Women's Leadership
Women in politics are, historically speaking, newcomers to a field built without them in mind.
Women may now hold seats at political tables, but those tables were never designed for them, and the violence, scrutiny and hostility they face are not anomalies but symptoms of systems still shaped by exclusion.
In Mexico, President Claudia Sheinbaum, celebrated as the nation’s first woman elected to the role, was sexually assaulted in broad daylight during a public event.
The assault was shocking, but perhaps more alarming was how quickly some dismissed it as just another hazard of public life. Her experience exposes the ongoing physical vulnerability women leaders continue to face, as well as the troubling tendency to minimize violence against them as inevitable rather than unacceptable. Power does not insulate women from misogyny; in many cases, it makes them more visible targets.
Closer to home, Montreal’s women mayors navigate a political terrain that looks welcoming on paper but feels far less in practice.
Their experiences show how the everyday labour of governing becomes gendered; from constant online harassment to double standards that shape expectations of tone, behaviour and even wardrobe. Their professionalism is evaluated alongside irrelevant criteria, sending the same persistent message: you can sit at the table, but don’t get too comfortable.
Milestones: Gina Raimondo became the first woman governor of Rhode Island (2015); Marian Anderson is the first African American woman to sing at the Metropolitan Opera; Ella Grasso became the first woman governor of Connecticut (1975); Anna Pauline “Pauli” Murray is the first African American woman ordained to the Episcopal priesthood (1977); Kay A. Orr, became the first woman governor of Nebraska (1987); Sen. Aaron Sargent introduced a resolution, written by Susan B. Anthony, to Congress for Women’s Suffrage Amendment (1878); Madeleine M. Kunin, first Jewish woman governor and first woman to serve three terms as governor in Vermont; Victoria Woodhull, first woman to address a House Committee, argues for women’s suffrage (1871); and Amelia Earhart makes the first solo flight from Hawaii to North America.
Birthdays for notable women: Kate McKinnon, actor and LGBTQ activist; Katie Couric, journalist; Zora Neale Hurston, author (1891); Kaia Los Huertos; Kate Stewart, Montgomery County Council; Carrie Chapman Catt, suffragist and peace activist (1859); Sian Leah Beilock, former president of Barnard College and current president of Dartmouth; Sarah Jane Higginbotham, co-founder of Harrison Clark LLC and the National Women’s Defense League; Anna Kellar, national organizing director at Rank the Vote; Alice Paul, Quaker, suffragist, author of the Equal Rights Amendment (1885).
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.
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.
Political gender equality is a central pillar of democracy, as all people, independently of gender, should have an equal say in political representation and decision-making. In practice, democracies are generally better at guaranteeing gender equality than most non-democratic regimes. According to International IDEA’s Global State of Democracy Indices, 41 per cent of democracies have high levels of gender equality, while this is the case in only two of the world’s authoritarian regimes (Belarus and Cuba). The democracies with low levels of gender equality are also exceptional (only four, all weak democracies - Iraq, Lebanon, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea). Low levels of gender equality are much more common in non-democracies – more than one third of them fall into this category.
Despite more than half the countries in the world being democracies of some form, levels of political gender equality have not kept pace with democratic progress. In 2022, only 26 per cent of legislators in the world are women, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union. At the current rate, gender parity will not be achieved until 2062, according to International IDEA’s estimate. The proportion of women heads of state is even lower. In 2022, only 19 countries in the world have women in the highest office of executive power. Of these, all except four are democracies. Moreover, as global democratic progress is threatened by rising authoritarianism and democratic backsliding, fragile levels of gender equality, further weakened by the pandemic, are at risk of more setbacks, as gender is increasingly used as a weapon in such processes.
Click here to read the full article published by International IDEA on 7 March 2022.
The pantheon of autocratic leaders includes a great many sexists, from Napoléon Bonaparte, who decriminalized the murder of unfaithful wives, to Benito Mussolini, who claimed that women “never created anything.” And while the twentieth century saw improvements in women’s equality in most parts of the world, the twenty-first is demonstrating that misogyny and authoritarianism are not just common comorbidities but mutually reinforcing ills. Throughout the last century, women’s movements won the right to vote for women; expanded women’s access to reproductive health care, education, and economic opportunity; and began to enshrine gender equality in domestic and international law—victories that corresponded with unprecedented waves of democratization in the postwar period. Yet in recent years, authoritarian leaders have launched a simultaneous assault on women’s rights and democracy that threatens to roll back decades of progress on both fronts.
Click here to read the full article published by Foreign Affairs.
Fawcett's Sex and Power 2022 Index is a biennial report which charts the progress towards equal representation for women in top jobs across the UK. Yet again, the report reveals the pace of change is glacial in the majority of sectors and shows that women are outnumbered by men 2:1 in positions of power.
Women of colour are vastly under-represented at the highest levels of many sectors and alarmingly, they are missing altogether from senior roles such as Supreme Court Justices, Metro Mayors, Police and Crime Commissioners and FTSE 100 CEOs.
Click here to download the report.
Very little research has considered how media discrimination could impact men and women’s political ambition. Yet, media discrimination could impact both beliefs about gender roles and political competence, and beliefs about voter bias, both of which could decrease women’s political ambition and increase men’s. Alternatively, media discrimination could lead women to react against discrimination and be motivated politically. This study tests how political ambition of men and women is impacted by media discrimination in a campaign and election lab experiment. Media discrimination in this experiment under-reports on women and uses traditional, stereotypical depictions of men and women. The results suggest that in certain conditions, media discrimination in political news may lead to a reactance or positive challenge effect for women, increasing their political ambition. Men, instead, may feel an aversion to entering politics, lowering their political ambition.
Click here to read the full article published by Sage Journals on 22 October 2022.
Although a voluminous literature has studied the substantive representation of women, these studies have largely been confined to advanced democracies. Similarly, studies that focus on the relationship between Islam and women’s rights largely ignored the substantive representation of women in Muslim-majority countries. As one of the first studies of its kind, this article investigates the role of religion in the substantive representation of women by focusing on a Muslim-majority country: Turkey. Using a novel data set of 4,700 content coded private members’ bills (PMBs) drafted in the Turkish parliament between 2002 and 2015, this article synthesizes competing explanations of women’s representation in the Middle East and rigorously tests the implications of religion, ideology, critical mass, and labor force participation accounts. The results have significant implications for the study of gender and politics in Muslim-majority countries.
Click here to download the report.
In times of crisis, people are more likely to appoint women and people of colour to be leaders. But this puts crisis leaders in a very precarious position.
When Carol Bartz was appointed CEO at Yahoo in January 2009, the internet company was struggling. She was hired on a four-year contract and put forward a strategic plan to turn things around. But in September 2011 – in a phone call with Yahoo's chairman of the board – she was fired, just two years and eight months after she'd joined the company.
"They didn't even let [her plan] come to fruition," says Alison Cook, a professor of management at Utah State University in the US.
Bartz is one of countless female leaders given a precarious leadership position and left standing on the edge of a "glass cliff" with no support.
Research shows that women and people from ethnic minorities are more likely to be chosen to lead a company, sports team, or even country when it is in crisis mode. While those glass cliff positions can provide a way for some leaders to prove themselves, they come with significant downsides – including stress, burnout, and derailed careers.
Click here to read the full article published by BBC on 7 February 2022.