Women's Leadership
A noteworthy trend is emerging in Indian democracy, where women are choosing to participate in the electoral process. As the percentage of women voters rises across India, it is yet to be seen how future elections will be impacted.
New Delhi: In recent times, virtually every political party in India has included a dedicated section in its election manifesto, pledging to engage and attract female voters. Does this signal a significant shift in Indian society?
Traditionally, like in many South Asian societies, it was believed that women's electoral choices were heavily influenced by male family members, such as grandfathers, fathers, or husbands. Voting decisions were typically made by men within the family or local community leaders.
However, a noteworthy trend is emerging – an increasing number of women are actively participating in the electoral process. In the recently concluded elections in the state of Rajasthan, where women in rural areas often remain behind veils, the female voter turnout exceeded that of males, with 74.72 percent of women casting their votes compared to 74.53 percent of men.
Click here to read the full article published by The Friday Times on 7 December 2023.
Image by The Friday Times
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Belfast, Northern Ireland – Northern Irish academic and activist Monica McWilliams says it has taken 25 years for women to be recognised for their roles in bringing peace.
A co-founder of the Women’s Coalition political party and delegate at the multiparty talks that drove forward Northern Ireland’s peace process in the 1990s, she was also elected to the first regional power-sharing assemblies that were established by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
Al Jazeera interviewed McWilliams at the recent One Young World 2023 summit in Belfast, on the key role women played in the peace process and unfinished work of the Agreement.
Click here to read the full article published by Al Jazeera English on 1 December 2023.
Image by AI Jazeera English
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Governance in Africa is undergoing an upheaval – the kind that is people-driven, and more recently and unfortunately, army driven.
These are trying times for democracy globally. From civilian threats against democratic processes in the United States in January 2021, to the recent combatant takeover of Gabon’s Government.
But democracy remains the most popular means of governance among Africans. Protection of democracy calls for us all to reject coups unequivocally, and counter harmful narratives that democracy could be traded off for good governance.
Click here to read the full article published by The East African on 1 December 2023.
Image by The East African
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Previous work suggests that observing women officeholders increases women’s political ambition. Yet, jumps in women’s representation in the United States’ “Years of the Woman”—following the Anita Hill testimonies and the election of Donald Trump—are linked to women’s exclusion from political decision-making. Drawing on focus groups with prospective women candidates, we theorize that exclusion when combined with a gendered policy threat increases women’s political ambition. Using survey experiments replicated across different samples, we show that women who read about an all-male city council poised to legislate on women’s rights report increased ambition compared with their pretreatment ambition levels and to women in other treatment groups. Women’s increased sense of political efficacy drives these results. When women’s rights are not under discussion, men’s overrepresentation does not move (or even depresses) women’s ambition. Seeing the policy consequences of their exclusion causes some women to seek a seat at the table.
Click here to read the full article published by the American Political Science Association on 30 November 2023.
Image by The American Political Science Association
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Gender quotas have successfully brought women to positions of political power. But the question remains: how and why do they influence women’s political participation, especially in societies where entrenched patriarchal norms serve as barriers, both within political parties and households? In a recent study published in the American Political Science Review, Tanushree Goyal delves into the world of women politicians in local politics and uncovers their profound impact on reshaping the political landscape, notably in lowering gender-based barriers both within political parties and households.
Click here to read the full article published by the American Political Science Association on 28 November 2023.
Image by American Political Science Association
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Historically, international relations have been one of the fields with the lowest female representation within the world of politics: except for a few notable exceptions, diplomacy has typically been a “man’s world” (Barrios Baron, 2020; Cengiz, 2023). A clear indicator in this direction is the fact that no woman has yet served as Secretary General in the United Nations.
At the same time, according to a report by GQUAL (2022), on the composition of 88 international tribunals and organisations, out of 578 positions, 234 are occupied by women, reaching only 40.48% of the total. The proportion remains practically the same at the regional level in Latin America and the Caribbean, representing 39% of female participation.
