Parliaments & Representatives
When Myriam Spiteri Debono was pregnant with her third child and campaigning for a national election, a fellow party member actively discouraged voters from supporting her because she was too busy as a mother and breadwinner to serve the public effectively.
The incident might sound like a matter of the past. But it’s still happening today as recounted by Nationalist MP Rebekah Borg who is pregnant with her second child and who admitted often faces the comment: "How will you manage and find the time?"
The President of the Republic and the MP were among those sharing their stories during a seminar titled 'Women, Politics and Violence', organised by the Gender Equality and Sexual Diversity Committee in collaboration with the Gender and Sexualities Department within the Faculty for Social Wellbeing.
Read here the full article published by the Times of Malta on 10 April 2025.
Image by Times of Malta
The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) is pleased to announce its new gender campaign for 2025, Achieving gender equality, action by action.
This initiative marks a pivotal year, in which the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the global blueprint for gender equality, is marking its 30th anniversary.
The campaign aims to mobilize the global parliamentary community to accelerate progress in achieving gender equality in politics and society.
With progress on women’s representation in parliaments stalling, as detailed in the IPU’s recent report Women in parliament 1995-2025, and a concerning rollback of women’s rights in some countries, the campaign emphasizes the urgency of immediate action.
The campaign promotes 10 key actions structured around three key thematic areas:
-
Promoting parity in parliament and politics
-
Encouraging gender-sensitive institutions
-
Combating gender-based violence and discrimination
40 years of bringing women MPs together
The campaign was launched at the 150th IPU Assembly in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the IPU Forum of Women Parliamentarians.
Initially formed in 1985 as an informal global women’s caucus, the first of its kind, the Forum of Women Parliamentarians has since evolved into a powerful platform for women MPs worldwide, driving significant advancements in gender equality and women's empowerment.
For example, the Forum has played a key part in parliamentary efforts to address violence against women, with 104 countries now having comprehensive laws addressing domestic violence.
The Forum provides an opportunity for women MPs to learn about how other countries are addressing gender inequality and to share good practices.
More recently, male MPs have also participated in the Forum, underlining the shared responsibility of both men and women in achieving gender equality.
Read here the full article published by the IPU on 7 April 2025.
On March 25, after marking the arrival of the art installation “Thinking of you” in Strasbourg, a tribute to women who have suffered conflict-related sexual violence, the Congress held its debate on violence against women in politics. Those gathered in the Hemicycle heard a series of harrowing testimonies, but also glimmers of hope that the Congress could bring about real change in the political culture of its member states to protect and encourage women-elected representatives, without whom democracy has no future.
Opening the debate, Congress President Marc Cools pointed out that in 2024 the “Mayors under pressure” debate had drawn attention to the vulnerability of women mayors and local councillors who have suffered daily harassment and physical and verbal abuse, particularly via social media. This is a growing trend that discourages women in Europe from embarking on political careers.
Jaqueline McLaren, Lord Provost of the city of Glasgow in the United Kingdom, confirmed that the figures for women's participation in politics were not reassuring. Moreover, during her time as a local councillor and mayor of Glasgow, she herself had encountered violence. Threatened, among other things, with tarring and feathering, she had felt the helplessness and anxiety that many women politicians had experienced, were experiencing or would experience. Hence her motivation to invest in mutual aid, mentoring and solidarity programmes between elected representatives, such as Eurocity. She called on Congress members to take action and to get involved, also citing the Cartier initiative which sought to build mutual support between women entrepreneurs and leaders around the world, as well as Sophie's Stop, an app created by women for women to combat gender-based violence.
Read here the full article published by the Council of Europe on 26 March 2025.
Image by Council of Europe
The “Women in politics: 2025” map, created by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and UN Women, presents new data for women in executive positions and national parliaments as of 1 January 2025. These data illustrate men’s overrepresentation in decision-making worldwide, thereby slowing down the achievement of equality between women and men in politics.
Women serve as Heads of State and/or Government in only 25 countries and make up 27.2 per cent of Members of Parliament. Globally, fewer than one in four cabinet ministers is a woman (22.9 per cent). The 2025 map shows that, while women lead important human rights, gender equality, and social protection policy portfolios, men dominate policy areas like foreign affairs, financial and fiscal affairs, home affairs, and defence.
Check here the full map by UN Women published on 12 March 2025.
As Nigeria continues its quest for socio-economic development, women have been encouraged to vie for political positions at all levels of government, from local councils to the National Assembly.
This call to action was made by the Chief Responsibility Officer, Mother Gold, Dr. Adeshina Fagbenro-Byron, at the third annual Mental Health Series themed “Rise, Speak, and Renew’, organized by the Victoria Modupe Foundation. at Wemabod Estate in Ikeja, Lagos, in commemoration of International Women’s Day.
Dr. Fagbenro-Byron emphasized the crucial role women play in the health and well-being of a nation, likening their exclusion from decision-making processes to having 50% of one’s body injured or malfunctioning.
He stressed that women’s participation in politics was not just a matter of equality, but also a matter of national interest.
Addressing women at the event, he said : “At least, 50% of the population of every nation are women.
