Women's Leadership
A new report has found that women in Congress are 70 times more likely to be targeted by deepfakes than men, often with sexually explicit images created by AI.
The American Sunlight Project (ASP) found that out of over 35,000 images of politicians, 26 different people have been exposed to non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII).
Out of these, 25 were women. Strikingly, one in six congress women have fallen victim to non-consensual imagery.
This is particularly concerning as Congress has previously introduced bills such as the Defiance Act, which criminalizes such activity. However, according to news outlet the 19th, due to the bureaucracy of the American political system, the House is still awaiting approval to finalize the legislation.
In a separate study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, an analysis of the comments on Instagram posts for women currently in power found that one in ten comments was highly likely to be toxic, with a staggering 93% of reports ignored by Instagram, as previously reported.
Read here the full article published by Cyber News on 16 December 2024.
Image by Cyber News
A new report published by the Open Nepal Initiative (ONI) sheds light on the increasing number of incidents of online violence targeting women politicians in Nepal.
The study says the pervasive issue undermines democratic participation and silences critical voices in public discourse. “The findings, based on monitoring the social media accounts of 12 prominent women politicians over three months (August–October 2024), expose alarming patterns and highlight the urgent need for action to create safer digital spaces,” a press release issued by the organisation on Sunday said.
The study finds that X, formerly Twitter, emerged as the primary platform for online abuse, accounting for most incidents during all three months. The anonymity and reach of social media have enabled perpetrators to launch coordinated attacks, spreading disinformation and gendered hate speech against female politicians, it said.
The study found that lawmakers Toshima Karki of Rastriya Swatantra Party, Sumana Shrestha of the same party and Minister for Foreign Affairs Arzu Rana Deuba of Nepali Congress are among the most targeted politicians.
Read here the full article published by The Kathmandu Post on 16 December 2024.
Image by The Kathmandu Post
The Coordinator, Afikpo North East Development Center, Comrade Ibe Immaculata Nnenna has urged women to encourage/support fellow women in office rather than castigate or seek their downfall.
The female politician spoke at a one-day high level multi-stakeholder’s roundtable on improving women’s political participation in Nigeria.
The event was organised by a Civil Society Organisation, Women Aid Collective, in partnership with UN Women, with support from the Government of Canada.
Sharing her experience as a young woman politician in Ebonyi State, Ibe, said the major hindrance she encountered in her political career were imposed by her fellow women.
She noted that as a young woman in politics, only few elderly ones showed willingness to extend mentorship to her while others were always bent on frustrating her efforts using diverse strategies.
Read here the full article published by 247ureports on 27 November 2024.
Image by 247ureport
The politician spoke at a one-day high level multi-stakeholder’s roundtable on enhancing women’s political participation in Nigeria.
The event was organised by a Civil Society Organisation, Women Aid Collective, in partnership with UN Women, with support from the Government of Canada.
Sharing her experience as a young woman politician in Ebonyi State, Ibe, the Development Centre Coordinator of Afikpo Northeast in Afikpo Local Government Area of Ebonyi State, said the major roadblocks she encountered in her political career were imposed by her fellow women.
Others, she said, were always bent on frustrating her efforts using diverse strategies.
She stressed that men are not the major problem of women in making their marks in Nigerian politics, maintaining that women out of mutual jealousy scandalise their fellow women, fabricating all kinds of lies to discredit their fellow women excelling in politics or seeking political positions.
Ibe narrated: “Before I became an office holder, I was thinking that men are our problem.
“At every occasion I would always be saying that the men should be told to give us a chance; tell the men to give us 35 percent affirmative action.
“But now I have discovered that the problem is not totally from men.
Read here the full article published by The Eagle Online on 22 November 2024.
Image by The Eagle Online
Beyond the ballot box
The election results reflect broader societal patterns affecting advancement in politics and other spheres. Despite increasing representation in various fields, the path to executive positions remains complex. This reality resonates particularly with established professionals who have navigated similar dynamics throughout their careers.
The conversation extends beyond individual candidates to examine institutional structures that influence leadership selection. As more voices join public discourse, many note how traditional power dynamics continue to shape outcomes across sectors.
Creating sustainable change
Community engagement and strategic coalition-building emerge as critical factors for progress. Grassroots organizations are developing new approaches to leadership development and support systems. These efforts focus on long-term institutional change rather than individual electoral cycles.
An April 2023 Pew Research Center report shows increasing political participation among diverse demographics, suggesting potential for future breakthrough moments. Thus, sustainable progress requires addressing deeper systemic issues around access and opportunity.
Read here the full article published by Rolling Out on 20 November 2024.
Image by Rolling Out
South Sudan UN Women Country Representative Rukaiya Mohammed has underscored the importance of dialogue in empowering women.
Mohammed expressed the sentiments during the three-day inter-generational dialogue on women’s leadership and political participation from East Africa.
The workshop held in Juba created a platform on breaking barriers for women in leadership.
“The transition period has been extended for two years, so we say women should not sleep. We should strategize and take advantage of the momentum,” Mohammed said.
“We said the young can walk fast, but the elderly know the road. It is vital for young women to harness the wisdom of the elders, while the elders should value the creativity and energy of the youth,” she added.
The dialogue included members of the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) from Kenya, Rwanda, and South Sudan, local MPs, and representatives from civil society organizations (CSOs).
