Women's Leadership

Less than four months out from the election, Vice-President Kamala Harris found herself in a difficult position.

President Joe Biden's poor performance on the debate stage spurred mounting criticism about his ability to win the election. As anxiety turned to tension within the Democratic party, her name rose up the list of replacement candidates.

With Mr Biden’s announcement that he will be ending his campaign and putting his support behind her, Ms Harris has finally reached a position she’d long sought: the top of the Democratic ticket, and potentially the presidency.

But the journey there has been fraught and full of difficult questions, especially in recent months.

Four years ago, the one-time candidate for the Democratic nomination would have welcomed the party's praises. By July 2024, Harris was in a more precarious position as part of an embattled incumbent ticket, her chances of another term tethered to Mr Biden’s performance.

In the 24 hours after the debate debacle, Ms Harris chose strong loyalty to Mr Biden.

The vice-president spoke on CNN, MSNBC and at a campaign rally. She defended her political partner's record and attacked their opponent, former President Donald Trump.

Read here the full article published by the BBC on 21 July 2024.

Image by BBC

In the run-up to Brazil’s municipal elections, FGV Press has just published an intense and long book featuring the moving stories of a hundred Brazilian women from all over the country who decided to tackle various obstacles and fight for a place in politics.

According to the book, Brazil is currently one of the worst countries in the world when it comes to the presence of women in politics, and the worst in Latin America. Despite often having a minimal chance of success, every two years a huge number of women run for office. They include teachers, small businesswomen, police officers and community leaders, who learn to balance politics with work and family life. They invest a lot of time and energy in this endeavor, but only a handful manage to get elected. As a result, just 17.7% of seats in the House of Representatives are currently held by women and 82.3% are held by men. In practice, men end up making the decisions in all areas, including those that concern women.

Concerned about this huge under-representation of women, Malu Gatto of University College London and Débora Thomé of Fundação Getulio Vargas, both of whom have doctorates in politics, set out in search of answers to try to understand what was happening to women and their struggles to get elected. In the 2020 and 2022 elections, they went out into the field to ask them what made them run for office, how they experienced this process, what types of violence they had faced and what their strategies were for getting along better with their parties.

Based on 188 interviews with 102 candidates (79 women and 23 men) and official data from the Superior Electoral Court, their book, “Candidatas: os primeiros passos das mulheres na política do Brasil” (“Female candidates: Women’s first steps in Brazilian politics”), published by FGV Press, draws on the academic literature to analyze evidence extracted directly from the voices of the protagonists of these stories. It presents the experiences of empowered black, white, young and old women, from all regions of the country and from all parties, with very different backgrounds. Moreover, the book presents the voices of these women. Divided into 10 chapters, it covers everything from the initial factors that make them run for office, their choice of party and relationship with it, election campaigns, political violence, post-election moments, and what happens when they are elected.

Read here the full article published by FGV Brazil on 22 July 2024.

Image by FGV Brazil

Luena — The ombudswoman, Florbela Araújo, highlighted, this Thursday, in Luena, Moxico province, the presence and leadership of women in the country, which is 'in great development'.

Speaking at a lecture on the 'role of the ombudsperson as a defender of women's rights', at the Casa da Cultura do Luena, the official said that today women are demonstrating that they have the physical and intellectual capacities to occupy decision-making positions.

According to the ombudsperson, the President of the Republic, as the Holder of the Executive Power, has been concerned with increasing the presence of women in decision-making positions at all levels, in the Executive, Judicial and Legislative branches.

He reiterated that women are the driving force to leverage a better world, far from the 'such and glaring' gender inequality that has been verified, so there is a need to empower them, as one of the ways to develop an increasingly just society.

He called on women to tirelessly continue to fulfill their role in society, as a way to contribute to the development of an increasingly just and good nation to live in.

Read here the full article published by All Africa on 19 July 2024.

Image by All Africa

Despite progress in codifying women’s rights into law, advances in gender equality around the world have been halting, at best. This, despite the additional attention that the #MeToo movement brought to incidents of sexual assault and harassment in parts of the Global North—and increasingly in the Global South.

In South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa made news in 2019 when he appointed a Cabinet that included as many women as men. Later the same year, the European Commission also achieved the European Union’s self-imposed goal of gender parity. The thinking behind gender parity in government is that with greater levels of representation, women policymakers and legislators will pay more attention to issues that are often ignored by men, like gender-based violence or inheritance laws that discriminate against women.

But where quotas are used, they have failed to achieve parity for women in all but a few cases. Nor are they a panacea. Even with increased representation, policymakers must figure out how to turn good intentions into change on the ground, so that removing restrictions on education, to take one example, actually leads to improved school attendance rates for girls and young women.

Read here the full article published by the World Politics Review on 16 July 2024.

Image by World Politics Review