Parliaments & Representatives
The Ministry of Women in Solomon Islands is looking at new legislation which could guarantee extra seats for women in provincial assemblies.
The SIBC reports in the 45 years of independent governance, 16 women have been voted into Provincial Assemblies and six into Parliament.
Endorsed in December by the now caretaker government, the proposed amendment would establish temporary special measures (TSM) to guarantee additional seats for women in Provincial Assemblies.
The TSM endorsement by Cabinet was the result of approximately six years of work led by several ministries and partner organisations including; Women's Rights Action Movement (WRAM), Solomon Islands National Council of Women (SINCW) and the Honiara City Council (HCC), the SIBC reported.
Click here to read the full article published by RNZ on 13 February 2024.
Image source: RNZ
With the Women’s Reservation Bill being passed in Parliament last year, the debate on whether quota within political parties or in Parliament and State Assemblies may be the best route for increasing women’s representation in politics seems to have come to an end. The Assembly elections in Rajasthan showed that the only way for increasing women’s political participation seems to be to provide them reservation in Parliament and State Assemblies. In the elections, the women candidates of both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) put up dismal performances.
Click here to read the full article published by The Hindu on 12 February 2024.
Image source: The Hindu
CRRC Georgia surveyed the Georgian public on attitudes towards gender equality in politics and obstacles faced by women in politics in Georgia.
Gender equality in politics is an important issue globally, and Georgian policy on the issue has been developing in recent years. Georgia introduced mandatory gender quotas for proportional party lists in 2020, extending this provision until 2032. The legislation stipulates that at least one out of four candidates submitted to the Central Election Commission, and provides financial support to parties that nominate more women.
Despite these policy changes, much remains to be done to ensure gender equality in practice. In the 2020 parliamentary elections, only three political parties and one electoral bloc benefited from the financial incentive mechanism for nominating more female candidates than the mandatory gender quotas required. A study on mandatory gender quotas in Georgia found that in 2022, women still made up only 19% of Georgia’s parliament.
Click here to read the full article published by the OC Media on 6 February 2024.
Image source: OC Media
You might be mistaken for thinking you’d stepped into the Tardis and been transported back in time 20 years upon seeing two of the headlines from around the world this week.
In one, Japan’s foreign minister was told by the country’s former PM that she “wasn’t that good looking” (he also got her name wrong several times and threw in an ageist slur for good measure). In another, a news channel ran an image of a female Australian MP that had been photoshopped to make her breasts look bigger and her outfit more revealing.
Both are grim examples of the way sexism still permeates through our political systems, even in so-called “developed” countries – but the second story made me physically gasp. In the year of our Lord 2024, how on earth are we still seeing women in politics being subject to this kind of degradation? And what could possibly be the thinking behind augmenting an MP’s chest for a news bulletin on duck hunting?
Click here to read the full article published by The Independent on 31 January 2023.
Image source: The Independent
Women in Sri Lanka face serious barriers to political representation and the country ranks among the lowest in the world for the percentage of women in national legislatures. After the parliamentary elections in 2020, there were just over five percent of elected women representatives in parliament.
Underrepresentation of women occurs at each level of elected leaders at national, provincial and local government level due to a variety of systemic and institutional obstacles.
In 2016, through the Local Authorities (Amendment) Act, a 25 percent quota was mandated for women and implemented through the Local Authorities Elections Act of 2017. The quota increased women’s representation in local authorities from two percent to nearly 23 percent.
Click here to read the full article published by Ground Views on 31 January 2023.
Image source: Ground Views
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UN Women organized an Information Sharing Meeting on Strengthening Women's Political Participation and Decision Making in cooperation with the Committee on Equality Opportunities for Women and Men (EOC) of the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TGNA).
The two-day meeting focused on critical issues such as gender equality and women's participation in politics. The meeting was enriched with presentations and reports covering a wide range of topics, from analyzing the 2018 and 2023 General Elections in Türkiye to gender responsive settlements. This meeting aimed to create a roadmap for taking strategic steps towards women's equal rights and more effective participation in politics and contributed to strengthening efforts in this field.
The meeting, which took place in Sapanca on November 10-11, was attended by UN Women Türkiye Country Director Asya Varbanova, Swedish Ambassador to Ankara Malena Mård, Chairperson of the Grand National Assembly of Türkiye Commission on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men Çiğdem Erdoğan Atabek and 16 members of the commission that are all MPs. During the meeting, different topics on the country's agenda were discussed. Sessions on "Analysis of the 2023 General Elections and Suggestions to Increase Women's Political Participation", "Gender Responsive Settlement Model", " Violence against Women in Politics in Türkiye" and "Digital Violence against Women Politicians and Suggestions to Improve Digital Security" were held.
