Parliaments & Representatives
Some reports suggest that female politicians face such behaviour more often than their male counterparts and it has even been reported that female politicians have begun to view toxic messages and harassment as just a part of the job.
This kind of hostility can deter women from remaining in politics and discourage those who haven't run for office from considering it. Politicians, including former UK Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan and former MPs Heidi Allen and Dehenna Davison have cited abuse and harassment as factors in their decisions to step down.
Such toxic behavior could ultimately hinder women's participation in public debate and democratic engagement overall.
In a new comparative study co-authored by Professor Anne Rasmussen, of King’s College London, and Dr Gregory Eady, from the University of Copenhagen, and published in the the American Political Science Review, more light is shed on the issue of toxicity in politics.
The researchers found that abuse directed at women in politics is viewed as more severe than those aimed at men, even if the nature and frequency of abuse received is similar. The study also explains why this occurs, showing that attacks on women are more likely to be perceived as motivated by misogyny and a desire to exclude women from public office, compared to abuse directed at men. In contrast, attacks on women are less likely than those on men to be seen as driven by other factors, such as policy disagreements.
Read here the full article published by King's College London on 22 January 2025.
Image by King's College London
Women have emerged as a significant vote bank in the last few elections in India. Despite that, political speeches of elected representatives or contestants across parties have consistently displayed an aversion to or prejudice against women. Comments have ranged from “How much are you being sold for”, “Worse than a prostitute”, “Kitni jagah leti hai woh, unka to chunao chinh hathi hai (She takes so much space, even her party symbol is that of an elephant)”, “dented-painted women protestors”, “the length of cigarettes she smokes and who she lives with”, “worse than a woman”, “temptress”, “enthral people with ghungroos and thumkas”, to “top khule nachleo vote debo na (Won’t vote for her even if she dances with her top off)”.
The recent remarks by BJP leader Ramesh Bidhuri on Priyanka Gandhi’s “cheeks” and Atishi’s “change of father” add to the miserable trend. Even holding an office as high as the Chief Minister’s does not serve as a deterrent to misogynist remarks attaching derogatory and sexualised meanings concerning the body, character, conduct, and profession.
Read here the full article published by The Indian Express on 14 January 2025.
Image by The Indian Express
In Pakistan’s last general election, in February 2024, Suriya Bibi became the first woman to be elected to the provincial assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwah from Chitral, on the Afghanistan–Pakistan border. She contested the election as an independent candidate with no prior history of contesting elections, though the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI), led by the former prime minister Imran Khan, backed her candidacy. She won with almost 19,000 votes, defeating a male candidate of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F), a party representing the Deobandi brand of Islam, known for its ultra-conservative views on women’s participation in public life. After the election, Suriya Bibi also became the deputy speaker of the provincial assembly.
Read here the full article published by Himal Southasian on 11 January 2025.
Image by the Himal Southasian
From the United States to Italy, Britain, and Pakistan, female politicians are increasingly becoming victims of AI-generated deepfake pornography or sexualised images, in a troubling trend that researchers say threatens women’s participation in public life.
An online boom in non-consensual deepfakes is outpacing efforts to regulate the technology globally, experts say, with a proliferation of cheap artificial intelligence tools including photo apps digitally undressing women.
The intimate imagery is often weaponised to tarnish the reputation of women in the public sphere, jeopardising their careers, undermining public trust, and threatening national security by creating conditions for blackmail or harassment, researchers say.
In the United States, the American Sunlight Project, a disinformation research group, identified more than 35,000 instances of deepfake content depicting 26 members of Congress — 25 of them women — across pornographic sites.
Read here the full article published by The Hindu on 7 January 2025.
Image by The Hindu
When the 119th U.S. Congress is sworn in on Friday, some of the newly elected women members will be making history.
Emily Randall, from Washington’s 6th Congressional District, will be its first out LGBTQ+ Latina. Lisa Blunt Rochester and Angela Alsobrooks will be the first Black senators to represent Delaware and Maryland, respectively — and the first two Black women to ever serve concurrently in the upper chamber. Sarah McBride, from Delaware’s at-large House district, will be the first transgender member of Congress. All are Democrats.
But for the first time since 2011, the number of women serving in the Senate and House of Representatives will decline.
