Parliaments & Representatives
President William Ruto last year established and mandated a 42-member task force to recommend solutions to the rising wave of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). The move came after cases hit record levels, triggering widespread public outcry.
Kenya has been grappling with a sharp increase in SGBV, with femicide cases in particular reaching alarming numbers over the past two years and targeting mainly girls and young women. Data from the Femicide Count Kenya shows the country has the highest rate of femicide in East Africa.
Now, the fight has received a significant boost. The National Police Service (NPS) has adopted the Policare Training Curriculum, a comprehensive framework addressing key competency areas required for an effective response to SGBV.
The Digital Rights Foundation has reported a sharp rise in technology-facilitated gender-based violence in its 2025 annual review, with 1,132 cases of male-perpetrated abuse recorded through its Digital Security Helpline.
According to the report, this was the most commonly reported form of online harassment during the year. The cases included blackmail, doxxing, and misuse of identity, with women and girls continuing to make up the majority of victims.
The report also flagged a rise in abuse carried out by anonymous perpetrators, driven by the increasing use of fake profiles and AI-generated content. These tactics have made it harder to trace offenders and have further complicated efforts to secure justice for survivors.
Another worrying trend highlighted in the review was the increase in intimate partner harassment. Such cases climbed from 218 in 2024 to 253 in 2025, showing how digital platforms are increasingly being used to monitor, threaten, and harass current or former partners across multiple channels.
While the helpline continues to offer support to survivors, the report said slow legal action and delayed platform responses are adding to the mental and emotional burden faced by victims.
The foundation also pointed to the continued vulnerability of marginalized groups, especially transgender individuals, who remain exposed to targeted online abuse. Many still avoid reporting incidents due to social stigma, fear of backlash, and weak legal protections.
The report said the scale and complexity of digital abuse now demand stronger coordination between civil society, tech platforms, and law enforcement. It warned that as online violence increasingly spills into real-life harm, survivor-focused support systems can no longer remain an afterthought.
A staggering 89% of women social media users in Bangladesh have experienced online violence at least once, speakers said at a national consultation, calling for urgent coordinated action to tackle technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV).
Speaking at the programme titled "Prevention, Mitigation and Response for Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence in the Context of Digital Development: The Role of Technology Platforms" on Thursday, they stressed the need for stronger policies, greater accountability of tech platforms, and widespread awareness to prevent and respond to the growing threat amid rapid digital expansion, UNB reports. The consultation, organised by the Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication (BNNRC) at the CIRDAP Auditorium in Dhaka, brought together policymakers, law enforcement officials, regulators, and development experts.
It was organised under the project titled "Strengthening Resilience Against Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV) and Promoting Digital Development." The project is implemented as part of the "Nagorikata: Civic Engagement Fund (CEF)" programme, funded by Switzerland, Global Affairs Canada, and the European Union, with technical assistance from GFA Consulting Group.
In March last year, soon after giving birth to her twins, Susan Kihika was subjected to a campaign of online abuse. Kihika, who is governor of Nakuru county in Kenya’s rift valley, was accused of abandoning her country because she took her maternity leave in the US after being treated there for a high-risk pregnancy.
The criticism quickly escalatedto attacks and sexist smears. Soon social media commenters were accusing her of sleeping her way into politics. Her location was shared.
Kihika’s deputy, David Kones, and the Kenya Women Parliamentary Association (Kewopa) defended her but the abuse continued, online and offline, calling for Kihika’s removal from office because she has dual Kenyan-US citizenship. Kewopa argued that the scrutiny Kihika faced reflected a double standard: male leaders are rarely criticised for taking time off for personal reasons.
It was not the first time Kihika had been subjected to sexist abuse. In 2018, when she divorced her first husband, she was criticised for choosing politics over monogamy. Twitter (now X) users demanded that she release nude photographs to show that she was not a man.
The Women’s Quota Act of 2023 has officially been implemented, marking a significant step towards increased representation of women in legislative bodies. This legislation aims to reserve 33 per cent of seats for women in the Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assemblies, thereby promoting gender equality in political participation. The Act is a landmark development in addressing long-standing disparities in political representation across India.
Following extensive discussions and debates in Parliament, the Act was approved on March 29, 2023. The move is expected to encourage more women to engage in politics, facilitating their active involvement in decision-making processes. Proponents of the Act view it as a crucial measure for empowering women and ensuring their voices are adequately represented in the political arena.
To enforce the provisions of the Women’s Quota Act, the Election Commission of India will begin the process of delineating constituencies to accommodate the new seats reserved for women. The Commission is tasked with ensuring a transparent and fair allocation process, which is vital for the successful implementation of the Act.
The discourse surrounding the Women’s Reservation Bill, or Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, shows how masculine politics has weaponised women’s issues. It reduces longstanding debates about women’s political representation to symbolism rather than focusing on substantive empowerment.
This article argues that a persistent gap exists between rhetoric and real inclusion. Structural limitations of the state and party system have restricted women’s access to decision-making roles for decades. Despite nearly a century of advocacy by the women’s movement, the system has not ensured the equitable representation of women in power.
In response, this work calls for a rethinking of political representation, including the possibility of imagining alternative political formations such as women-led and women-centric platforms to eliminate entrenched exclusion. This work concludes that women’s political inclusion is not only about numbers but about strengthening their political agency by following the bubble-up approach. It reiterates that women’s rights are non-negotiable. While aiming for substantive justice by strengthening grassroots politics, it calls for eliminating patriarchy at all levels.
