Women's Leadership
When the 1967 Abortion Act cleared parliament, marking one of the most significant steps forward for women’s rights in history, Diane Munday was among the campaigners raising a glass of champagne on the terrace of the House of Commons.
“I’m only drinking a half a glass,” she told her colleagues at the time, “because the job is only half done.”
And, she was right. “Fifty years later, women were still going to prison,” says Munday, who co-founded the British Pregnancy Advice Service. She was also a leading member of the Abortion Law Reform Association during the 1960s and 1970s and is a patron of Humanists UK.
The 94-year-old campaigner still spends most of her days at work in her home office, where evidence of her passion is clear: from the bookshelf stacked with titles about abortion, to the notes tacked above her desk, to the filing cabinet stuffed with decades of history.
In the turbulent Venezuelan political landscape of early 2026, Delcy Eloína Rodríguez Gómez has emerged as a central figure in the transition following the capture of President Nicolás Maduro by U.S. forces. At 56, and with a long trajectory inside chavismo, Rodríguez assumed office as interim president of Venezuela on January 5, 2026, after the Supreme Court ordered her constitutional elevation in order to “guarantee administrative continuity and the comprehensive defense of the State.”
Born in Caracas on May 18, 1969, Rodríguez is a lawyer by profession, trained in labor law, with a political career that began in technical government posts in the 2000s and solidified after the death of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro’s rise to power in 2013. Her résumé includes positions such as Minister of Communication and Information, Minister of Foreign Affairs, President of the National Constituent Assembly, and since 2018 Vice President of the Republic. In the years leading up to 2026, she also held responsibilities tied to the economy and the oil industry, placing her among the most influential figures inside the regime.
As we head into a brand new year, FlamboroughToday asked local community leaders five questions about their thoughts on 2025 and their hopes for 2026. Today, MPP Donna Skelly reflects on the past year, and her wish for the next 12 months.
What is your proudest accomplishment of 2025?
I have two accomplishments that I am particularly proud of: proposed legislation exempting farms from stormwater fees and becoming the first woman elected as Speaker of the Province of Ontario.
As your readers will know, I am a vocal critic of municipal stormwater fees in Ontario, particularly in my riding. Agricultural and rural residential properties should be exempt from these charges because they do not use or benefit from municipal stormwater infrastructure.
Supermajority, the nonprofit organization focused on mobilizing women voters, is shutting down.
Founded in 2019 by Cecile Richards, the former president of Planned Parenthood; Ai-jen Poo, co-founder and executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance; and #BlackLivesMatter co-creator Alicia Garza, Supermajority became a key player in the women’s resistance movement.
Since its founding, Supermajority has contacted more than 20 million women voters, organizing for candidates including Democratic Govs. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Katie Hobbs of Arizona and Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, as well as for then-Vice President Kamala Harris’ unsuccessful presidential bid last year. The group plans to connect its volunteers with other organizations that do grassroots organizing work, starting with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). All 22 current Supermajority employees will be laid off; the organization will be winding down its work in the next several weeks.
Women in India are transforming the landscape of electoral politics with unprecedented force. Their turnout has now overtaken male participation in many elections — for instance, women reported a 65.8% turnout in the 2024 General Elections as against 65.6% for men, and an extraordinary 71.6% in the Bihar Assembly elections of November 2025 as against 62.8% for men. This shift has made women an electoral constituency of immense significance. Even though their numerical representation in lawmaking remains low, their growing presence as voters has recalibrated political strategy. Welfare schemes, cash transfers, and targeted development programmes are now routinely crafted around women, reflecting a recognition that “investing” in this constituency yields tangible political dividends.
In conflicts within India, women’s groups have repeatedly taken risks to mediate peace. In present-day Manipur, women work discreetly to support displaced families in relief camps, rebuild relationships, and restore threads of trust.
Yet, this dynamic raises more profound democratic questions. Does this “quid pro quo” empower women as full political agents? Women must not remain mere labharthis (passive recipients of State benevolence). A democracy worthy of its constitutional promise requires women as active claimants of rights, voice, and agency in policy arenas.
It is truly disappointing that, out of 2,582 candidates who filed nomination papers for the upcoming parliamentary election, only 110 are women.
That about 4% of total candidates are women is nothing if not a sobering indictment of our political culture and the utter failure to empower, encourage, and embrace half the nation’s population as equals in leadership.
While we have long projected ourselves as a nation where women have risen to the highest political offices repeatedly and have stayed there for years, what cannot be denied is that, beyond the two prime ministers, we have largely failed to see systemic inclusion of women in our politics.
Indeed, the fact is that women remain sidelined, oftentimes even contesting as independents after being denied party nominations. That we remain a country where mainstream parties are reluctant to trust women with winnable seats shows a deep-rooted bias that is unmistakable.
What we repeatedly fail to comprehend is that such an exclusion, beyond being unjust, is ultimately self-defeating. No nation can truly prosper when half its citizens are denied meaningful participation in shaping its future.
That we continue to reject the perspectives women can bring, from their resilience to community-building to their lived experiences of inequality, is nothing if not baffling. In an increasingly volatile and complex world, their leadership is essential for tackling the crises that define our times.
Women have already proven their mettle in every sphere, and our aspirations for democracy remain incomplete without their adequate presence in political leadership. We can only hope that the nation sees this 4% representation as a collective failure, and that we can be a nation that starts recognizing the value of women as leaders and starts empowering them to shape our country’s destiny.
