Women's Leadership

WINDHOEK, NAMIBIA -Australian women’s political leadership advocate Leonie Morgan AM, has urged countries in Southern Africa to invest in mentorship, financial support, training and women’s networks to accelerate female political participation and leadership.

In an exclusive interview, Morgan said sustainable progress in women’s political representation depends not only on funding, but also on structured mentoring systems and institutional backing that encourage women to contest elections and remain active in public leadership.

Morgan, who co-founded EMILY’s List Australia in 1995, has spent more than three decades supporting women candidates across Australia and parts of the Asia-Pacific region. Through her work, she has helped approximately 800 women run for state and national parliaments, with 385 eventually elected.

She said her passion for women’s leadership was inspired by the late Joan Kirner, the first female Premier of the Australian state of Victoria, whom she described as a mentor and role model.

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For 15 years, Mamata Banerjee and her regional Trinamool Congress (TMC) party seemed to embody a political law of India's West Bengal state: they always found a way to survive.

On Monday, that ended.

The firebrand populist's defeat to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ended her bid for a fourth consecutive term as chief minister - a feat that would have placed her alongside long-serving regional titans such as Jyoti Basu and Naveen Patnaik.

Banerjee's loss brings one of the most remarkable political careers in contemporary India to a moment of profound uncertainty - one that began with street protests and now culminates in the weakening of the political fortress she herself built.

Dimunitive and draped in a plain cotton sari and rubber sandals, Banerjee hardly looked like a politician who would topple one of the world's longest-running elected Communist governments.

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Women who enter public life, including journalists, activists and those in politics, have always understood that visibility comes at a cost.

But in the digital age, first shaped by social media and now increasingly driven by artificial intelligence, that cost has deepened, changed form, and become systemic and often relentless.

Harassment now travels in coordinated waves, often beyond control, moving faster than truth and leaving behind consequences that do not easily fade. And the danger is not limited to these attacks – it is also found in the silence they are designed to produce from their targets. Artificial intelligence is now making easier to manufacture, scale, and sustain that silence.

Examining the impact of emerging technologies

The urgency of these shifts was at the centre of discussions during a side event at the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70), Women Holding the Line: Storytelling & Safety in an Age of AI, convened in partnership with BBC Media Action and Peace Pays. Around 60 leaders from across the globe, journalists, activists, technologists, policymakers, and funders, gathered to examine how emerging technologies are reshaping both risk and resilience for women in public life.

In a panel discussion led by BBC reporter Samira Hussain, Fatou Baldeh, an FGM activist from Gambia; Kat Fotovat, a former ambassador and Co-Founder at Peace Pays.ai; Arbana Xharra, a Kosovar Albanian investigative journalist; and Varinder Kaur Gambhir, Country Director at BBC Media Action, India emphasized how the threats facing women in public spheres are no longer isolated or temporary. They are embedded within rapidly evolving technological systems which increase surveillance, track and invade privacy, and may also put family members and sources at risk.

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This year, on March 8, International Women’s Day, participants of the Islamabad chapter of the Aurat March (Women’s March) faced extreme brutality and arrests by the authorities after attempting to hold their annual rally in Pakistan’s capital. Organizers from the feminist collective Hum Aurtein say police used force to disperse the gathering and arrested more than 35 women, including several well-known activists. Authorities accused the group of violating Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, a legal provision that bans public assemblies in designated areas. The detainees were released later that evening after nearly 10 hours in custody.

For the past eight years, Aurat March organizers have marked International Women’s Day (March 8) with creative demonstrations to raise awareness against patriarchy and advocate for the rights of women and marginalized communities in Pakistan. Over the years, marches have been typically organized in several major cities, including    Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, and Multan, where the four chapters are based. While the rallies have often faced pushback from authorities and conservative religious groups, organizers say this year’s detentions in Islamabad marked an unusually severe response.

On the morning of March 8, Aurat March organizers and participants gathered at a supermarket in Sector F-6, intending to march toward the Islamabad Press Club located downtown. Before the rally could begin, police detained the group and transported them in prison vans. Their mobile phones were confiscated, and they were taken to the Women’s Police Station in G-7. Witnesses said that friends and family members who arrived at the station seeking information about the detainees were also threatened with arrest.

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A war that began between the United States and Iran on February 28 led to a two-week ceasefire on April 8, brokered through mediation efforts by Pakistan. Islamabad invited both countries to engage in negotiations. Although the first round of talks, held in Islamabad from April 11 to 12, ended in a deadlock, discussions continued behind closed doors, away from media scrutiny. While political leaders sought a path toward peace, a female anchor from GTV News faced a separate struggle, becoming the target of online harassment and abusive commentary.

On April 11–12, media outlets from around the world gathered at the Jinnah Convention Center in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, located less than two kilometers from the venue where the official talks were taking place. As social media buzzed with commentary on logistical arrangements and even the branding of coffee for journalists, a photograph of Gharida Farooqi, anchorperson at GTV News, wearing a green cord-set suit, went viral—accompanied by derogatory remarks about her attire. Some accounts circulated morphed images of her, while others engaged in gender-based harassment and shared AI-generated videos of the anchor.

Gharida Farooqi, no stranger to online harassment, filed a complaint with the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) soon after the images began circulating. At the same time, she quietly gathered evidence to help identify those responsible.

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In 2009, 93.7% of Mexico’s governors were men, as were 72.4% of federal deputies and 80.5% of senators.

Seventeen years later, the numbers are very different, as major progress has been made in increasing women’s representation in Mexican politics. Federal gender parity laws, including a 2019 constitutional reform dubbed paridad en todo (parity in everything), have supported the progress.

Today, Mexico has achieved virtual parity in women’s political representation, and the country — as everyone knows — has a female president for the first time.

In this week’s “Mexico in Numbers” article, we take a look at women’s representation in President Claudia Sheinbaum’s cabinet, at the head of state governments and in federal Congress. We also compare female political representation in Mexico to that in the United States.

Let’s get into the numbers!

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