Political Parties
Former Presidential candidate and renowned academic, Professor Benedicta Egbo, has said that Nigerian women deserve a strong voice as partners in politics and the decision-making process in the country.
Egbo advocated the creation of support networks funded through private and public efforts to enhance the chances of women seeking to lead the country, adding that recognition for the gender should go beyond the current “tokenism” approach.
Egbo, who contested the 2023 presidential poll on the platform of the National Rescue Movement (NRM), made her remarks amid the current clamour for more opportunities for women to participate in the 2027 elections.
“The time is now. Indeed, the national parliament and other relevant parties should, as a matter of urgency, enact laws that guarantee women’s greater participation in politics and democratic governance in the country in the interest of equity, fairness and national unity. It is the patriotic thing to do for the common good”, Egbo wrote in a statement she released on Wednesday.
The female politician called for reform-oriented interventions such as removing economic barriers that limit women’s access to resources such as “campaign finance, removing cultural impediments, combatting gender-based violence and, building women’s capacity through mentorship and political literacy programmes.”
Full article here.
Thousands Join to Boost Women’s Participation in Politics
Ahead of Iraq’s upcoming parliamentary elections in November, women politicians and political activists have launched the Arab country’s first women’s political party. After two years of waiting for official licensing approval, the al-Mawadda Women’s Party has issued a platform that seeks to unite women across Iraq and increase their political participation. Al-Mawaddah is an Arabic term from the Qur’an, symbolizing compassion, love, and respect. Jihan al-Taei, the secretary-general and founder of the party, said to Rudaw, “Women constitute more than half of Iraqi society. Our party was established due to the marginalized role of women and their genuine exclusion from all areas of life, especially from decision-making.” Per Iraqi law, at least one-third of a political party’s membership must be male. With over seven thousand members across Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, Taei will rely on “people’s belief” of women’s role in decision-making to garner more support. To campaign, the party has begun organizing programming, including awareness workshops and an online portal for media membership.
BAGHDAD — Iraq has witnessed the establishment of its first women’s political party, named the al-Mawadda Party, in an initiative aimed at unifying the efforts of women from various communities and sects, and enhancing their role in political life.
The founding conference of the party was held with broad participation from both women and men. Participants affirmed that the party would serve as a platform for empowering women and involving them in decision-making processes, driven by the urgent need for all segments of society to contribute to building Iraq’s future.
The establishment of the Al-Mawadda women’s party is considered an important milestone in the journey of Iraqi women, and a significant step that emerged from extensive discussions, workshops, and women-led meetings that sought to create real space for women in the political landscape.
Full article available here.
What you need to know:
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Myllene Bosibori's political journey exposes deep gender, ethnic, and financial barriers facing Kenyan women candidates.
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Sexual harassment, biased systems, and economic hardship continue to block women’s fair access to political leadership.
When Myllene Bosibori decided to run for Kajiado North MP in 2022, she never thought it would be an uphill task.
However, her experience was not horrifying. Having come from the minority ethnic group, Myllene tells the Nation that she faced double discrimination of coming from a small ethnic group and being a woman. She recounts how on many occasions she was told to go seek elective politics in her native Kisii region.
Myllene also bitterly recalls how she was asked for sexual favours and a bribe to be given a ticket for one of the popular political parties. “When I refused, it was handed to another person. It is so hard for a woman seeking political leadership to fairly compete with men.”
Full article published by Nation Africa here.
Image by Nation Africa
The conservative Protestant party SGP has again voted down a proposal to formally recognize women’s eligibility for political and administrative roles, maintaining a decades-long stance that continues to limit women's participation despite previous legal rulings and internal activism.
On Saturday, party delegates overwhelmingly rejected a motion to enshrine in the party’s core statutes that women are welcome to hold political or leadership positions. The vote ended 299 to 53 against the proposal. Only party delegates were allowed to vote, not the broader membership.
The proposal was submitted by Lilian Janse and her local chapter in Vlissingen. Janse became the first woman to hold office for the SGP in 2014 when she joined the city council. Despite that milestone, the party's founding regulations still state that women who enter politics are acting "in conflict with their calling."
Stem op een Vrouw (Vote for a Woman) director Devika Partiman responded to the vote by urging women within the party not to give up. “There is no magical formula, but things really will change eventually,” she said. Partiman said she was not surprised the proposal was rejected, but she did not expect the margin to be so wide. She pointed out that only designated male delegates — often strict followers of party rules — were allowed to cast ballots. “That is the biggest problem,” she said.
According to Partiman, many regular SGP members support changing the party statutes, making the outcome “regrettable.” She added, “It would be a good idea if the men who do agree with the changes would speak out publicly, so there are visible role models.” However, she acknowledged the difficulty, noting that speaking against the leadership might hurt their own prospects in the party.
Full article published by the Netherlands Times on 24 May 2025.
Image by Netherlands Times
Labour has cancelled its national women’s conference and restricted all-women shortlists as it awaits full guidance from the equalities watchdog, drawing criticism from transgender rights and gender-critical campaigners.
