not only a matter of equality but a necessity for balanced and effective governance.
Dina Boluarte, the president of Peru, was removed from office on Thursday after a late-night congressional vote in which parties across the political spectrum called for her ouster.
Boluarte has been under investigation for months over various allegations including bribery and involvement in a deadly crackdown on protesters in 2022.
She has denied all allegations and refused to attend the vote on Thursday, where Congress approved her removal, citing “permanent moral incapacity” to face the onslaught of organized crime in the country.
The president of Congress, 38-year-old José Jerí Oré, will act as interim president and must now call elections, under the constitution.
Boluarte becomes the latest in a long line of disgraced Peruvian leaders. Since the turn of the millennium, no fewer than seven presidents have been brought to trial or faced legal challenges relating to allegations of corruption or human rights abuses. An eighth shot himself dead when police were closing in.
Mass mobilizations have been a feature of Claudia Sheinbaum’s first year presiding over Mexico, and to finish her first “accountability” tour of Mexico and mark one year of governance, she had her biggest yet. More than 400,000 people came out to watch her speak for nearly an hour on Sunday, October 5, reflecting on her and the party’s achievements in the first year of her term, and the continued “fourth transformation” of Mexico.
In recent weeks, Sheinbaum has visited all 31 states of Mexico, outlining her administration’s current projects, plans and results in each state.
The communication strategy of MORENA, the governing party, is very front-facing, with both Sheinbaum and her predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador hosting daily press conferences from Monday to Friday, and then generally traveling to one or two parts of Mexico over the weekend. This has proven extremely effective in countering the narratives from the large press corporations that own and operate the majority of Mexican media outlets, as well as of course maintaining closer communication and accountability with the people of Mexico.
Sheinbaum has faced significant challenges in her first year, most notably due to relations with the administration of US President Donald Trump, with problems ranging from tariff threats even to members of his administration suggesting unilateral military intervention against Mexico. While Trump has threatened Mexico with tariffs at every turn, Sheinbaum’s firm but open stance has proved effective in negotiations with Trump and today the country has managed to achieve important exceptions to the aggressive tariff regime.
Sheinbaum arrives at one year in charge with historic levels of approval, depending on the poll you choose your approval rate is somewhere between 72% and 79%. While other countries around the world aren’t as comprehensive in approval polls as Mexico, this likely makes Sheinbaum the most popular leader in the world.
Full article here.
As Jammu and Kashmir gears up for another round of Rajya Sabha nominations, a familiar question returns, and once again, it risks being ignored: will a woman finally find a place at the table? For more than seventy years, the answer has been an unbroken no. Not a single woman from Jammu and Kashmir has ever been nominated to the Rajya Sabha. It is a silence that stretches across decades and governments, across promises and slogans and it reveals something far deeper than administrative neglect. It reflects how power in J&K, despite moments of progress, continues to exclude women from its highest echelons.
The story of women’s political participation in Jammu and Kashmir is one of paradoxes. At the grassroots, women have been the backbone of community resilience, leading self-help groups, panchayats, and local welfare initiatives, often in the most trying conditions. They have mediated between conflict and community, kept families and neighbourhoods together when institutions faltered, and quietly shouldered the work of peacebuilding.
Yet, when it comes to formal political representation to the spaces where laws are written and policies debated, their presence vanishes.
Even at the national level, the record is bleak. The only woman from Jammu and Kashmir to enter Parliament was Krishna Mehta, nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 1962 for her humanitarian work. Her selection symbolised hope, a gesture that recognised women’s role in rebuilding society. But in the six decades since, not one woman from the region has been nominated to the Rajya Sabha. The silence speaks for itself.
Full article here.
Sanae Takaichi just broke Japan’s highest glass ceiling.
The country’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party on Saturday voted Takaichi to be the party’s next leader, which is also effectively Japan’s next Prime Minister, setting her up to be the first woman to lead the country.
According to public broadcaster NHK, Takaichi, 64, secured 185 of 341 votes cast from the party’s sitting parliamentarians and current members. The race, much like last year’s party leadership contest that Takaichi initially led but ultimately lost to Shigeru Ishiba, went to a run-off vote between Takaichi and the would-be youngest-ever Prime Minister, 44-year-old Shinjiro Koizumi.
“Instead of just celebrating, I know the real challenge starts now,” Takaichi said. “I believe there is a mountain of work ahead and we must tackle it together with everyone's support. With all of you, I will strive to fire up the LDP and make it a positive party, which turns people's anxieties into hope.”
