Women's Leadership
The ninth National Assembly of Nigeria squandered an unparalleled chance to promote equitable political representation and gender empowerment by rejecting landmark gender bills, including the Reserved Seats for Women Bill (HB 1349 & SB 440). As the public hearing for this bill kicks off today, Monday, September 22, 2025, under the chairmanship of Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Benjamin Kalu, the nation stands at a crossroads in its journey toward gender-inclusive democracy. Activists, including renowned human rights advocate, Aisha Yesufu, are calling on the tenth Assembly to right past wrongs and cement their legacy by passing the bill.
The gathering brought together political leaders from around the world who collectively reflected on a vision of a future in which women not only participate equally in decision-making, but also actively shape global policies in the interests of peace, sustainability and equality.
On the occasion of the 80th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, the Vice President of the Parliament of Montenegro, Zdenka Popović, participated in the event with the theme "Positive Future", organized by the global network WPL (Women Political Leaders) at the invitation of WPL President Silvana Koh Mehrin.
As announced by the Parliament of Montenegro, the gathering brought together political leaders from around the world who jointly reflected on a vision of a future in which women not only participate equally in decision-making, but also actively shape global policies in the interest of peace, sustainability and equality.
"Vice President Popović used this opportunity for a series of important bilateral meetings with prominent international officials and leaders. Among the interlocutors were: Director-General of the World Health Organization Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, former President of Finland Tarja Halonen, former President of Ethiopia Sahle-Work Zewde, President of WPL Silvana Koh-Mehrin, as well as President and CFO of Salesforce, Robin Washington," it was announced.
The Women's Political Rights Forum has submitted six-point demands to the Election Commission (EC), calling for electoral reforms ahead of the 13th national elections.
The delegation met Chief Election Commissioner AMM Nasir Uddin at the Election Commission Building in Agargaon this afternoon (23 September).
The forum demanded mandatory nomination of women candidates, leadership roles for women within party structures, allocation of campaign funds equal to the expenditure limit, policies to prevent harassment both online and offline, direct elections to reserved parliamentary seats, and the introduction of 'no' votes in all constituencies. A written proposal outlining these demands was formally submitted to the EC during the meeting.
The meeting was led by Maheen Sultan, member of the Women's Affairs Reform Commission, and attended by Sadaf Saz, executive council member of Naripokkho; Seema Dutta, president of Bangladesh Nari Mukti Kendra; and Shyamoli Shil, president of Nari Samhati. Four election commissioners — Abdur Rahmanel Machud, Tahmida Ahmed, Md Anwarul Islam Sarkar, and Abul Fazal Md Sanaullah — along with EC Secretary Akhtar Ahmed, were also present.
New Zealand has brought in a Swedish economist to run its central bank as it seeks to end a period of turmoil at the top of the institution and steer the country away from the brink of a “double-dip” recession. Anna Breman, who has been first deputy governor of the Sveriges Riksbank in Sweden since 2019, will become the first female governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand when she takes up the role in December. Her appointment follows a period of recent upheaval at the central bank, where her predecessor Adrian Orr abruptly stood down this year due to a disagreement with the government over the institution’s budget. Neil Quigley, chair of the central bank, also departed last month. The RBNZ canvassed 300 candidates for the role, according to finance minister Nicola Willis, who in a statement on Wednesday praised Breman’s “impressive blend of technical skills and organisational leadership experience”.
On this International Day of Peace on September 21, the call for unity and reconciliation resonates worldwide but for women in conflict zones, peace is not just a principle to celebrate, it is a daily act of survival and rebuilding. Local community and government leaders, health workers, policymakers, and mothers sustain fragile trust in communities torn apart by violence. They rebuild, they console, they negotiate. Their actions and voices are critical in peace and security efforts, yet their stories seldom receive the recognition they deserve.
The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda acknowledges the meaningful perspectives that women bring to the table, drawing them from the margins to the center. Rooted in UN Security Council Resolution 1325, this framework emphasizes that decisions about peace must meaningfully include women. In alignment with the aims of the WPS agenda, organizations like Our Secure Future are leading initiatives to advance women’s roles in peace and security efforts in order to enable more effective policy-making and lasting peace. Evidence consistently shows that when women fully participate in peace processes, peace agreements tend to endure and carry meaning beyond words.
However, women remain underrepresented in peace processes globally. In 2023, women constituted only 9.6 percent of negotiators, 13.7 percent of mediators, and 26.6 percent of signatories in peace and ceasefire agreements, a notable improvement from earlier figures, yet still far short of parity even as their informal leadership continues to shape trust and dialogue in countless ways.
