Women's Leadership
In Togo’s rural communities, women bear much of the family responsibilities. However, they remain committed to their communities’ development despite the socio-cultural pressures.
Several rural areas in the Kara region of northern Togo have poor infrastructure, affecting the communities in Bassar and the Kabye, Lamba, and Konkomba people. The roads are often impassable, and waterways hamper hospital access, posing significant healthcare challenges. The women working as community health workers must combine their professional and family responsibilities to provide essential care for their communities.
In Togo, women account for more than 51.3 percent of the population of over 9 million. The illiteracy rate is 33 percent for men and almost double that for women.
Women-specific challenges in rural communities
In traditional Togolese culture, gender stereotypes are still prevalent, often preventing women from standing up for themselves and making independent decisions.
Agriculture is the primary industry in rural areas. It employs 80 percent of the female working population in subsistence farming, helping them provide for their families and meet their everyday needs. However, only 15 percent hold land titles. This limited access to land ownership and agricultural credits makes them dependent on men for resources and decision-making. Many women often suffer discrimination and economic violence, which, according to a demographic study, is sometimes compounded by physical violence. Reports indicate that as many as 32 percent of Togolese women have been victims of physical or sexual abuse from the age of 15.
Full article available here.
The end of the oppressive Assad regime in Syria in late 2024 has been broadly welcomed on the global stage – underscored by the fact the United States and European Union have now lifted sanctions against the country.
However, women have been marginalised by Syria’s new leadership. That’s a problem for Syrian women, of course, but it also puts at risk prospects for sustainable peace in Syria.
A growing body of research, including our own, shows a direct correlation between gender equality and peace.
Syria now stands at a crossroads. Will it ensure women’s meaningful participation and follow a path to peace? Or will things head in the other direction?
This is more urgent than ever. Failure to grapple with women’s rights in Syria risks plunging the nation further into extremist violence.
Full article published here.
The First Lady, Oluremi Tinubu, has said that allocating special seats to women in state and federal parliaments is not an act of charity but a way of strengthening the country’s democracy.
Tinubu made this statement on Wednesday at an interactive session on the special seat bill for women during the 2025 Open National Assembly Week, organised by the House of Representatives in Abuja.
Represented by the Chairman of the House Committee on Women Affairs, Kafilat Ogbara, the First Lady commended the 10th House of Representatives for pushing the reservation of special seats for women in both the states and the National Assembly.
She pledged to continue supporting interventions that promote women’s political empowerment, education, and economic inclusion, urging legislators to demonstrate official eagerness to ease the passage of the bill.
She said, “This event comes at a very important time in our nation’s history, as the National Assembly is currently conducting public hearings across the country on key constitutional and legislative reforms.
Full article available here.
Just four years ago, a woman in Afghanistan could technically decide to run for President, attend university, or play sports.
Today, none of that is possible. Even before the Taliban took power in August 2021, Afghanistan ranked among the lowest countries in the world for gender equality. But there had been hard-won gains. Now, under the Taliban’s de facto rule, those gains have been erased and Afghanistan has become the world’s most severe women’s rights crisis.
Yet the fierce determination and resistance of Afghan women continues to burn – and inspire. Despite near-total restrictions on their lives, they still find ways to run businesses and work on the front lines as humanitarian workers, journalists and community leaders.
“Sometimes, I wonder how to remain hopeful in these dark circumstances,” says Fariba (name changed), who had just started a degree when universities were closed to women. “Nonetheless, I remain hopeful for the future and reassure myself that darkness will end soon, and women and girls in our society will once again access opportunities for work, education and their basic rights.”
Full article published here.
Women in Borno state have called on the state government to mandate the reservation of special portfolios both at the state and federal levels.
The women, under the aegis of Women Political Participation Working Group, made the demand in the late hours of Thursday during a Consultative meeting of Women Advocacy Groups in preparation for the Zonal Public Hearing on Review of the 1999 Constitution in Maiduguri, Borno state
The Chairperson of the Women Political Participation Working Group, Aisha Abubakar, while speaking, said the bill for seat reservation, which has been prepared, is set to be presented at the Zonal public hearing on constitutional review.
She said, “The bill is all about having a reserved seat for women so that women can contest favourably and confidently for seats.
“Initially, contesting with men is not easy because of reasons like political, social, economic and other factors. Now, if we have this reserve seat, it means they will be basically reserved for us to contest”.
While citing an instance, she said, “We have 27 LGAs in Borno state, and 28 members House of Assembly, so going forward there will be additional members.
“Those additions will be reserved for women. This will also include senatorial district, where we have three, so it is now going to be four, which means the additional one is for women.”
Read here the full article.
In the grand theatre of South Asian politics, where symbolism often overshadows substance, women’s political participation remains wrapped in layers of emotional performance and aesthetic design. Women’s representation in politics is packaged within strategic aesthetics; emotional narratives of motherhood, sacrifice, and campaign posters all contribute to a branded women’s representation in politics that distributes aesthetic meaning. This is more than branding; it is what is often casually termed in political and feminist discourse, increasingly “Pink Politics,” a curated image of progress appears progressive to an extent but ultimately reproduces the very limitations of traditional gender roles.
Read the full article here.
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.
Women participating in politics have navigated unique challenges and opportunities from the coronavirus pandemic. Governments around the world should take these steps to safeguard women’s political inclusion during the pandemic and beyond.
The coronavirus pandemic continues to disrupt political processes around the world. Seventy-three elections have been postponed. Many parliaments have suspended or limited their activities, and over a hundred countries have restricted citizens’ freedom of assembly and expression in the name of public health. Authoritarian and authoritarian-leaning leaders have further taken advantage of the emergency to concentrate power in the executive branch.
Few analyses have probed the gendered consequences of these trends. In the media, the main narrative about gender and pandemic politics has centered on the perceived effectiveness of female politicians in responding to the crisis—including Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand. Yet these positive headlines conceal a more worrisome global picture: the pandemic’s profound political and socioeconomic effects could halt or reverse advances in women’s political inclusion.
Click here to read the full article published by Carnegie Endowment on 17 November 2020.