Following a premiership vote in Japan’s parliament, Takaichi will presumably take over from Ishiba, who resigned last month after the LDP suffered two election defeats since he took office in 2024. The party and its coalition partner lost majorities in both chambers of parliament for the first time since 1955, and are now operating under a minority government. The LDP’s successive election failures were in part caused by several political scandals that have in recent years tarnished the party’s reputation.
Takaichi, a more far-right pick for the typically center-conservative party, takes charge amid growing calls for the party to reform itself as Japanese voters have increasingly gravitated toward right-wing political movements.
Full article here.
NEW DELHI: India’s Muslim women politicians have been chief ministers, constituency managers, party faithfuls, party hoppers, managers of important ministries– in short, capable of every quality shown by men to be go-getters and parliamentarians. Missing from the House (Juggernaut), a new book by journalists Rasheed Kidwai and Ambar Kumar Ghosh, however, has come up with a shocker.
Since the first general elections of 1951-52, there have been, until 2024, only 690 women MPs. Of this only 18 have been Muslim women. Out of the 18 Lok Sabhas constituted till 2025, there were five that did not have a single Muslim woman member.
“Equally shocking is the fact that the number of Muslim women elected to Parliament in one tenure, never crossed a mark of four in the 543-seat Lower House of Parliament,” they write in the book.
Speaking at the book launch organised by Juggernaut Books and the Prabha Khaitan Foundation at Delhi’s India Islamic Cultural Centre on Wednesday, Iqra Hasan, Samajwadi Party’s Kairana MP, spoke of “having to play by the rules set”, but underlined the “need for reservations within the party’s workforce” for an organic leadership to emerge so that there are enough women around to benefit from the 33 per cent reservation in Lok Sabha that the Women’s Reservation Bill 2023 promises.
Full article here.
This GSoD In Focus showcases global and regional data around trends in and the progression of gender equality, based on data from the Global State of Democracy (GSoD) Indices. The GSoD Indices are International IDEA’s measurement of democracy for 158 countries between 1975 and 2017.
The political position of women today is better than just 20 years ago. Trends in the GSoD Indices Gender Equality subcomponent show improvement in gender equality in every region of the world. Women are in more positions of political power, are more represented in the political sphere, have higher access to education and less barriers to civil society participation. In 1997, only 3 per cent of countries had a lower chamber legislature made up of more than 30 per cent women; in 2017, this had risen to 28 per cent of countries. These gains should be celebrated, although much progress remains to be made before most countries have a critical minority of women in parliament. Furthermore, progress with women in ministerial positions is slower. Although gender equality is a necessary ingredient for a healthy democracy, some of the countries in the GSoD sample have a high proportion of women in political office coupled with low levels of democratic performance overall. While these countries are often hailed for their high levels of gender equality, these gains need to be analysed critically, as women’s political agency within regimes that have democratic deficits may be limited.
Click here to see the report.
This map is a unique visual tool that captures women’s participation in executive government and in parliament on a given date—1st January 2019. The map of Women in Politics not only provides a country ranking for both ministerial and parliamentary representation, but also statistics on women in political leadership positions—Heads of State or government, women Speakers of Parliament, as well as ministerial portfolios held by women throughout the world. Borders are depicted and used on the map in order to present data. They are not the expression of any opinion concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area, or concerning the delimitation of frontiers or boundaries.
Click here to download the map in English.
The annual report provides an update and analysis of progress made and setbacks encountered by women in parliament further to elections and renewals held over a year. Produced every year on the occasion of International Women's Day (8 March), it presents data on women in national parliaments, regional and world trends, information on women presiding officers and women candidates. It also analyses mechanisms aimed at supporting women's access to parliament. The report is short and easy to read, providing a snapshot on the situation of women in parliaments worldwide.
Click here to see the report.
In January 2018, the Government Equalities Office (GEO) commissioned this rapid evidence review, the two broad aims of which were to identify: a) barriers to women’s participation in local and national government; and b) evidence of policies and practices, sometimes referred to as Positive Action Mechanisms, which have increased their levels of participation.
An established way of examining the barriers that women face to widening their political representation is to explore supply and demand issues. For the purposes of this review, supply and demand barriers have been collapsed into a typology comprising three overall themes: social and cultural barriers; structural and institutional barriers; and knowledge and information barriers.
Much of the literature and research suggests that gender quotas are the most effective method for increasing numbers of women and quantitative analysis has pointed to their broader impact for political engagement as they encourage more women to stand for election, and incentivise political parties to target women’s votes. However, although quotas increase the number of women elected, the evidence points to the fact that they do not necessarily ensure the success of women once elected, as quotas do not tackle the gendered practices of political institutions. The literature emphasises the need for quotas to be accompanied by a broader array of measures.
Click here to read the report.
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.