Parliaments & Representatives
A UNITED NATIONS committee has highlighted the low representation of woman in the Dáil and at Cabinet as “priority issues” that must be addressed by the state.
The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission stated that it welcomed the findings of the UN Committee, which is tasked with “the Elimination of Discrimination against Women”.
The Irish Commission had previously provided submissions to the UN Committee on the issue and communicated its concerns. Today, the Committee has recommended that the government amend the Electoral (Amendment) (Political Funding) Act 2012 to require 50% gender parity in the quota on political party candidate selection.
At present, political funding available to parties is dependent whether the party meets the gender quota for candidates. Payments are reduced by 50% unless at least 40% of the candidates whose candidatures were authenticated by the party at the preceding general election were women, and 40% were men.
Full article available here.
In a video address to the Committee on Gender Equality, which is currently reviewing an initiative to increase the quota for the underrepresented gender in the electoral law from 30% to 40%—with the additional requirement that at least one out of every three candidates on electoral lists be from the underrepresented gender—Prime Minister Milojko Spajić expressed his full support.
I fully support raising the quota for the underrepresented gender from 30% to 40% in the electoral legislation, said the Prime Minister in his message to the Chair and members of the Committee.
Spajić stated his belief that Europe Now Movement (PES) is already living this principle, noting that 40% of the PES ministers in the current Government are women who, as he emphasized, lead their respective ministries with great competences – often outperforming their male counterparts.
Full article available here.
During a motion of no confidence in March 2025, opposition member of parliament Fuiono Tenina Crichton heckled Samoan Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa, saying that her ‘leadership would have been remarkable’ if only she ‘had gotten married’ and had someone to ‘advise’ her.
Fiame defeated the motion comfortably by 32 votes to 19. The episode did not directly result in a prime ministerial resignation, but within three months, Samoa’s Head of State, His Highness Tuimaleali’ifano Vaaletoa Sualauvi II, dissolved Fiame’s minority-held parliament.
Though not new anywhere in the world, it remains important to consider the manifestations of, and motivations behind, these kinds of deliberately provocative, sexist statements in politics. Is there something peculiar to the expression of sexism in Pacific politics?
To unpack this, we must understand Samoan voter sentiment, the legacy advantage Fiame has always had and the purpose of sexist discourse in politics.
In a 2021 survey of over 1300 Samoans, 88 per cent expressed support for women’s involvement in politics. Even before Fiame was promoted to the highest office, 85 per cent of survey respondents agreed that a woman should become prime minister. At the local level, while 37 per cent agreed with the sentiment that women should not speak in village councils, 63 per cent disagreed.
These figures show that the Samoan community purports to be extremely welcoming of female political leadership. In 2021, Fiame became Samoa’s seventh prime minister, leading the newly established Faʻatuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi party to a historic democratic victory. She was the first female Head of Government in the Pacific, following Hilda Heine’s lead as the region’s first female Head of State.
Plus, Samoa is the only sovereign country in the Pacific to institute a gender quota at the national level, ensuring that women hold a minimum of 10 per cent of parliamentary seats. Public contestation — both in parliament and in the courts, including public calls for clearer wording of the reform — over this quota following the 2021 election demonstrates local support.
Full article available here.
Extract
The 2024 elections made US history in numerous ways. Vice President Kamala Harris became the first Black and South Asian woman to be nominated by a major party for the presidency. Former president Donald Trump made history by becoming the oldest person and the first convicted felon to become president. 2024 marked the first presidential election following the historic Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in 2022.
The 2024 elections made US history in numerous ways. Vice President Kamala Harris became the first Black and South Asian woman to be nominated by a major party for the presidency. Former president Donald Trump made history by becoming the oldest person and the first convicted felon to become president. 2024 marked the first presidential election following the historic Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in 2022.
We asked leading experts in the field to reflect on the gender and racial dynamics of the 2024 election cycle and consider which aspects of the election are illuminated by gender scholarship. We asked what theories help explain the dynamics of the campaigns, voting behavior, and the outcome, as well as which election aspects were unanticipated. We asked about the larger lessons and challenges for the study of gender, LGBTQ+ identities, race/ethnicity, elections, and politics. As Politics & Gender celebrates its 20th anniversary, we wanted to know what new questions should be addressed and whether new theories about gender and US elections are needed.
Full article available here.
OpenAI has banned a network of ChatGPT accounts originating from the Philippines that used its platform to generate social media comments praising President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr as the crackdown highlights how artificial intelligence (AI) could be misused to conduct influence operations.
The US-based AI pioneer said it had identified the accounts using ChatGPT to generate short comments in English and Filipino, which were later posted on Facebook and TikTok. It dubbed the operation “High Five” because many of the comments included emojis, according to a report released on June 5.
“The comments this operation generated and posted online were brief but partisan. Typically, they praised President Marcos and his initiatives, or criticised [Vice-President Sara Duterte-Carpio],” OpenAI wrote in its report.
Full article available here.
On this International Day of Parliamentarism, observed on 30 June under the 2025 theme ‘Achieving Gender Equality, Action by Action’, Pacific nations stand at a critical juncture. Parliaments across our region average just 8.2 percent women's representation, the lowest globally. In some Pacific Island countries, not a single woman sits in the chamber.
This is not just a crisis of numbers. It is a crisis of representation, policy inclusion, and missed potential.
In Vanuatu, only one woman sits among 52 Members of Parliament, the Hon. Marie Louise Milne. That’s less than two percent. Yet, despite this, her voice has been powerful. She has championed rural women’s concerns, pushed for stronger protections against gender-based violence, and called for equitable access to essential services in remote islands.