This article investigates legislators’ willingness to talk about gender and women during policy making discussions, asking whether it is conditional on their sex or partisanship in environments where party discipline does not constrain their speech. The Canadian Senate offers a case of a legislature with low or absent party discipline. A quantitative content analysis of nearly 1,000 Senate committee meetings confirms that sex is a primary indicator of legislators’ inclination to talk about gender and women. Moreover, women senators who sit on committees with a critical mass of women members (30% or greater) are more likely to talk about gender and women, making the case for the importance of women’s descriptive representation. Partisanship and independence had no significant effect on senators’ propensity to discuss women. The findings suggest that partisanship does not constrain legislators’ representation of women in environments with low party discipline.
Read here the full article published by the Cambridge University Press on 15 May 2024.
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Gender equality in politics has faced both notable achievements and enduring obstacles in Pakistan, a nation with a multifaceted sociopolitical environment. It is believed that a democratic society must prioritize gender equality in politics. For many years, women’s rights have been the focus of heated discussion and agitation in Pakistan. Even with notable progress in social and legal systems, Pakistani women still confront formidable obstacles in their pursuit of equality. The need of equalizing women’s participation in politics, the economy, and public life is becoming more and more apparent in developing nations as they want to build their country. With the low representation of women in positions of decision-making, Pakistan still has a long way to go political power remains firmly the domain of men, except a small number of elite women with dynastic political backgrounds.
To eliminate the gender discrimination our nation’s fathers once remarked “Acquire education and participate in politics because you are the architects of the nation’s future” the statement represents the Quaid-e-Azam’s encouragement of women to enter politics; he had progressive ideas on the status of women in politics and society. Similarly, Allama Muhammad Iqbal’s poetry and prose, demonstrate a deep regard for women’s roles in society and their potential contributions to a variety of fields including politics, he said:
“The existence of woman adds color to the picture of the universe It is her lyre that adds passion to the flame of life” “Zarb-e-Kalim” By incorporating these viewpoints, both political figures promote and assist Pakistani women’s active political engagement with men.
Read here the full article published by Pakistan Today on 2 July 2024.
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As of December 2023, women constituted 61.3 percent of the Rwandan parliament (lower or single house). This makes it the country with the highest share of women in parliament worldwide. Cuba had the second highest share of female MPs with 53.4 percent, followed by Nicaragua. The European country with the highest percentage of women in their parliament was Andorra with 50 percent.
See here the full graphic published by Statista on 4 July 2024.
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As women increasingly participate in political decision-making around the world, the research emphasizes the need to further understand how informal barriers shape women's political participation. At the same time, the persistent stability of hybrid political regimes calls for additional inquiry into the impact of hybrid regimes on gender politics and its actors. Based on the case of Turkey, a hybrid regime, this study explores how women MPs navigate gendered, informal obstacles in parliament and to what extent their navigation strategies reflect the broader implications posed by the hybrid regime context. This exploratory study draws on qualitative, in-depth semi-structured interviews with eight women MPs in the Turkish parliament from government and opposition parties. The findings illustrate that navigating the informal barriers women MPs experience in the Turkish parliament happens both individually and in collective ways. Individually, women MPs choose to navigate the informal barriers of gender norms by either assimilating or contrasting the masculine way of doing politics. Collective navigation strategies of women MPs in the Turkish parliament illustrate their approaches to representing women's interests, seeking women's solidarity across the parliament, and linkages with civil society to empower women, which also reflect the different positionings of government and opposition within the Turkish hybrid regime dynamics. The findings reveal the need to further research the complex, dynamic interplay of how informal practices and hybrid regime tactics target gender politics and its actors, while also giving more attention to women's agency in tackling and countering obstacles to their political power within and beyond political institutions.
Read here the full article published by Frontiers on 1 July 2024.
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Abstract
This study draws together theories of women’s substantive representation and research on politicians’ knowledge of constituent preferences. We ask whether politicians are better at predicting their constituents’ policy preferences when they share the same gender. In doing so, we contribute to knowledge about the mechanisms underlying substantive representation. Using original surveys of 3,750 Canadians and 867 elected politicians, we test whether politicians correctly perceive gender gaps in their constituents’ policy preferences and whether women politicians are better at correctly identifying the policy preferences of women constituents. Contrary to expectations from previous research, we do not find elected women to be better at predicting the preferences of women constituents. Instead, we find that all politicians — regardless of their gender — perform better when predicting women’s policy preferences and worse when predicting men’s preferences. The gender of the constituent matters more than the gender of the politician.
Read here the full article published by the Cambridge University Press on 25 March 2024.
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Women’s participation in politics is essential to advancing women’s rights and contributes to countries’ overall stability and economic prosperity. According to a 2023 report by UN Women and the Inter-Parliamentary Union, one-fourth of parliamentary positions worldwide are held by women. Although current representation is still far from equal, it represents a significant increase over the last 20 years.
However, a new paper from Washington University in St. Louis — published in the journal International Organization — shows that the progress women have made in politics is threatened when conflict strikes.
A team of WashU researchers led by Margit Tavits, the Dr. William Taussig Professor in Arts & Sciences, conducted an analysis of Ukrainian politicians’ engagement on social media in the months leading up to and after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine — a rare opportunity to observe the effect conflict has on politicians’ behavior in real time.
Their research provides evidence that violent conflict pushes politicians to conform more strongly with traditional gender stereotypes, so that men become more politically engaged than women, and politicians gravitate toward their respective gendered communication styles and issue spaces. They also show that gender biases among the public are magnified during war.
“Our findings suggest that women leaders’ voices may be drowned out by their male counterparts during conflict, which is troubling,” Tavits said. “We know that who engages, and how, in response to conflict can have significant consequences for how the conflict unfolds, how long it lasts, whose concerns are heard and represented and so on.”
Read here the full article published by the Washington University in St. Louis on 29 May 2024.
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