The party’s governing body, the national executive committee (NEC), met on Tuesday to sign off plans to cancel the women’s conference, which was due to take place before the party’s annual conference in Liverpool in September.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s interim advice, published after the supreme court decision that the term “woman” in the Equality Act refers only to a biological woman, has suggested that voluntary organisations should apply that rule.
The NEC had been told the party was at risk of a legal challenge if it went ahead with the conference, according to LabourList, and could face protests and direct action if the conference proceeded as usual on the basis of self-identification.
Full article published by The Guardian on 20 May 2025.
Image by The Guardian
Racial/ethnic minorities and women continue to be underrepresented in public office in the United States. Here, we evaluate the role of general election political party support for women and minorities in structuring these inequalities, as a key part of general election success is support from party networks. With detailed data on party support and the demographics of congressional candidates, we use two difference-in-differences strategies to leverage within-district and candidate-constant change over time. Thus, we are able to separate the effect of race/ethnicity and gender from other factors we demonstrate to be associated with party support. We find that, all else equal, Democratic and Republican minority nominees do not receive less support than their white counterparts. We also find that white women receive more party support from Democrats than Democratic men or minority women in the general election and that this support is more responsive to changes in electoral competitiveness. These findings suggest that party elites may provide additional support to candidates from underrepresented groups in the general election to broaden their appeal to voters.
Click here to download the paper published by Sage Journals on 23 April 2022.
‘Leave no one behind’ (LNOB) is the central, transformative promise of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Hence, SDG 5—‘Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls’—is an intrinsic enabler for sustainable development and representative democracy for each country and the world at large. The SDG 5 stipulates the requisite collective action for transformation and creating conducive environments towards substantive equality for all women and girls. In order to take on the challenge of translating SDG 5 into reality for women and girls across the world, it is fundamental to address the key areas of gender inequality, such as gender-based discrimination in law and in practice, violence against women and girls, the lack of and unequal access to and ownership of economic resources, and women’s unequal participation and representation in both private and public decision-making positions.
This Technical Paper focuses on political parties’ responsibilities on achieving gender equality in politics and women’s political empowerment, particularly women’s participation and representation in positions of power and decision making at all levels.
Click here to access the paper published by International IDEA on 4 November 2021.
Abstract
Throughout history and across countries, women appear more likely than men to enter politics on the heels of a close family relative or spouse. To explain this dynastic bias in women’s representation, we introduce a theory that integrates political selection decisions with informational inequalities across social groups. Candidates with dynastic ties benefit from the established reputations of their predecessors, but these signals of quality are more important to political newcomers such as women. Legislator-level data from twelve democracies and candidate-level data from Ireland and Sweden support the idea that dynastic ties are differentially more helpful to women, and that the quality of predecessors may be more relevant for the entry and evaluation of female successors than their male counterparts. The role of informational inequalities is also reflected in the declining dynastic bias over time (as more women enter politics), and in the differential effect of a gender quota across Swedish municipalities.
Click here to read the full article published by Sage Journal on 3 July 2020.
The Win With Women Political Party Assessment (WWW Assessment) is an initiative designed to help political parties become more inclusive and representative through an assessment that gauges men and women's perceptions of women in leadership, the types of social norms held by members of parties, and the individual, institutional and socio-cultural barriers to gender equality.
Click here to see the report.
The Women's Network of the Union of Latin American Parties (UPLA) is a political platform that seeks to promote and strengthen the participation and positioning of women in public decision-making roles in Latin America and the Caribbean.
UPLA prepared a report for the electronic discussion on the role of political parties in the promotion of women in politics.
Click here to see the report.
Political parties are a cornerstone of democracy, providing critical pathways for citizens’ political participation and engagement. They mobilise citizens behind ideologies and policies, select candidates for representative posts, lead electoral campaigns, form legislative blocs in parliaments and, if elected, implement a program of government. Their role in defining key political institutions - policy formation, elections and parliaments - mean political parties have traditionally been important springboards for women's political participation. However, because of history, tradition and gender norms, many have found it difficult to provide women with meaningful and equal access to leadership positions or party platforms. Political parties also tend to be ‘protected’1 public spaces, allowing and enabling violence against women within their ranks to take place.
NDI has revised its long-standing Win With Women political party assessment tool, including by adding guidance on measuring levels of and dealing with the violence that women members face within their parties. The No Party to Violence: Political Party Assessment includes survey, focus group and in-depth interview tools to be used with women and men in the leadership and membership of parties in order to develop action plans to root out the violence targeting women within their own political party
Over the last year, this new approach has been piloted with a number of the larger political parties and civil society in Côte d’Ivoire, Honduras, Tanzania and Tunisia. The outcomes from this piloting represent the first assessment of women party members’ experiences of violence within political parties, thus providing important new insights on the phenomenon, which has never been systematically studied previously. It offers a unique cross-country analysis of the current understandings and perceptions of men and women party members around the types, levels, and impact of violence against women within these institutions. This important information is being used to create party- and country-specific recommendations to improve awareness, action and accountability to end violence against women within political parties, thereby strengthening women’s membership and their roles on a basis of enhanced equality. The piloting process has also created a safe space for multi-party dialogue in ways which have not exposed any party to the political risk of negative commentary from the issue being aired in public and/or used by their competitors.
Click here to see the report.