Women's Leadership
IT’S the responsibility of political parties to ensure that more women take part in local and national elections, says Assistant Foreign Minister and Deputy Speaker Lenora Qereqeretabua.
Additionally, Ms Qereqeretabua said making political life safer for women was crucial.
“Many capable women in politics face unfair attacks, making them reluctant to participate in public office,” she said, adding that addressing these issues was essential for a more inclusive society. The 2022 general election witnessed a decline in the number of female politicians compared with the 2018 election.
Click here to read the full article published by The Fiji Times on 13 December 2023.
Image by The Fiji Times
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Abstract: While the passage of the 2018 Gender Parity Law was a step in the right direction, progress on women’s political empowerment in Japan has been slow. With a combined effort from advocacy groups, political parties, and the international community to include more women on ballots and support them to electoral success, Japan can move the needle on gender equity in politics.
The annual Group of Seven (G7) meeting invites opportunities for multi-national collaboration but also comparison amongst the attending states. The G7 countries (Canada, the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, France, and Japan, plus attendance from the European Union) indeed share many things in common: they are all relatively wealthy, liberal democracies committed to working together on global issues. Yet the photos from this year’s meeting highlight another questionable commonality: where aren’t there more women in positions of leadership? A deeper look reveals varying levels of gender equality in politics across G7 members with Japan continuing to lag significantly behind.
Click here to read the full article published by The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus on 10 December 2023.
Image by The Asia-Pacific Journal
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Today, I’d like to reflect on why Southeast Asia stands out in the global history of gender, for pioneering female political and spiritual leadership; how job-creating economic growth, urbanisation and universities are the major contemporary drivers of gender equality; and how development cooperation can promote gender equality.
If you were to invent a time machine, where would you go to avoid gender discrimination? Pre-Christian Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, Central Asia and East Asia were all patrilineal and patrilocal. Survival and solidarity were rooted in clans, which were governed by men. Sons were celebrated as scions of the family line; heralded as providers and protectors. Daughters were merely temporary: they married out and moved away.
Since patrilineal societies trace descent down the male line, they usually care about paternal certainty and legitimate biological heirs. Virginity, chastity and cloistering were all idealised. In Ancient Greece, women were seen as inferior and ideally secluded. In public discourse, women’s names were not uttered. Men gained honour by providing for their families and keeping their wives at home.
Click here to read the full article published by Devpolicy on 8 December 2023.
Image by Devpolicy
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A noteworthy trend is emerging in Indian democracy, where women are choosing to participate in the electoral process. As the percentage of women voters rises across India, it is yet to be seen how future elections will be impacted.
New Delhi: In recent times, virtually every political party in India has included a dedicated section in its election manifesto, pledging to engage and attract female voters. Does this signal a significant shift in Indian society?
Traditionally, like in many South Asian societies, it was believed that women's electoral choices were heavily influenced by male family members, such as grandfathers, fathers, or husbands. Voting decisions were typically made by men within the family or local community leaders.
However, a noteworthy trend is emerging – an increasing number of women are actively participating in the electoral process. In the recently concluded elections in the state of Rajasthan, where women in rural areas often remain behind veils, the female voter turnout exceeded that of males, with 74.72 percent of women casting their votes compared to 74.53 percent of men.
Click here to read the full article published by The Friday Times on 7 December 2023.
Image by The Friday Times
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Belfast, Northern Ireland – Northern Irish academic and activist Monica McWilliams says it has taken 25 years for women to be recognised for their roles in bringing peace.
A co-founder of the Women’s Coalition political party and delegate at the multiparty talks that drove forward Northern Ireland’s peace process in the 1990s, she was also elected to the first regional power-sharing assemblies that were established by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
Al Jazeera interviewed McWilliams at the recent One Young World 2023 summit in Belfast, on the key role women played in the peace process and unfinished work of the Agreement.
Click here to read the full article published by Al Jazeera English on 1 December 2023.
Image by AI Jazeera English
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Governance in Africa is undergoing an upheaval – the kind that is people-driven, and more recently and unfortunately, army driven.
These are trying times for democracy globally. From civilian threats against democratic processes in the United States in January 2021, to the recent combatant takeover of Gabon’s Government.
But democracy remains the most popular means of governance among Africans. Protection of democracy calls for us all to reject coups unequivocally, and counter harmful narratives that democracy could be traded off for good governance.
