Women's Leadership
Amid 1970s environmental threats of nuclear proliferation and pollution, the origin of the term “ecofeminism” is attributed to Françoise d’Eaubonne, a French feminist and ecologist who is said to have first used it in her 1974 work “Le Feminisme ou la Mort” (Feminism or Death), which was reprinted in October 2020 by Le Passager Clandestin. D’Eaubonne argued that the oppression of women and the exploitation of nature stemmed from a system deeply rooted in patriarchal values.
D’Eaubonne’s theory is fully expounded in her 1978 work “Écologie et féminisme. Révolution ou mutation?” (Ecology and feminism: Revolution or mutation?), where she explains that for centuries, men have controlled the fertility of both women and the earth, but global capitalism has pushed this domination to a new extreme: life itself is now at risk. As men in power fail to address the ecological and political crisis, she contends that women must reclaim control over their fertility and build an ecological, egalitarian, and self-governing society.
Ecofeminism, as a practice, was advanced beyond Europe in the 1970s as well. In 1973, in India, women led the Chipko movement, organized to protect trees and forests from deforestation. In 1977, Kenyan activist Wangarĩ Maathai, who in 2004 became the first East and Central African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, founded the Green Belt Movement, a grassroots organization that, working on the intersection of ecological restoration and social justice, empowers rural women to restore ecosystems and forests through nature-based enterprises.
Exile Hub is one of Global Voices’ partners in Southeast Asia, emerging in response to the 2021 coup in Myanmar, focusing on empowering journalists and human rights defenders. This edited article is republished under a content partnership agreement.
What you see in the frame is a woman holding a camera in a war zone.
What you don’t see is everything beyond it: the sound of military aircraft overhead, the fear of a second strike, and people running for safety.
While others fled, Myat Moe Thu, a recipient of Exile Hub’s Critical Voices Fellowship 2026, moved toward the scene.
A journalist reporting from the border areas between Shan and Kayah (Karenni) States, she documents the realities of war as they unfold. On the day this image was taken, a military jet had just dropped two 500-pound bombs on a civilian village. As residents fled, fearing another attack, she walked into the aftermath to gather the story.
There was no protective gear. No guarantee of safety. Only a decision to bear witness.
Nigeria’s democracy has survived. The harder question is whether it is deepening. Since 1999, the country has sustained civil rule longer than at any other period in its post-independence history. Elections have been held. Governments have come and gone. Political parties have risen and fallen. At important moments, power has changed hands peacefully. These are not small achievements.
But democratic survival is not the same thing as democratic success.
For many Nigerians, democracy still feels distant from daily life. Citizens are courted during campaigns and forgotten after elections. Representatives emerge in the people’s name but often govern without a meaningful connection to the people’s voice. Voter turnout has been troubling. Public trust is weak. Political inclusion remains uneven. Too many Nigerians see democracy as a ritual of voting, not a lived experience of belonging, influence and accountability. This is why the relationship between participation and representation deserves urgent attention.
Bangladesh’s democratic trajectory reveals a persistent paradox. Despite the prominence of women in national leadership, strong female voter turnout, and significant economic participation, particularly in the ready-made garment sector, their substantive engagement in formal politics remains limited. This essay examines how structural constraints within major political parties, notably the Awami League (AL) and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), as well as broader societal norms, have shaped and sustained this disparity under both AL- and BNP-led governments. It argues for a more inclusive and intersectional model of political representation to bridge the gap between women’s symbolic visibility and their actual influence within Bangladesh’s political institutions.
SEOUL, June 03 (AJP) - The Ruling Democratic Party candidate and former justice minister Choo Mi-ae is certain to win the Gyeonggi Province gubernatorial race, making her the first woman to head a metropolitan or provincial government in South Korean history.
According to the National Election Commission on Wednesday, Choo is projected to defeat People Power Party candidate Yang Hyang-ja in the June 3 local elections. The six-term lawmaker maintained a wide lead over Yang throughout the campaign, cementing her victory early on.
Her win breaks a long-standing glass ceiling in South Korean politics. Since the country introduced nationwide local elections in 1995, women have consistently run for top regional posts but have never won.
The closest attempts occurred in 2022 and 2010. In the 2022 Gyeonggi governor race, conservative candidate Kim Eun-hye lost to Democratic Party candidate Kim Dong-yeon by a margin of 0.15 percentage points after a tight race that stretched into the morning after election day. In 2010, Democratic Party candidate Han Myeong-sook lost the Seoul mayoral election to Oh Se-hoon by 0.2 percentage points.
Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, Deputy Executive Director for Normative Support, UN System Coordination, and Programme Results, visited Bangladesh from 16–21 May this year. During her visit, she travelled to Dhaka and Cox’s Bazar and engaged with key UN Women partners, including government counterparts, civil society organisations, and development partners, to discuss both opportunities and challenges in advancing gender equality in Bangladesh.
In an interview with Prothom Alo, Gumbonzvanda speaks on gender equality issues and ways to strengthen collaboration to accelerate the implementation of international and national commitments on gender equality. She was joined by Christine Arab, Regional Director, UN Women Regional Office for Asia and Pacific. The interview was taken by Ayesha Kabir.
Quotas designed to bring gender parity to parliaments have an overall positive impact on support for female political leadership – especially after women members of parliament take office. Furthermore, there is no evidence of a backlash among men.
That’s what I found in a study published in October 2025 looking at the impact of gender-parity quotas in Namibia, in sub-Saharan Africa.
In 2013, Namibia’s dominant political party, the South West Africa People’s Organization, or SWAPO, quietly rewrote its internal rules. From that point forward, every spot on its parliamentary candidate list would alternate between a man and a woman.
Most prior research on measures to encourage gender parity in politics focuses on national or legislative policies rather than voluntary party quotas. Namibia offers an unusually “clean” case in that SWAPO is electorally dominant and did not face grassroots pressure to adopt its quota policy. That makes it possible to isolate the effects of the quota itself, rather than any preexisting trend in public attitudes.
This data story looks at the economic empowerment of women over the past decade and a half across selected Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries (Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Liban, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine*, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates). It sets out a few stylised facts on how education, labour markets, laws, and public opinion shape women’s opportunities**. It also looks at how economic realities interact with cultural norms and legal structures across the region. Most importantly, it asks a central question: are women agents of change in their own economic and political trajectories, and how is that visible in the data that follows?
This issue goes beyond human rights or social and economic concerns and directly affects the region’s political and security landscape. As women gain greater opportunities to work, earn and participate in public life, they strengthen the resilience of families and communities, which supports broader social stability and – as research has consistently shown – contributes to higher levels of security and peace.
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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?