While Democrats sent a record 110 women lawmakers to Congress, Republicans elected just 40 women across both chambers. (On Election Day, 151 women were serving.) In addition, at least one Republican, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, who was also the only woman serving in GOP House leadership, is expected to resign if she is confirmed as ambassador to the United Nations in the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump.
Read here the full article published by The 19th News on 3 January 2025.
Image by The 19th News
More than two dozen members of Congress have been the victims of sexually explicit deepfakes — and an overwhelming majority of those impacted are women, according to a new study that spotlights the stark gender disparity in this technology and the evolving risks for women’s participation in politics and other forms of civic engagement.
The American Sunlight Project (ASP), a think tank that researches disinformation and advocates for policies that promote democracy, released findings on Wednesday that identified more than 35,000 mentions of nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII) depicting 26 members of Congress — 25 women and one man — that were found recently on deepfake websites. Most of the imagery was quickly removed as researchers shared their findings with impacted members of Congress.
“We need to kind of reckon with this new environment and the fact that the internet has opened up so many of these harms that are disproportionately targeting women and marginalized communities,” said Nina Jankowicz, an online disinformation and harassment expert who founded The American Sunlight Project and is an author on the study.
Read here the full article published by The Markup on 11 December 2024.
Image by The Markup
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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The number of women Speakers of Parliament reached an all-time high by the end of 2015 at 49 (or 17.9% of the total number of Speakers), reports the Inter-parliamentary Union (IPU) in “Women in Parliaments in 2015: The year in review”. That is up from 43 at the beginning of the year. Elections in Argentina, Denmark, El Salvador, Finland, Lesotho, San Marino, Switzerland and Trinidad and Tobago resulted in the appointment of women Speakers. Women also became Speakers for the first time ever in Namibia, Nepal and the United Arab Emirates. Despite the significant increase in the number of women Speakers of Parliament, the number of women parliamentarians globally rose by a mere 0.5% from 2014. Bigger improvements were seen in the Americas (+0.8%), sub-Saharan Africa (+0.7%) and Europe (+0.4%); but those were tempered by timid increases in the Arab States (+0.3%), Asia (+0.1%) and the Pacific (+0.1%). The Americas remain in the lead in terms of regional averages, with women’s parliamentary representation standing at 27.2%. There was a slight decrease in the Nordic countries (-0.4%), which have now stagnated at 41.5%. It was also reported that in elections where quotas were legislated in 2015, women took almost a quarter of the parliamentary seats available. More women appear to have won seats where political parties adopted voluntary quotas. Only 13.6% of seats were won by women in countries without quotas. Click here to see the report.
Gender mainstreaming and gender budgeting are fixtures of the debates and documents of the international women’s movement. Politically active women all over the world have developed gender mainstreaming as a strategy to enable them to emerge from their powerlessness, both real and perceived, in relation to political actors. The purpose of these new strategies is to eliminate injustices in gender relations and to get rid of all forms of discrimination based on gender.
Gender mainstreaming and gender budgeting are strategies to be implemented by organisations and institutions, such as administrations. They lead to changes in decision-making processes in these organisations. The strategies are therefore not confined to special projects for women but rather to an organisation’s everyday operations. Such operations are scrutinised in terms of gender equality. This involves systematic procedures inside organisations ordered by management and implemented by all employees. The analysis of all operational domains and measures, all products and every part of an organisation forms the core of gender mainstreaming. Implicit in the concept of gender is that gender relations are culturally and socially determined and constantly reproduced. The question of how social structures contribute to the incessant reproduction of certain assignments and life situations for men and women is decisive. Gender analyses concern the production and specific characteristics of life and work situations in which men and women differ. A gender analysis, therefore, not only enquires about the differences between men and women in a particular group, but also about how these differences are produced and what contribution is made by the measures one is investigating. Gender budgeting is the application of the principle of gender mainstreaming to financial and budget policy: in other words, to public revenues and expenditures. The European Council defines gender budgeting as follows: Gender budgeting is the application of gender mainstreaming in the budgetary process. Gender budgeting means a gender-based assessment of budgets and incorporates a gender perspective at all levels of the budgetary process and restructuring revenues and expenditures in order to promote gender equality. Gender budgeting does not mean reserving a specific budget for women or for men, but investigating the effects of all budget decisions on gender relations and gearing those decisions to the aims of gender policy.
The Map, which presents latest data and global rankings for women in politics, reveals a mixed picture on gender equality in executive government and in parliament at regional and national levels.