Click here to read the full article published by The East African on 1 December 2023.
Image by The East African
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Women’s full and equal participation in all decision-making processes is necessary to achieve gender equality and drive progress towards sustainable development. In 2017, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) and the International Gender Champions–Geneva published Shaping the international agenda: Raising women’s voices in intergovernmental forums to empower a wide range of gender champions and stakeholders in advancing gender equality and parity in intergovernmental processes.
This second edition updates the findings and recommendations based on survey responses received from members of the United Nations Governing Bodies Secretariat (UNGBS) in 2020. Il also concludes with recommendations to further enhance gender parity goals directed at three important groups of actors: the UNGBS; Member States of the United Nations; and ministers, ambassadors, heads of organizations and other senior officials. A knowledge product and an advocacy tool, this report is intended to raise awareness, share lessons and inspire others to commit to action that improves and strengthens women’s participation, which is critical to shaping an inclusive international agenda.
Click here to access the report.
Politics & Gender is an agenda-setting journal that publishes quality scholarship on gender and politics and on women and politics. It aims to represent the full range of questions, issues, and approaches on gender and women across the major subfields of political science, including comparative politics, international relations, political theory, and U.S. politics.
Politics & Gender short paper series on Gender, Politics, and the Global Pandemic
The Gender, Politics, and the Global Pandemic series features 24 articles. The topics fall into three broad categories: Gender, leadership, and policymaking on Covid-19; gender, health, and public opinion during the Covid-19 pandemic; and Covid-19, caring, and inequality. The papers address such questions as: Were women leaders more successful in managing Covid-19 response? Why are men less likely to report wearing face coverings? How did the pandemic impact elections?
Click here to learn more and access the articles.
Summary: There has been a lot said about how women have done a better job leading during the Covid-19 crisis than men. According to an analysis of 360-degree assessments conducted between March and June of this year, women were rated by those who work with them as more effective. The gap between men and women in the pandemic is even larger than previously measured, possibly indicating that women tend to perform better in a crisis. In fact, women were rated more positively on 13 of the 19 competencies that comprise overall leadership effectiveness in the authors’ assessment.
When discussing the careers of women leaders, there’s a phenomenon referred to as the “glass cliff.” It’s an obvious relative to the term glass ceiling, which describes the invisible barrier to advancement that women often face when they are up for promotion to the highest levels of an organization. The “glass cliff” describes the idea that when a company is in trouble, a female leader is put in charge to save it. When women are finally given a chance to prove themselves in a senior position, they are handed something that is already broken and where the chances of failure are high.
We see this happen frequently enough that it made us wonder, are women in fact more qualified to lead during a crisis? Could that be why they are handed the reins when times are tough?
Click here to read the full article published by the Harvard Business Review on 30 December 2020.
Tool by Make Every Woman Count that monitors elections in Africa.
See it here.
MPs can sometimes be subject to human rights violations, ranging from arbitrary detention and exclusion from public life to even kidnapping and murder in the worst cases. The IPU has been defending MPs in danger for the past 40 years through its Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians.
The map below shows the latest alleged violations of MPs' human rights currently monitored by the IPU. Clicking on a country leads to the page of the parliament, from where you can access the latest information about the case.
See it here.
Violence against women in politics is an intolerable violation of women’s rights which poses fundamental challenges to democratic values and electoral processes. To tackle this issue, the Kofi Annan Foundation commissioned Carmen Alanis, the first female Chief Justice at the Superior Chamber of the Electoral Court of Mexico, and member of the Kofi Annan Foundation’s Electoral Integrity Initiative, to produce a policy paper which highlights the barriers women face in their attempts to access political spaces, as well as the challenges they encounter if elected to public office.
- In attempts to shed light on the extent of the problem, the paper addresses three vital questions:
- Why do women face barriers in exercising their political and electoral rights?
- If violence against women in politics is a global phenomenon with a negative impact on democracies, why is the problem still not being adequately addressed by states?
- Do current models of access to justice engage with the issue effectively?
The paper demonstrates that violence against women in politics undermines electoral integrity by disregarding the principles of universal suffrage and political equality. These principles are not being fulfilled in both newer and older democracies across the world, with various barriers to equal and universal political participation.
Click here to see the report.