Women's Leadership
On the sidelines of the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA80), a powerful, intergenerational and intersectional group of women leaders called for urgent action to centre women’s leadership in global peace efforts.
The event, hosted by the UN Women Leaders Network, in partnership with the Government of Iceland and the UN Foundation, was held ahead of the 25th anniversary of UN Security Council resolution 1325, which launched the Women, Peace and Security agenda. This year also marks the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action on gender equality, elevating women and girls’ leadership in peace and decision-making as fundamental to building a peaceful and sustainable future for all.
Gender equality commissioner Josie Christodoulou on Friday voiced concern over the low level of female participation in Cyprus’ political life ahead of the 2026 parliamentary elections, warning that unbalanced representation in decision-making creates a democratic deficit.
“Political parties need to demonstrate the same commitment to strengthening gender equality in politics to ensure the equal participation of all citizens in shaping the country’s future,” she said.
Christodoulou noted that women currently hold only 14 per cent of seats in parliament and 37 per cent of positions in the Council of Ministers.
At the local government level, female representation remains similarly low, while Cyprus is represented exclusively by men in the European parliament.
For several years, Nigerian MPs have been blocking legislation aimed at better representation for women in politics. The country's women – who make up the majority of the electorate – are pushing for a bill that would reserve at least 35 percent of seats in parliament for women.
Hundreds of women descended on the Nigerian capital, Abuja, on Monday to push for a bill that would add women-only seats in the Senate and House of Representatives.
Several African countries, from Senegal to Rwanda, have increased their number of female legislators by using quota systems.
Nigeria, which has some of the lowest numbers of women in parliament worldwide, has no such system.
It counts just four women senators out of 109, and 16 women in the 360-member House of Representatives, according to the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre (PLAC), a local NGO.
Weekend Reading on Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation in politics, on boards, in sports and entertainment, in judicial offices and in the private sector in the U.S. and around the world—with a little gardening and goodwill mixed in for refreshment!
Milestones for notable women this week include birthdays for: Mary Church Terrell, African American civil rights activist and suffragist (1863); Muthoni Wambu Kraal, partner at NEWCO Strategies; New York City council member Diana Ayala; U.S. Rep. Erin Houchin; Mehrnaz Teymourian, RepresentWomen board member; Erin Loos Cutraro, founder & CEO of She Should Run; U.S. Rep. Doris Matsui; U.S. Rep. Marilyn Strickland; Onida Coward Mayers, RepresentWomen board member; Sophie Dorf-Kamienny, RepresentWomen alum; Serena Williams; Corinne Bennett, RepresentWomen alum; Fatma Tawfik, RepresentWomen international research manager; Vi Alexander Lyles, mayor of Charlotte, N.C.; Madeleine M. Kunin, former Governor of Vermont; Poppy McDonald; and Katharine Pichardo-Erskine, executive director of Latino Victory Project.
The immediate past Accountant General of the Federation, Dr Oluwatoyin Madein, has decried the under-representation of women in the country’s political space, saying that efforts must be intensified to address this imbalance.
In a statement issued on Saturday by the Media Consultant to the former Accountant General, Temitope Oyekan and made available to journalists, Dr Madein described Nigerian women as very brilliant, resourceful, resilient, courageous and possessing all the required capacity to provide adequate leadership for the betterment of the country.
She remarked while speaking at the Ogun East Conference for Women, held at the Akarigbo Palace Hall in Sagamu.
This year’s conference, themed “Women in Leadership: Building Capacity, Enhancing Participation and Securing Tomorrow,” brought together leaders, professionals, entrepreneurs, and grassroots advocates in a vibrant exchange of ideas, celebrating women’s achievements and charting pathways for greater inclusion in governance and economic development.
Women leaders under the National Women’s Council have appealed to all stakeholders in Uganda’s electoral process to champion peace and prevent acts of violence during and after the forthcoming elections.
Addressing the media in Kampala, National Chairperson Faridah Kibowa emphasized that women and children often bear the heaviest impact of election-related conflicts.
“As women, we stand to advocate for peace because any form of violence directly affects us more, and it is our families that suffer most,” Kibowa said.
The leaders highlighted that violent episodes frequently result in displacement, lack of shelter or food, and exposure to gender-based violence.
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