Click here to read the full article published by UN Women on 30 January 2023.
Image source: UN Women
The performance of women legislators is analysed by looking at the nature of questions posed by them over a span of 20 years (1999–2019) in the lower house of the Indian Parliament. The analysis, however, is a contestation of claims that suggest women act as silent members, and if at all they speak, they do on “softer issues” like women and child development, food processing, health, and sanitation, thus trying to escape the discussions on national security, finance, agriculture, railways, etc. These are otherwise considered as male bastions. This paper is a quantitative analysis of women’s political performance during the Question Hour session, which is considered as an important plenary space where legislators act on their own, free from the party regulation.
Independent India claims to be the world’s largest democracy, turbulent and vigorous but ever so evolving. Elections form the animating spirit of Indian democracy. It is held religiously every five years with enough pomp and show. Indian democracy flourishes with exceptional rates of citizen participation. The Lok Sabha elections of 2019 manifested 67% voter turnout with decreasing rates of gender gap (ECI 2019). These figures indicate the undying credence citizens have in Indian politics and its democracy, despite the limitations of electoral democracy. The Indian Parliament acts as a theatre of democracy regardless of the people’s sneering disbelief and despondency in political institutions of the country to which Parliament is no exception (Rai and Spray 2019: 2). Electoral democracies all over the world are faced with criticism about their substantive representation1 to which they retort by translating democracy into electoral representation. How can the democratic institutions in India include all its citizens? In other words, how can these institutions be representative of its entire population? (Jayal 2013: 25). Here, what concerns this paper is the study of the impact of systematic exclusion of women from the political life on their political representation and in turn on their political performance.
Click here to read the full article published by Economic and Political Weekly on 1 August 2022.
In this study, we report results of a survey of U.S. state senators about their experiences of psychological abuse, physical violence, and sexualized abuse and violence on the job, as well as gender differences among senators. Overall, our results indicate that more than 80% of state senators reported having faced abuse and violence, and women senators reported more physical violence than men. Moreover, we found differences in the factors that contributed to abuse and violence among women and men state senators. Most notably, women with higher levels of power (party or committee leaders) were more likely than other women to experience psychological abuse and sexualized abuse and violence, and Democratic women senators faced more sexualized abuse and violence than Republican women. The implications for continued service by state senators in the face of these experiences, the likelihood of attracting future candidates, and the implications for gender diversity in office are explored.
Click here to read the full article.
The third Global Parliamentary Report examines public engagement in the work of parliament. This report takes a detailed look at why engagement matters and how parliaments globally are engaging with the people they represent. It outlines trends and priorities for public engagement and considers key principles for ensuring better and deeper engagement into the future, in support of the 2030 Agenda.
Click here to access the report.
Number and Percentage of Women in State Legislatures, 1980-2022
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Current State Legislature
2,300
(1,516D, 764R, 13NP, 5Ind, 2Prg)
31.2% of 7,383 seats
Since 1971, the number of women serving in state legislatures has more than quintupled.
NP = non-partisan, Ind = Independent, Prg = Progressive
State-by-State Summary Data on Current Women State Legislators
Click here to access the data.
How does the gender composition of the Australian parliament compare with parliaments around the world, and how has it changed over the past two decades
International comparisons
The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) has published international rankings of women in national parliaments since 1997. The IPU’s rankings are based on the representation of women in the lower (or single) houses of national parliaments only. The representation of women in the Australian Senate is therefore not factored into Australia’s ranking.
As illustrated in Figure 1 below, Australia’s IPU ranking for women in national parliaments was 27th in 1997, rising to 15th in 1999. In 2022 Australia’s ranking has fallen to 57th.
Click here to read the full article published by Parliament of Australia on 20 April 2022.
In late March 2022, 16 years after she was first elected to the Isabel Provincial Assembly in Solomon Islands, Rhoda Sikilabu became the country’s first female premier. The four-time MPA and former Deputy Premier replaced Leslie Kikolo who resigned a day before he faced a motion of no confidence.
The local coverage of Solomon Islands’ first female premier – in the Solomon Times, the Island Sun, Twitter, as well as the Australian and New Zealand Pacific outlets – was pleasantly surprising and suggests that women’s political leadership is finally becoming newsworthy.
Click here to read the full article published by DevPolicy Blog on 27 April 2022.