Read here the full article published by Radio Tamazuj on 16 November 2024.
Image by Radio Tamazuj
Are elected officials more responsive to men than women inquiring about access to government services? Women face discrimination in many realms of politics, but evidence is limited on whether such discrimination extends to interactions between women and elected officials. In recent years, several field experiments have examined public officials’ responsiveness. The majority focused on racial bias in the USA, while the few experiments outside the USA were usually single-country studies. We explore gender bias with the first large-scale audit experiment in five countries in Europe (France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Netherlands) and six in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Uruguay). A citizen alias whose gender is randomized contacts members of parliament about unemployment benefits or healthcare services. The results are surprising. Legislators respond significantly more to women (+3% points), especially in Europe (+4.3% points). In Europe, female legislators in particular reply substantially more to women (+8.4% points).
Click here to see the report.
More than 2.5 billion women and girls around the world are affected in multiple ways by discriminatory laws and the lack of legal protections. In response, UN Women, the African Union, the Commonwealth, Inter-Parliamentary Union, Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, and Secretaría General Ibero-Americana have jointly issued “Equality in law for women and girls by 2030: A multistakeholder strategy for accelerated action” in close collaboration with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Equality Now, Global Citizen, Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights, International Association of Women Judges, International Development Law Organization, Muslims for Progressive Values, and Women’s Learning Partnership to tackle persisting discrimination in law.
Between 2019 and 2023, the strategy seeks to fast track the repeal of discriminatory laws in six thematic areas—comprehensive reforms, women’s economic empowerment, minimum age of marriage provisions, nationality rights, discriminatory rape laws, and family and personal status laws—in 100 countries and is expected to address the legal needs of more than 50 million women and girls.
Click here to see the report.
Our report, with U.S.-based National Democratic Institute (NDI), outlines a new framework for understanding how disinformation is being used online to exclude women from public life, in the first major study into this threat to democracy.
The report has found that online spaces are being systematically weaponised to exclude women leaders and to undermine the role of women in public life. Attacks on women which use hateful language, rumour and gendered stereotypes combine personal attacks with political motivations, making online spaces dangerous places for women to speak out. And left unchecked, this phenomenon of gendered disinformation, spread by state and non-state actors, poses a serious threat to women’s equal political participation.
In this research, we investigated state-aligned gendered disinformation in two countries, Poland and the Philippines, through an analysis of Twitter data. The research found evidence of disinformation campaigns which attacked women and used gendered narratives to undermine women who oppose or criticise the state.
For the first time, researchers identified core themes of gendered disinformation, and common strategies used by those engaged in it, finding that campaigns relied not just on false information, but used highly emotive content to try to undermine their targets politically.
The report found that gendered disinformation is parasitic on news events, existing rumours, and underlying social stereotypes, and can be extremely successful in reaching a broad audience to reshape public discourse in a way that harms women.
Demos is calling for systematic improvements to be made to how platforms operate in facilitating, promoting and moderating online speech. Existing responses to disinformation, such as fact-checking, while important, are ineffective in solving this problem.
Click here to access the report.
COVID-19 and conflict: Advancing women’s meaningful participation in ceasefires and peace processes
This brief addresses the importance of women’s full, equal, and meaningful participation to an effective pandemic response and to peacemaking efforts, and how the women, peace and security (WPS) agenda can provide a critical framework for inclusive decision-making and sustainable solutions. While efforts to flatten the pandemic’s curve unfold around the globe, violent conflict remains a deadly reality for far too many people.
In March 2020, the UN Secretary-General called for a global ceasefire to allow the world to address COVID-19. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, women have been at the forefront of effective COVID-19 prevention and response efforts—from frontline service delivery to the highest levels of decision-making. With women’s participation central to achieving sustainable solutions, the pandemic has brought into sharp relief how critical the WPS agenda is to inclusive and effective decision-making.
This brief recognizes the vital role of women’s civil society organizations in mobilizing support for an urgent cessation of hostilities, inclusive ceasefire processes, and comprehensive peace talks. It also provides a preliminary analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on women’s participation in ceasefires and peace processes and offers a series of recommendations, including on “building back better”.
Click here to see the report.
On 24–25 October 2019, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA)—together with the Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law (ECCL) and the Political Settlements Research Programme (PSRP) at the University of Edinburgh—hosted the inaugural event in a series of forums to be known as the Women Constitution-Makers’ Dialogue.
The series is a networking and peer-to-peer dialogue programme wherein women constitution-makers and comparative constitutional experts can share country-specific constitution-building experiences, knowledge resources and tools, and identify opportunities and obstacles to women’s participation and influence from both a country-level and global perspective. The dialogue focuses on women’s representation and participation in national constitution-making processes, examines constitutional outcomes from a gender perspective, and considers commonly contested constitutional design choices more broadly.
Click here to see the report.
Women have made significant inroads into political life in recent years, but in many parts of the world, their increased engagement has spurred attacks, intimidation, and harassment. This book provides the first comprehensive account of this phenomenon, exploring how women came to give these experiences a name: violence against women in politics.
Tracing its global emergence as a concept, Mona Lena Krook draws on insights from multiple disciplines--political science, sociology, history, gender studies, economics, linguistics, psychology, and forensic science--to develop a more robust version of this concept to support ongoing activism and inform future scholarly work.
Click here to see the book.