Women's Leadership
This poster presents global data on women in executive positions as Heads of State, Heads of Government, and Cabinet members heading Ministries. Data indicate that women are underrepresented at all levels of executive decision-making worldwide, and achieving gender parity in political life remains a distant goal.
Only 26 countries are led by a woman, a modest increase from just 18 countries a decade ago. Women represent 23.3 per cent of Cabinet members heading Ministries in 2024—a less than 0.5 percentage point increase from 2023—and continue to primarily lead portfolios related to women and gender equality, family and children affairs, social affairs, and indigenous and minority affairs. Policy domains such as economic affairs, defence, justice, and home affairs, continue to be dominated by men.
Click here to see the full poster published by UN Women on June 2024.
India recently concluded its 2024 general elections, which took place in seven phases—from April 19 to June 1—to elect all 543 members of the Lok Sabha (lower house). While the results have taken many by surprise, what has been even more astonishing is the fact that for a country that has rigorously been trying to establish a more progressive front on women’s rights and gender equality over the past few years, the new Indian parliament has failed to showcase a notable uptick in the representation of women after the latest elections.
Making just 13.63 per cent of the elected strength, the 18th Lok Sabha will comprise only 74 women compared to 469 men. This share is not only abysmally skewed but also lower than the 14.4 per cent share of female representation during the 2019 election, where 78 women were elected as MPs.
The irony here is that just last year, India—during its G20 presidency—brought about a paradigm shift in gender-based policymaking by challenging the status quo and with the innovative idea of women-led development in order to ensure women’s inclusion and representation at all levels of decision-making.
Even at the domestic level, India—after many deliberations—finally passed the historic Women’s Reservation Bill in 2023, which seeks to reserve one-third of the seats in the Lok Sabha and state legislative assemblies for women.
Read here the full article published by the First Post on 20 June 2024.
Image by First Post
São Paulo witnessed a historic change in the 2020 municipal elections. Four Black women were elected as councillors — over 72 years, the capital of São Paulo state has elected only six Black women councillors in total.
However, the proportion of women among the 55 members of the City Council — the largest in Brazil — is still below that of the general population. In São Paulo, for every 10 councillors, two are women. When taking into account all of the metropolitan region, the average falls to one woman councillor for every 10 deputies in the town halls.
When looking at municipal councils, the situation seems even more difficult: only three of the 39 cities in Greater São Paulo have women mayors.
According to the platform TSE Women, of the High Electoral Court, women comprise more than half (52 percent) of the electorate in Brazil. However, the number of votes won by women candidates between 2016 and 2022 was 33 percent, with 15 percent of them being elected.
A few months before new elections in the 5,565 Brazilian municipalities, scheduled for next October, Agência Mural talked to councillors, community leaders, and experts about why it is so difficult for women, especially from peripheral, poorer areas, to enter institutional politics, and also about the journeys of those who were elected.
Read here the full article published by Global Voices on 18 June 2024.
Image by Global Voices
The Global Gender Gap Index annually benchmarks the current state and evolution of gender parity across four key dimensions (Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment). It is the longest-standing index tracking the progress of numerous countries’ efforts towards closing these gaps over time since its inception in 2006.
Read here the full report published by the World Economic Forum on 11 June 2024.
Image by WEF
PAKISTAN ranks low on the Gender Gap Index in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, 2023. On women’s political empowerment, it ranked 95th out of 146 countries, with only a handful of women occupying senior, managerial, policy- and decision-making posts. The main factors preventing women from achieving gender parity in politics are a patriarchal system, systemic gender discrimination, socioeconomic disparity, and hidebound cultural norms.
The Constitution is clear that “there shall be no discrimination on the basis of sex alone” and that “steps shall be taken to ensure full participation of women in all spheres of national life”. Besides, Pakistan is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which obligates governments to “take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in political and public life”, including in elections.
Pakistan’s women constitute almost half of the population, but their share in parliament is just 20 per cent. The gender gap also exists among voters.
Women’s participation and representation in the political process is a fundamental principle of democracy, and it is a prerequisite for gender-sensitive and gender-responsive governance. Ensuring the latter is only possible by increasing the number of women in policy- and decision-making positions and providing them with a conducive and women-friendly environment. According to UN Women, “in the last 25 years, women’s political representation has doubled globally. Even then, more than three-quarters of seats in parliament are still held by men”.
Read the full article here.
Image by Dawn
News reports over the past few years featuring Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, or his daughter, Kim Ju Ae, have led to speculation about a future North Korea ruled by a woman. This is an intriguing development worth monitoring, given the North Korean regime’s history of patrilineal succession. However, ordinary North Korean women may have a greater role to play in the future of the country.
These women are typically out of the spotlight but always present in the background, working for the Kaesong Industrial Complex, applauding Kim Jong Un or his military parade with flowers, or dancing to songs in front of respected guests. They have never received significant attention, but they might have the potential to empower themselves and create positive dynamics in contemporary North Korea. Accordingly, the international community should focus specifically on increasing those women’s access to opportunities and resources and their ability to effect change in North Korean society through various multilateral engagements.