The harassment of women is nothing alien in Bangladesh, but when it comes to politics, the hostility is sharpened and deliberate. Women candidates, and anyone who dares to support them, are unfairly attacked, judged, and harassed. The recent student council elections in our biggest universities made this painfully clear. The misogyny, the character assassination, the filth in the comment sections of social media platforms, it is all meant to remind women of one thing: Politics is not your field.
I am no fan of BNP politician Rumin Farhana. But it stuck in my head when I scrolled through a news post about her; the comments were filled with bigotry, obscenity, and misogyny. This is the norm, but when the subject is a woman in politics, the ugliness multiplies. She is not attacked for her politics, but for her personal choices, for being unmarried, for simply existing as a woman in public life. The cruelty is staggering.
This cruelty is not just reserved for national figures. At Dhaka University, female candidates contesting the Ducsu elections have faced waves of online abuse. Obscene comments under campaign posts, sexually explicit inbox messages, doctored videos, even rape threats -- this is the reality of student politics for women.
One incident was so severe it reached the High Court: After a left alliance candidate filed a petition, a student posted a call for her “gang rape” on Facebook. The offender was suspended, but almost every woman candidate reported cyberbullying. As one described, social media had become a “weapon to bring down opponents.” Misogyny here is not about ideology. It is about punishing women for daring to get involved in politics at all.
This working paper is part of UN Women’s research efforts to highlight the importance of women’s leadership and participation in decision-making during the pandemic and beyond. The working paper tackles the question of how women leaders at the national and subnational levels of government managed COVID-19 response and recovery during the pandemic’s first 15 months, from January 2020 through March 2021.
The paper finds that women leaders placed premiums on effective leadership, rapid response, and socially inclusive policies as they understood that the effects of the pandemic would reach far beyond public health, affecting every aspect of society and disproportionately harming women and girls.
The publication also maps out lessons learned and recommendations on how to ensure women participate in and influence decision-making during the pandemic response and recovery.
Click here to read the report.
Special Representative on Gender Issues Hedy Fry (Canada) issued the 2021 Report today with a thematic focus on “Violence against women journalists and politicians: a growing crisis,” shedding light on intensifying and widespread offline and online violence against women in two public fields – journalism and politics.
The report, divided into two parts, explores the impact of such violence and its implications on the fields of journalism and politics, as well as democracy as a whole – outlining that the negative effect goes well beyond physical and mental health challenges. It examines the existing barriers to effective responses and possible ways forward that could be implemented to address this growing issue. Lastly, the report provides information on the dynamics of gender balance in the OSCE structures and its field offices.
Click here to read the full report published by OSCE on 12 August 2021.
The compilation, analysis and dissemination of gender statistics are critical to capture the specific realities in the life of women and men. They are powerful tool to highlight aspects of gender inequality, and to provide an evidence base for developing and monitoring policies and programmes oriented towards reducing these inequalities. Gender data is key to achieve the 2030 Agenda and other national commitments. Government policies and programs in Lebanon articulate the need for measuring and monitoring gender equality, which has led to a substantial increase in demand for data producers to make available relevant and reliable gender statistics.
In response to the rising needs for more gender disaggregated data and indicators, and to better understand trends in gender equalities and inequalities over the past 15 years, CAS- with the support of UNDP- did a compilation of gender-disaggregated indicators based on official survey-based statistics and administrative data. The results were comprehensively presented in the report “The life of Women and Men in Lebanon: A Statistical Portrait”. This compilation provides a better understanding of the country’s progress on gender inequality and highlights critical gaps and disparities yet to be bridged. The report focused on six thematic areas: Demography, health, education, labor market, socio-economic conditions, and decision-making and human rights.
Click here to read the full report published by UNDP on 19 October 2021.
Decades of research has debated whether women first need to reach a “critical mass” in the legislature before they can effectively influence legislative outcomes. This study contributes to the debate using supervised tree-based machine learning to study the relationship between increasing variation in women's legislative representation and the allocation of government expenditures in three policy areas: education, healthcare, and defense. We find that women's representation predicts spending in all three areas. We also find evidence of critical mass effects as the relationships between women's representation and government spending are nonlinear. However, beyond critical mass, our research points to a potential critical mass interval or critical limit point in women's representation. We offer guidance on how these results can inform future research using standard parametric models.
Click here to read the full article published by Cambridge University Press on 21 September 2021.
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