Systemic barriers remain: entrenched cultural expectations, campaign financing hurdles, and the lack of childcare support for MPs are just a few of the challenges. These barriers limit not only women’s entry into politics but also their full participation and leadership.
The Speaker of the Parliament of Vanuatu has previously emphasised that symbolic representation alone is not enough. We must pursue systemic inclusion.
Efforts are underway. Vanuatu’s Department of Women’s Affairs, civil society actors, and the Parliament’s own Civic Education Unit, with support from partners like UNDP, are working to advance legal reforms, conduct outreach, and train aspiring women candidates. Cross-party discussions on reserved seats and targeted financial support are also being initiated.
There is also much to learn from within the Pacific.
Read here the full article here.
Extensive research shows that when women run for office, they perform just as well as men. Yet women remain severely under-represented in our political institutions. In this report, we argue that the fundamental reason for women’s under-representation is that they do not run for office. There is a substantial gender gap in political ambition; men tend to have it, and women don’t.
The results put forward in this report are based on the Citizen Political Ambition Panel Study, a research project the authors Richard L. Fox and Jennifer L. Lawless have been conducting over the course of the last seven years. In 2001, they surveyed more than 3,700 lawyers, business leaders and executives, educators, and political activists about whether they ever considered running for office. They re-surveyed more than 2,000 of these individuals in 2008. Because they surveyed well-matched pools of men and women who work in professions that most typically precede a political candidacy, they could provide the first comprehensive investigation of the process by which women and men decide to enter the electoral arena. They could also determine the extent to which political ambition has changed over time.
The authors offer clear and compelling evidence that women, even in the highest tiers of professional accomplishment, are substantially less likely than men to demonstrate ambition to seek elected office. These results hold regardless of age, partisan affiliation, income and profession.
The authors link the persistent gender gap in political ambition to several factors. Women are less likely than men to be willing to endure the rigors of a political campaign. They are less likely than men to be recruited to run for office. They are less likely than men to have the freedom to reconcile work and family obligations with a political career. They are less likely than men to think they are “qualified” to run for office. And they are less likely than men to perceive a fair political environment.
In the end, this report documents how far from gender parity we remain, as well as the barriers and obstacles we must still overcome in order to achieve it. But the results also offer guidance to organizations and individuals seeking to increase the number of women in elected positions. Recruiting women candidates, disseminating information about the electoral environment and working with women to quell their anxiety about campaigning can help narrow the gender gap in political ambition and increase women’s numeric representation.
Access the report here.
Gender mainstreaming has been embraced internationally as a strategy towards realizing gender equality. Gender mainstreaming has a double dimension: it requires both integrating a gender perspective to the content of the different policies, and addressing the issue of representation of women and men in the given policy area. Both dimensions – gender representation and gender responsive content - need to be taken into consideration in all phases of the policymaking process.
Equality between women and men is recognized by the EU as a fundamental right, a common value of the EU, and a necessary condition for the achievement of the EU objectives of growth, employment and social cohesion. Since 1996, the Commission committed itself to a “dual approach‟ towards realizing gender equality. This approach involves mainstreaming a gender perspective in all policies, while also implementing specific measures to eliminate, prevent or remedy gender inequalities. Both approaches go hand in hand, and one cannot replace the other. Within the European Parliament, the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM Committee) is the main body in charge of promoting gender equality and gender mainstreaming in all the EP‟s policy and legislative processes. Click here to access the report of the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality on gender mainstreaming in the work of the European Parliament for 2015.
The UCLG Standing Committee on Gender Equality monitors and promotes the participation of women at local level across the world. The Committee firmly believes that the participation of women in local decision-making is the foundation of global development. The Standing Committee works with local elected women and grassroots organizations to build their capacities and increase women’s representation.
Local and regional governments have a long track record of working internationally for gender equality, with a particular focus on increasing the representation of local elected women and the promoting the participation of all women in local decision-making:
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Click here to read the UCLG Standing Committee on Gender Equality's report on the role of local governments in advancing and promoting gender equality for sustainability.
The aim of the project was to examine the advisability of creating a new mechanism to address laws that discriminate against women. The terms of reference specified two key objectives. The first was to overview existing UN mechanisms to ascertain the extent to which they addressed the issue of discriminatory laws. This involved interviewing UN human rights and agency officials working in both Geneva and New York1 and also reviewing the reports and jurisprudence of human rights committees and special procedure mechanisms. The second was to try to get national data on laws that discriminate against women. This was to be done by means of a questionnaire. On the basis of the data gathered, the consultant was required to advise on whether a special mechanism addressing discriminatory laws was needed (...)
Co-organized by the Inter-parliamentary Union (IPU) and the National Assembly of Zambia, and building on the theme “Agenda 2030: Youth leading the way, leaving no one behind”, the third edition of the IPU’s Global Conference of Young Parliamentarians was held on 16 and 17 March 2016 in Lusaka, Zambia, with the attendance of 130 young men and women parliamentarians from 50 countries. Click here to access the outcome document of the conference.
The Inter-parliamentary Union has recently published a report reviewing the developments made in women's participation in parliaments in the last 20 years, globally, regionally and at the country level. The report shows that the past 20 years have witnessed an impressive rise in the share of women in national parliaments around the world, with the global average nearly doubling during that time – and all regions making substantial progress towards the goal of 30 per cent women in decision-making. The global average of women in national parliaments has increased from 11.3 per cent in 1995 to 22.1 per cent in 2015 (+10.8 points). All regions registered some increase in their share of women in parliament, the greatest strides being made in the Americas. The countries that achieved the greatest progress between 1995 and 2015 in their single or lower houses are Rwanda (+59.5 points, achieving 63.8% by 2015), Andorra (+46.4 points with 50% in 2015), and Bolivia (+42.3 points with 53.1% in 2015).
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