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Despite notable normative advances, after 25 years, the effectiveness of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda is threatened by a fragmented global panorama and faces significant challenges and setbacks.
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In the new context, the following stand out: (a) the increased frequency and complexity of armed conflicts; (b) the rise of ‘anti-gender’ movements and the erosion of women’s rights in many regions; (c) geopolitical divisions, which make it difficult to prioritise comprehensive solutions to conflicts; (d) the Agenda’s funding crisis; (e) the crisis of multilateralism; (f) the reduced representation of women as negotiators and mediators; and (g) the loss of policy coherence and its transformative potential due to the instrumentalisation of the Agenda, often used for geopolitical purposes.
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For the Agenda to remain relevant, it is crucial that it evolves and adapts to the new global situation and updates its principles with an understanding of the local contexts in which it must be applied.
In 2000, the United Nations Security Council recognized that women’s leadership and gender equality are crucial for international peace and security, and the past 25 years have seen increased attention to this matter. However, the rise in global conflict in recent years risks erasing the modest progress made in previous decades.
Every year, the UN Secretary-General presents an annual report to the Security Council detailing the status of the women, peace and security agenda in the world. This year’s report contains more than one hundred facts and figures on issues ranging from women’s participation in peace processes, peace operations, or politics in conflict-affected countries, to the impact of conflict on women and girls, including atrocities that target them disproportionately, like reproductive violence, gender-based persecution, or conflict-related sexual violence.
This infographic, prepared by UN Women, highlights a few of these facts and figures, along with recommendations to change course.
Abstract
Advocates of women’s rights in many Muslim countries have long demanded the formation of state-level institutional structures that promote and protect women’s rights, in turn contributing to democratization and development. The design and impact of such structures, collectively referred to as national women’s machineries (NWMs), has, however, varied across contexts. This paper advocates analysis of the actors and factors that impact the design, influence, and function of NWMs, with an emphasis on the role of state gender ideology. It argues that NWMs, as formal state institutions, are never conceptualized and formed in a vacuum, with various competing interests impacting their design and function especially in non-democratic and unrepresentative contexts. Through a case study of NWMs in the Islamic Republic of Iran, it shows that despite efforts for cabinet-level women’s rights policy-making since the early 1990s, throughout the past decades such gains have faced backlash and reversal as a result of conservative ideological shifts, at times rendering such institutions illegitimate in the eyes of the Iranian feminist movement.
The act was a forceful symbol of her support for the movement and condemnation of the Iranian regime. “We cannot remain silent against the killing of women and girls like Mahsa (Jina Amini) or Armita (Geravand) who were killed merely because of their hijab,” she says.
Other prominent women, including celebrities, had removed their hijabs in public acts of defiance against Iran’s mandatory hijab laws during the protests. But Vasmaghi’s unveiling held particular significance. Until then, her public persona was that of a deeply pious scholar who consistently observed the hijab in a strict sense without showing any hair—even while lecturing in Europe on her expertise in Islamic fiqh (jurisprudence). What Vasmaghi clearly opposed was not veiling itself but its compulsory nature: Just months before her public unveiling, she had drafted an open letter to the Supreme Leader challenging the Islamic justification for forcing women to cover their hair. In it, she asked pointedly: “How can the Islamic Republic justify such strict enforcement of mandatory veiling when even the Quran does not explicitly require women to cover their hair?
Abstract
Much of the literature on women’s-rights activism in the Muslim world presents such activism as employing discourses either of egalitarianism (secular) or of complementarianism (religious). This article analyzes the recent framing of demands for women’s right to political office by elite Islamic women in Iran and Turkey in terms outside this dichotomy. Drawing on data gathered from personal interviews as well as on careful study of public statements and publications by elite women, or those backed by state institutions, this article demonstrates the inadequacy of understanding women’s activism in Muslim contexts as employing either an egalitarian or a complementarian approach by highlighting a more nuanced conceptualization of women’s-rights framing and organizing in accordance with shifting contexts and political ideologies. Specifically, it shows how Islamic women’s-rights activists who are closely affiliated with their governments at times strategically adopt a “gender justice” framing, as opposed to “gender equality,” to appeal to more conservative sectors of their society. This strategy can have important policy implications and lead to shifts in political discourse about women and politics. However, elite women’s backing from and affiliation with conservative ruling elites can lead some groups, particularly secular feminists, to perceive their use of gender justice discourse differently and to be dismissive of their efforts
Women of Iran, similar to those across many parts of the region, benefit from a long history of feminist activism. Refusing to remain silent to discriminatory laws, practices, and behaviors, women have been struggling for equality, freedom, and justice through grassroots mobilization against conservative religious rule.
The latest spark of feminist resistance on a mass level occurred in September 2022 over the killing of Kurdish-Iranian Mahsa Jina Amini from injuries she sustained while in police custody for allegedly violating Iran’s conservative hijab laws. Under the banner of, “woman, life, freedom,” women led vast street protests for months in demand for basic rights and liberties, risking their lives and freedoms in the face of a violent state crackdown. Building on decades of women’s rights organizing, women across Iran rose to express their frustrations from systemic gender discrimination codified in Iran’s laws, as well as their intentional marginalization from politics.
In this latest wave of protests, large sections of the population, regardless of gender, region, ethnicity, age, and religious identity, also joined in—recognizing that women’s demands for equality and freedom form the foundations of broader demands for democracy, human rights, and justice.