Women's Leadership
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.
National Women Leaders Forum of Political Parties in Nigeria ,NWLFPPN, has called for stronger digital protection systems against Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence ,TF-GBV, targeting women in politics.
The President of the group, Mrs Amina Darasimi-Bryhm, made the call during a high-level dialogue with the theme “Advancing Feminist Leadership to End Digital Violence Against Women in Politics in Abuja on Thursday.
The News Agency of Nigeria ,NAN, reports that the event, supported by the Westminster Foundation for Democracy ,WFD, was to mark the 2025 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence ,GBV, and the 2025 International Human Rights Day.
GBV refers to any act of violence directed against an individual based on his or her gender.
It is a widespread menace that affects people of all ages and backgrounds, manifesting in various forms such as physical, sexual and psychological violence, including intimate partner abuse, trafficking and forced prostitution, considered as serious violation of human right.
NAN also reports that the 16 Days of Activism Against GBV is a United Nations’ international campaign that runs from Nov. 25, which is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, through Dec. 10, which is the International Human Rights Day.
For all the setbacks for the world’s women in 2025—job losses that rival those of the pandemic, worsening toxicity of the online “manosphere,” a certain presidential rebuke directed to a female reporter that invoked a farm animal—the leaders and vanguards on the 2025 Forbes Power Women list stood as examples of resilience in turbulent times. Sanae Takaichi was elected as prime minister of Japan, becoming the first woman in history to helm the $4 trillion (GDP) nation. Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott deployed some $700 million to support historically Black colleges and universities in the U.S. AMD CEO Lisa Su struck an agreement with OpenAI to build six gigawatts of AI chips over the next several years—in a deal that could be worth tens of billions of dollars and transform the AI ecosystem. And Kim Kardashian, who has more than 350 million social media followers, partnered with Nike on NikeSkim and her brand raised money at a $5 billion valuation in 2025.
Powering massive ecosystems—from countries and commerce to education and artificial intelligence—is what the most influential women including these four women do across the globe on a daily basis. The 22nd annual Forbes list of the World's 100 Most Powerful Women was determined by four main metrics: money, media, impact and spheres of influence. For political leaders, we considered gross domestic products and populations; for corporate chiefs, revenues, valuations and employee counts were critical. Media mentions were analyzed for all.
The result: 100 women including 17 newcomers—who command a collective $37 trillion in economic power and influence more than 1 billion people.
NEW YORK CITY: Twenty-five years after the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which committed world leaders to advancing the inclusion of women in peace and security processes, a new UN report reveals a troubling reversal of progress.
While global military spending is surging and armed conflicts are intensifying, women are increasingly shut out of peace processes.
“Despite the promise and the engagement around Resolution 1325, military spending is at record levels, gender equality is under attack, and multilateralism is weakening,” said Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, the deputy executive director of UN Women.
“Last year, 87 percent of peace talks took place without a single woman at the table,” she said, at a time when the world is seeing more conflicts than at any time since the Second World War, with devastating consequences for women and girls.
According to the report, nearly 700 million women and girls now live within 50 kilometers of armed conflict, the highest number since the 1990s. Civilian casualties among women and children have quadrupled over the past two years, while conflict-related sexual violence has increased by 87 percent.
Gender equality and women’s empowerment are central to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Community Vision 2025 of the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). They are also key to fostering a more sustainable and inclusive region. Providing women with equal access to decision-making power and leadership not only supports their well-being, but also enables their contribution towards regional progress and inclusiveness.
Data, however, shows that substantial progress is needed to empower a new generation of ASEAN women leaders. This factsheet explores, through available official statistics, the various leadership roles that women play in the ASEAN region, and sheds light on areas where improvement is needed.
Click here to access the report.
Latinas are serving in record numbers across levels of elective office, but we are still vastly underrepresented when compared to our numbers in the population.
Data from the 2020 U.S. Census shows that those identifying as Hispanic or Latino accounted for more than half of the country’s population growth in the previous decade, with the greatest increases in Texas, California, and Florida. Latinas are key to that rise. But has representation in elective office kept pace with that population growth? This report helps to answer that question. It provides a review of the current status of Latinas in elective office in the U.S. within a historical context and with attention to what is possible in the 2022 election
Click here to access the report.
This article presents the results of a randomized survey experiment demonstrating that the public evaluates women politicians more highly than men across multiple characteristic assessments. This finding is consistent with a recent wave of research indicating greater preference for women politicians. Which respondents rate women politicians more highly, and why? The survey found that women and younger voters do not account for the greater marks given to women politicians. Instead, respondent partisanship and the presumed partisanship of the politician account for a great deal of the findings, with gender playing a complicating role. Democratic and Republican respondents are apt to project their own partisanship onto politicians, and across both parties, the survey found higher assessments for co-partisan politicians and for women politicians. On the whole, women politicians are evaluated on par with of significantly higher than men politicians across six characteristics, scoring especially well relative to men when politicians are presumed to be members of the opposing party and when traditionally feminine characteristics are assessed.
Click here to access the article.
UNDP’s Gender Equality Strategy 2022-2025, aligned with its Strategic Plan, guides UNDP in its efforts to assist countries in accelerating progress on gender equality and the empowerment of women over the next four years. It aims to move beyond piecemeal efforts and to instead help countries to shift power structures and the economic, social, and political systems that perpetuate discrimination.
Click here to access the document.
After national news coverage of a COVID-19 mask requirement controversy in Dodge City, Kansas in December of 2020, Mayor Joyce Warshaw received numerous threats such as “Burn in hell”; “Get murdered”; and “We’re coming for you.” Fifteen days later, Mayor Warshaw resigned saying that she and her family no longer felt safe.
Four important questions arise from the circumstances in which Mayor Warshaw and other mayors find themselves.
- How prevalent is violence against mayors from the public?
- Are there gender and race-based differences in violent experiences of mayors?
- Is the violence experienced by mayors causing them to rethink their service?
- What are the wider implications to representation of exposing public servants to abuse and violence? Will fewer people, especially women and women of color run, for and stay in office?
This research seeks answers to these questions.
Click here to access the report.
This article is the second in a two-part series examining the impact of gender quotas. The first article discussed the structure of gender quotas and their general impacts.
Gender quotas play a varied and complex role in political life; every country maintains its own reason for their implementation and experiences unique outcomes from their existence. This article aims not to present a definitive case for or against gender quotas. Rather, it explores two very different manifestations of gender quotas and how they concretely impact the political atmosphere of India and Sweden. These two countries help demonstrate how quotas may bring gender equality in name, but not in practice. Both countries suffer from a similar “moral hazard” problem where quotas may encourage complacency in addressing women’s issues, leaving deeper problems unresolved.
Click here to read the full article published by Harvard International Review on 15 August 2022.