Parliaments & Representatives
One of the challenges facing local governments—and institutional politics in general—is reversing the historically negligible presence of women in political parties and administrations. Although the number of women on electoral lists and in council and mayoral positions has multiplied over the last decade, significant gaps still exist in the types of responsibilities men and women assume in city councils, and parity has not been achieved in the mayoral positions.
According to data from the Catalan Women's Institute (ICD), the portfolios of Social Services, Education, Health, and Community Welfare are typically headed by women. Social Services is particularly notable: in 75.3% of Catalan city councils, a woman holds the portfolio. In the case of Education, Health, and Community Welfare, the percentage of women is 65%.%. In contrast, in Security, Sports, Housing and Urban Planning, Infrastructure, and Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, there is a man in charge in two out of three cases.
Full article published by ARA.
Image by ARA
A heated debate on affirmative action versus merit-based appointments to increase women’s participation, including in the media, took centre stage at a BBC World Questions episode recorded live in Petaling Jaya last night.
The episode featured seven questions from the audience, including one that asked: “We can observe now most bosses in Malaysian media corporations are men. Where are the women?”
Full article by Malaysia Kini
Image Malaysia Kini
What you need to know:
-
Aritua called for a multi-stakeholder approach, urging the Uganda Communications Commission and other regulatory bodies to crack down on digital abusers.
As Uganda prepares for the 2026 general elections, women in politics are raising concerns over persistent online violence, which they say is silencing them and deterring participation in public life.
Speaking at a stakeholders' meeting organized by the Women’s Democracy Network Uganda Chapter in Kampala, former Leader of the Opposition Ms Winnie Kiiza noted that many women continue to lag behind in digital adaptation, leaving them vulnerable.
“Most women in leadership lack adequate knowledge and tools to use technology effectively, yet it's the way to go. This gap is affecting our participation in decision-making,” Ms Kiiza said.
Full article published Monitor Uganda.
Image by Monitor Uganda
Over 50% of female local assembly members in Japan have been troubled with harassment, more than double the proportion of such male members, according to a Cabinet Office report.
The report on barriers to women's participation in politics, released Friday, said that 53.8% of local assemblywomen answered in the government agency's latest survey that they themselves, their family members, or their supporters have been harassed by others while 23.6% of assemblymen made similar answers.
Specifically, "verbal abuse" was cited by both male and female members as the leading form of harassment. "Insulting behavior and remarks based on unconscious gender bias" and "physical contact and stalking" were complained much more strongly by women than men.
On harassers, 65.7% of female members pointed the finger at election rivals and their supporters as well as peer assembly members, while 64.0% mentioned voters.
Full article published by The Japan Times here.
Image by The Japan Times
ABSTRACT
While gender quotas in politics have received considerable scholarly debate, much of the focus remains on whether quota-elected women are less qualified due to their pre-election background. Far less attention has been given to their actual parliamentary performance and how it compares to their non-quota peers. This study uses UK parliamentary records between 2005 and 2017 to compare the parliamentary activity of Labour women selected via All-Women Shortlists (AWS) with those selected via the traditional Open-List. Parliamentary activity is measured through contributions in spoken debate, rebellion rates, submission of written questions, and vote attendance, alongside an examination of AWS women’s commitment to women’s substantive representation. The results show that AWS women were equally active in most parliamentary channels, but they were more active in submitting written questions and speaking about women’s issues during debates compared to their Open-List counterparts. Consequently, the findings refute claims that AWS women are less active or underperform in Parliament, demonstrating that they perform as well as, or better than, their Open-List counterparts across all measures. These results should encourage the broader adoption of quotas in other UK political parties.
Full article published by Taylor & Francis here.
The 2025 report from the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) paints a chilling portrait of political life for women in the Asia-Pacific: Three in four women parliamentarians have endured psychological violence, and one in four has been subjected to sexual violence. Far from isolated incidents, these acts form a disturbing pattern of abuse targeting women for daring to lead. Violence, both online and offline, has become an entrenched feature of public life for women in politics.
More than 60 percent of women in political office have been victims of online hate, threats and disinformation campaigns. Parliamentary staff, especially young women, are similarly vulnerable. These attacks are not random: They are deliberate, systematic efforts to degrade, silence and push women out of politics.
This is not just a gendered struggle; it is a profound democratic crisis that erodes the very foundations of inclusive governance.
Full article by The Jakarta Post.
Image by The Jakarta Post
Ensuring GSP principles are embedded in political institutions is vital for a healthy democracy. It highlights that women’s inclusion and equality does not just stop at the ballot box. All groups must be able to fully participate within our elected institutions for our democracies to work effectively and to the good of all in our societies. This interim report comes at a timely moment for the GSP agenda.
More recently, the CPA and CWP updated its gender sensitive guidelines providing a ‘checklist’ for parliamentary change. Not only this, but COVID-19 has offered a moment of significant reform (albeit temporary in many cases) to parliamentary practices and procedures across the Commonwealth and many political institutions around the world are reflecting on the experience and the lessons learnt.
The 2020 CPA Gender Sensitising Parliaments Guidelines set out four dimensions of Gender Sensitive Parliaments (Figure 1). This interim report focuses on the first two dimensions: ‘Equality of participation within Parliament’ and ‘Parliamentary infrastructure’. It documents the current state of play regarding GSP practices in institutions across the British Islands and Mediterranean region (BIMR), particularly in light of institutional responses to COVID-19 and recommends ‘best practice’ reforms for the short and medium term.
Click here to access the report.
Gender and politics scholars are increasingly making appeals to ethnographic methodology to bring important contributions to understand the reproduction of gender, gender hierarchies, gendered relations, and their redress in parliamentary settings. This article draws upon fieldwork conducted in the U.K. House of Commons and the European Parliament and finds distinctive gendered cultures and norms in debating and working parliaments. Focusing on one dimension of this distinction—the parliamentary debating chamber—the article argues that parliamentary ethnography provides novel empirical insights into this conceptual distinction and into empirical understandings of gendered debating and working parliaments. While parliamentary ethnography is a fruitful innovation, the article discusses the drawbacks of this methodology and provides feminist reflection on ways to make it more accessible.
Click here to read the full article published by Cambridge University Press on 3 August 2022.
This report highlights the key findings from research conducted by Equal Voice on sexual harassment in Canada’s legislative Assemblies.
Click here to access the report.
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.