Read here the full article published by the United States Institute of Peace on 28 May 2024.
Image by United States Institute of Peace
Abstract
Social norms that legitimise men as political leaders, and undervalue women’s leadership, are a tenacious barrier to women’s representation globally. This article explores the circumstances under which women dynasty politicians, whose legacy connections have provided them with an initial pathway into politics, are able to disrupt these norms. We test a proposed typology of normative change – one that progresses from norm acceptance, to norm modification, then norm resistance – among women dynasty politicians in the Pacific Islands. We find that norms of masculinised political leadership are strong, and in many cases the election of wives, widows, daughters and other relatives of male political actors reinforces these norms through their positioning as ‘placeholders’. Yet some women dynasty politicians can, and do, challenge and extend social norms of leadership. This is especially the case when the ‘legacy advantage’ is a springboard from which women demonstrate – and their publics accept – their own articulation of political leadership.
Click here to access the paper.
This report reflects the main arguments presented during the high-level seminar, organized by UN Women in collaboration with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, on “Strengthening women’s participation in peace processes: What roles and responsibilities for states?” in Rome, Italy, on 3 and 4 December 2019. The main arguments include the persistent barriers to women’s meaningful participation in peace and mediation processes and the opportunities that exist to remove them.
Specifically, seminar participants discussed challenges related to limited political will, the link between women’s underrepresentation in politics and their marginalization in peace processes, the complex balance between women’s representation and promoting gender equality, and the barriers to sustainable civil society involvement.
Second, the report highlights perspectives and lessons learned that representatives of the United Nations, Member States, regional organizations, and civil society shared on how to enhance women’s meaningful participation in peace processes. Two strategies were emphasized: the design of inclusive peace processes and the role of regional networks of women mediators in bridging peace processes across tracks. The case studies of Colombia, Syria, and Cyprus are also included, offering insights on some successful strategies to increase women’s participation.
Finally, the report describes the key policy recommendations that emanated from the seminar, with a view to addressing ongoing barriers to women’s participation and using innovative and comprehensive strategies to achieve more gender-responsive peace processes.
Source: UN Women
The global report on Gender Equality in Public Administration (GEPA) report provides an overview of key trends and analysis on women’s participation and leadership in public administration, based on evidence from UNDP and the University of Pittsburgh’s ground-breaking GEPA database. The first comprehensive in-depth research into the issue covering 170 countries, finds that though there has been progress on women’s representation overall in public administration, persistent gaps remain. Women continue to hit a glass ceiling and glass walls that stop them from advancing to positions at the highest levels of power and influence, including in the COVID-19 response. The report provides practical recommendations to help shatter these glass ceilings and glass walls and to reimagine and redesign more gender inclusive and diverse public administrations.
Source: UNDP
Abstract
Throughout history, most positions of political power have been held by men, and despite numerous laws and regulations aimed at increasing gender equality in society and politics, the majority of democratic assemblies remain predominantly composed of men. What makes this gender composition persistent over time? Using data from Swedish population registers from 1982 to 2014 and demographic statistics from 1749 to 1859, I study how historical social norms shape the present-day gender balance in local politics. The results show that where family formation was more traditional in the past, there are fewer women in local politics today. The analysis also shows that family formation is a likely mechanism for the transmission of social norms across generations. The findings contribute to our understanding of the historical persistence of social structures and the reasons why gender balance in politics is not easily achieved.
Click here to access the article.
Abstract
What explains the gender gap in political engagement and economic policy preferences? Many scholars point to material resources, while others credit cultural determinants. We identify and test an important link between these factors: cultural lineage norms that structure entitlements to resources. Studying the relationship between culture and resources is challenging in societies where both disadvantage women. We analyze a unique setting: northeast India, where matrilineal tribes live alongside patrilineal communities. Patriarchal cultures and political institutions are shared, but lineage norms are distinct: patrilineal groups distribute inherited wealth through men, while matrilineal tribes do so via women. We conduct survey and behavioral experiments with representative samples of both communities, alongside extensive qualitative research, and find that the gender gap reverses across patrilineal and matrilineal groups. Our results indicate that lineage norms—which determine who gets to make decisions about wealth and how—are key determinants of the political economy gender gap.
Click here to read the paper.
Abstract
Does the representation of women in cabinet and party leadership positions affect whether governments are more or less likely to fulfill the policy promises they make during election campaigns? This research note studies the effects of women's descriptive representation in cabinet and party leadership on policymaking by analyzing the pledge fulfillment of parties in 10 European countries, the United States, and Canada. The empirical analysis suggests that governing parties are more likely to fulfill their election promises when levels of women's representation are higher. The results have implications for our understanding of the descriptive and substantive representation of women, as well as for party competition and policymaking more broadly.
Click here to read the full article published by the Wiley Online Library on 18 February 2021.
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