Now, you imagine if 50% of your body is either excluded, injured or maligned in some way. What would happen to the total health of the body? So, if 50% of our women population are disenfranchised and excluded one way or another, what do you think will be the total health of the nation? It will not be as it should be.
“ By excluding women, we limit our problem-solving capacity and hinder our progress.Solution can come from either a man or a woman. So if you exclude women or make them redundant, that means the totality of where your ideas should come from, you have already blocked it. That means you are walking on half speed”.
Read here the full article published by The Vanguard on 13 March 2025.
Image by The Vanguard
The future of work isn’t just about technology, automation or upskilling — it’s about power. Right now, that power remains unequally distributed. Women make up half the global population but hold just 26.5% of parliamentary seats and 22.9% of ministerial positions worldwide. This political imbalance isn’t just about representation — it has real economic consequences.
When women hold political power, economies grow. A 10 percentage point increase in women’s parliamentary representation is associated with a 0.7% percentage point increase in GDP growth. Countries with greater female political representation consistently implement policies that support gender-equal labour markets, such as paid family leave, pay transparency and childcare infrastructure. These policies don’t just benefit women; they increase workforce participation, boost productivity and fuel economic expansion.
Yet, despite decades of progress, we are still 169 years away from achieving gender parity in political representation. Without structural change at the policy level, labour market inequities will persist, limiting the economic potential of half the population. As AI disrupts industries, demographics shift and economic uncertainty rises, closing the gender gap in political leadership isn’t just a moral imperative — it’s an economic necessity.
Read here the full article published by the World Economic Forum on 13 March 2025.
Image by World Economic Forum
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.
The second Global Parliamentary Report is jointly produced by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). It focuses on parliament’s role in oversight of government, and parliament’s power to hold government to account for its actions and decisions.
Oversight is a core function of parliament. It is essential for building effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions as envisioned by Agenda 2030 and Sustainable Development Goal 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions). Parliaments’ oversight of government is critical for ensuring that people receive essential services, and is thus critical for building accountability. Parliament, through its representative mandate, is the appropriate entity through which oversight should be led.
The analysis, conclusions and recommendations in the report are grounded in parliamentary practice and experience: 150 national parliaments contributed to the preparation of the report. The report includes numerous examples of how parliaments and Members of Parliament (MPs) carry out oversight in their countries, as well as tips for MPs on ways to approach oversight.
The report is intended to stimulate action to strengthen parliament’s oversight role. The future positive development of parliaments and their ability to contribute to achievement of the SDGs depends, in large part, on what oversight can deliver for the populations they serve. UNDP works to strengthen parliaments to help them become fit for purpose for the delivery of Agenda 2030 in some 70 partner countries, and will implement the lessons learned from the report in this work.
Click here to see the report.
The Sex and Power series was first published by the Equal Opportunities Commission fifteen years ago, then taken over by the Equality and Human Rights Commission for several years, and then for 5 years up to 2015 the ‘Counting Women in Coalition’ collected and collated data on women’s representation across different areas of public life.
In 2018, the centenary year of (some) women first getting the vote in parliamentary elections, and to coincide with the first statue of a woman in Parliament Square, the Fawcett Society has now brought together a new edition of that Sex and Power dataset.
One hundred years on from when the first women gained a say in how the country is run, it is an assessment of where the UK has made progress on representation – and where we have not.
In the report you will find:
- A breakdown of percentages of women in power across politics, business and public life
- Analysis of women's representation in politics, businesses, the arts and more
- Conclusions and recommendations, including a time-limited use of quotas across public bodies and the boards of large corporate organisations.
For further information, please click here.
Download report here.
The annual report on women in parliament by IPU 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 access the report.
Caribbean countries face complex development challenges shaped by socio-political, economic and environmental factors. These are experienced differently by women and men due to gender inequalities that intersect with variables like class, age, race and disability. Parliaments are responsible for ensuring that citizen interests are widely represented and for developing and monitoring policies. This includes policies to meet commitments like the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. To fulfill their roles of oversight, representation and lawmaking, parliamentarians require analytical tools that account for gender and other inequalities.
This portal features toolkits that unpack the gender dimensions of development challenges related to climate change, economic and political inequality, and violence. It includes videos, checklists, policy briefings, infographs and campaign ideas to assist you in scrutinizing laws and budgets, promoting women's leadership, and engaging your constituents to achieve development outcomes that are equitable and sustainable.
This portal is a joint initiative of ParlAmericas and the UN Women Multi-Country Office - Caribbean. It is designed for self-guided online learning and additionally includes resources that can be used for in-person trainings. It features toolkits on gender equality issues developed for parliamentarians in the Caribbean.
Click here to visit the portal.
Journeys from Exclusion to Inclusion: Marginalized Women’s Successes in Overcoming Political Exclusion identifies critical factors preventing marginalized women’s inclusion in customary and democratic decision-making structures and describes how women have worked in overcoming barriers to their participation.
The report’s ten case studies gather knowledge and practical experience from around the world, drawing upon reform efforts to identify ways in which women can impact on political processes through their participation in politics. The report details specific strategies marginalized women and their supporters have adopted, ranging from direct action strategies in Somaliland to ‘soft’ advocacy strategies in Cambodia.