Women's Leadership
Women’s participation in politics and leadership remains low in African countries due to various factors, including online harassment and a patriarchal system that hinders their involvement.
This was highlighted during a workshop attended by journalists from Sub-Saharan African countries, held in Nairobi, Kenya and spearheaded by International IDEA https://www.idea.int/ and WYDE.
Speaking at the workshop, Josephine Mwangi, the Program Manager for the Women’s Political Participation Project in Africa and West Asia from IDEA, stated that the limited participation of women in politics is driven by multiple factors, including the way media portrays women.
The African Barometer report, published in November 2024, revealed that women’s representation in African parliaments stood at only 27% in 2024. Additionally, the report showed that the increase in women’s political participation in Africa has stagnated, with only a 1% rise recorded between 2021 and 2024.
The workshop also highlighted that one of the key barriers to women’s representation in politics is the threats and harassment they face, both when participating in politics and when using social media platforms.
Read here the full article published by WinoTz on 21 February 2025.
Image by WinoTz
Young women in America have seen two female presidential candidates lose to President Donald Trump during some of the most formative years of their lives.
Four young voters on the GBH News video series “Politics IRL,” debated whether the glass ceiling is breakable, and if the country is making progress toward one day seeing a woman in the oval office in wake of Trump’s latest victory.
“The fact that we’re nominating female candidates is least a move in the right direction,” said 26-year-old independent Leandena Dankese.
She noted former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s 2024 run for president. “It was admirable to see women in office actually trying to reach for the presidency and getting closer and closer each time.”Jaclyn Corriveau, a 34-year-old Republican, said Kamala Harris’ candidacy is a bad case study for female candidates, considering her “forced nomination.”
“We need to think about how Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris came into their nominations. I think Hillary came up through a much more democratic process. Kamala Harris was anointed,” Corriveau said.
Read here the full article published by GBH News on 4 February 2025.
Image by GBH News
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – It was a brief remark during a mundane session of parliament. But to Harini Amarasuriya, Sri Lanka’s prime minister, it was the moment she realized that her country, wrecked not long ago by strongman leaders and their populist politics, had entered a potentially transformative moment for women.
A male colleague (and “not a very feminist” one, as Amarasuriya described him) stood up to say that the island nation could not get more women into the formal workforce unless it officially recognized the “care economy” – work caring for others.
To Amarasuriya, it was “one of the biggest thrills” to hear language in government that had long been confined to activists or to largely forgotten gender departments. “I was like, ‘OK, all those years of fighting with you have paid off,’” she said with a laugh during an interview in December at her office in Colombo, the capital.
Two years after Sri Lankans rose up and cast out a political dynasty whose profligacy had brought economic ruin, the country is in the midst of a once-in-a-lifetime reinvention.
Read here the full article published by The Spokesman-Review on 4 February 2025.
Image by The Spokesman-Review
Worsening levels of abuse are deterring future politicians from careers in parliament, a group of MPs have warned.
Bradford West MP Naz Shah, Rother Valley MP Jake Richards and ex-Dewsbury MP Mark Eastwood said women received more threats and abuse than male colleagues - and it was discouraging their staff from careers in politics.
The politicians made the claims after Spen Valley MP Kim Leadbeater told Radio 4 earlier this week that the level of abuse had increased since her sister Jo Cox was murdered by a far right terrorist in 2016.
Leadbeater said the level of "abuse and nastiness in politics" then was "nowhere near what it is like now".
Richards, who worked on the prosecution of Cox's killer as a junior lawyer, said the abuse had caused members of his parliamentary staff to reconsider careers in politics, which was "pretty shocking".
He said: "We need people from all backgrounds and perspectives to get into public life and to represent us or we'll go wrong politically.
"It's not just about looking after MPs and not hurting feelings, it's about how we make our politics work better."
Read the full article here.
1. Defends Mexico’s Sovereignty
Claudia Sheinbaum, the newly elected president of Mexico, has reiterated the need to “keep calm” in the face of several executive orders and threats issued by President Donald Trump regarding trade, migration, and other issues that impact U.S.-Mexican relations.
2. International Criminal Court Prosecutor Requests Arrest Warrants for Taliban Leaders
This week, a prosecutor from the International Criminal Court (ICC) officially requested arrest warrants for two Taliban leaders in Afghanistan under charges of gender-based persecution. The warrants, which cite article 7(1)(h) of the Rome Statute, target supreme spiritual leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and Abdul Hakim Haqqani, who has been the chief justice of Afghanistan since 2021.
3. Iraqi Parliament Passes Law to Permit Marriage of Girls as Young as Nine
The Iraqi parliament has enacted legislation allowing the marriage of girls as young as nine. The law revokes a ban enacted in 1959 that made the statutory minimum age for marriage eighteen, with some allowance for individuals as young as fifteen to marry with legal approval.
Read here the full article published by the Council on Foreign Relations on 24 January 2025 .
Ten years of war have severely weakened political life, undermining its role as a peaceful foundation for society in Yemen. CMI is supporting the country’s political parties in restoring their standing, with a strong emphasis on empowering women as a crucial step toward lasting peace. During a workshop held in Amman, Jordan, in November 2024, politicians shared their perspectives on how to strengthen women’s role in politics.
“The first obstacle to women’s participation in politics in Yemen is that their roles are restricted to traditional expectations. We rarely see women involved in critical and sensitive departments within political parties. For instance, women hardly ever work in political or economic departments, and they rarely participate in military or diplomatic matters. This means women are often unaware of or uneducated about these issues.”
Read here the full article published by CMI – Martti Ahtisaari Peace Foundation on 16 January 2025.
Image by CMI – Martti Ahtisaari Peace Foundation
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
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.