Click here to read the full article published by The Peninsula Qatar on 25 November 2023.
This year’s report looks back at 25 years of women in parliament on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Beijing conference and its groundbreaking action plan for gender equality.
IPU analysis shows that gender parity is possible. The overall percentage of women in parliaments has reached 24.9 per cent in 2020, up from 11.3 per cent in 1995. In four countries (Rwanda, Cuba, Bolivia and the United Arab Emirates) women now account for 50 per cent or more MPs in their lower or single chambers compared with 1995 when no parliament had reached gender parity.
The IPU has tracked women’s participation in parliament for decades, allowing it to monitor historical trends, progress and setbacks.
Click here to see the report.
This map is a unique visual tool that captures women’s participation in executive government and in parliament on a given date—1st January 2020. The map of Women in Politics not only provides a country ranking for both ministerial and parliamentary representation, but also statistics on women in political leadership positions—Heads of State or government, women Speakers of Parliament, as well as ministerial portfolios held by women throughout the world. Borders are depicted and used on the map in order to present data. They are not the expression of any opinion concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area, or concerning the delimitation of frontiers or boundaries.
Click here to download the map in English.
Political campaigns online have demonstrated that they can help candidates win elections, include more citizens’ concerns in political debates or allow upcoming parties to gain political exposure.
However, social media can also have a negative effect on political and electoral integrity by attacking an essential principle of democracy: the fundamental right of citizens to access trustable, reliable information to form their political opinions and, ultimately, decide their votes.
In this context of potential manipulation of public opinion through digital information operations, electoral management bodies, monitoring authorities, legislators and political parties face increasing difficulty in protecting the integrity of the political process.
Based on International IDEA’s work in Tunisia, Panama and Bolivia, this Fact sheet seeks to identify some overarching recommendations and a way forward based on how these types of activities may have potentially influenced their recent elections.
Click here to see the fact sheet.
Women made great strides in political representation in 2018. There has been significant media attention devoted to the historic gains women made in Congress, but the shift in political representation the states was equally significant. Women’s representation in state legislatures increased by more than three points in 2018 (from 25.4 percent to 28.9 percent of all state legislative seats). Nevada became the first majority women legislature and Colorado approached gender parity, with a legislature that is 47 percent women.
Although often presented as a non-partisan phenomenon, the gains in women’s representation across the board were due to Democratic women candidates’ victories. Democratic women gained about 300 state legislative seats in 2018, while the number of Republican women state legislators declined by just over 40.3.
More than a year out from the “year of the woman,” the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) and Quorum examined the impact of this changing representation in the states. In this fact sheet, we present new data on women’s state legislative achievements, including that women state legislators introduced and enacted more legislation than men over the past two legislative sessions.
Click here to see the factsheet.
In late 2018 and early 2019 UN Women interviewed 87 per cent of the women who ran for Parliamentary election (75 of the 86 women; of the 113 women who registered to run, 86 made it on to candidate lists). This report summarizes their stories and experiences as candidates and looks at issues of: violence against women in politics, financial constraints and campaign management, media and image portrayal, violence harassment and discrimination.
Click here to see the report.
While still far from parity, female representation in politics has continuously increased over the last two decades worldwide. In light of this development, we analyze whether higher female representation has substantive effects on policy choices using the example of child care – a public good arguably valued by women. We hand-collect micro-data for 224,448 candidates running in the local council elections of 2002, 2008 and 2014 across 1,632 municipalities in the German state of Bavaria. Exploiting an open-list electoral system, we run RDD regressions centered around mixed-gender races for the last council seat that accrues to a party. We find that a female victory in a mixed-gender race accelerates the expansion of public child care provision by 40%. Our main strategy to explore mechanisms uses information from hand-collected minutes of 7,721 monthly council meetings. We show that an additional woman changes "the conversation": female councilors speak up more often and child care is discussed more frequently in the council.
Click here to see the report.