Women's Leadership
Abstract: The election of Sanae Takaichi as Japan’s first female prime minister in October 2025, coupled with the Liberal Democratic Party’s historic supermajority in the February 2026 lower house election, invites examination of what women’s political leadership actually means for gender equality. We provide an overview of the key gender-related issues surrounding Takaichi’s rise to power and the broader legislative landscape, arguing that her impressive political triumphs underscore a tension long recognized by political scientists: descriptive representation (i.e., who holds office) does not necessarily improve substantive representation (i.e., whose interests are advanced through policy). Takaichi’s time as prime minister, we argue, can be understood as a test case for the limits of descriptive representation, as voters appear to substitute descriptive and symbolic satisfaction with demands for substantive representation.
Keywords: gender equality, descriptive representation, substantive representation, female leadership, Sanae Takaichi
On February 8, 2026, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi successfully led the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to the largest majority any single Japanese party has secured in the lower house in the postwar era. The LDP won 316 of 465 seats, a historic supermajority that will help Takaichi enact her campaign promises and has also silenced many of her critics. It can be argued that Japan’s first female prime minister now commands more legislative authority than any of her (male) predecessors.
This electoral outcome raises important questions about representation. When she first won the prime ministership on October 21, 2025, Takaichi had broken what commentators have liked to describe as “the ultimate glass ceiling” in a country that ranks 118th out of 148 economies in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2025, which is lower than Uzbekistan (#110) and only a bit higher than Jordan (#122). In stark contrast to Japan’s international gender ranks, an October 2025 Kyodo News poll found that 86 percent of Japanese considered it “desirable” or “somewhat desirable” to have a female prime minister. These data align with other polling done by the Stanford Japan Barometer in the last several years, which has consistently shown that the Japanese public prefers female elected officials. But it’s not clear exactly why this is the case. Do they value female politicians, or Takaichi specifically, or the policies that a female politician might promote, or both? The answer matters here because it helps us understand what Japanese voters think about gender and gender-related policies.
A civil society activist is calling for the urgent enactment of a formal legal framework to enforce the 35% affirmative action for women, warning that without “punishment” for non-compliance, political parties will continue to treat gender equality as a mere “song” rather than a reality.
During a comprehensive assessment of the political landscape on Thursday, Grace John Kenyi—Executive Director for the Centre for Strengthening Community Voice—highlighted significant progress in mentoring young female leaders.
Speaking during the “Amplifying Voices of Women and Girls” program, she also exposed the “dark underbelly” of the political arena, citing challenges ranging from online harassment to demands for sexual favors.
Quotas designed to bring gender parity to parliaments have an overall positive impact on support for female political leadership – especially after women members of parliament take office. Furthermore, there is no evidence of a backlash among men.
That’s what I found in a study published in October 2025 looking at the impact of gender-parity quotas in Namibia, in sub-Saharan Africa.
In 2013, Namibia’s dominant political party, the South West Africa People’s Organization, or SWAPO, quietly rewrote its internal rules. From that point forward, every spot on its parliamentary candidate list would alternate between a man and a woman.
Most prior research on measures to encourage gender parity in politics focuses on national or legislative policies rather than voluntary party quotas. Namibia offers an unusually “clean” case in that SWAPO is electorally dominant and did not face grassroots pressure to adopt its quota policy. That makes it possible to isolate the effects of the quota itself, rather than any preexisting trend in public attitudes.
Women board a crude vessel to cross the Ganga in Murshidabad. With every year of handling money, papers and government offices as their husbands and sons remain away, women are becoming more independent and less willing to merely obey their instructions. The Federal photo
“Every election, they ask whether we are Hindus or Muslims. Nobody asks why my husband is washing dishes in Kerala.” This angry remark by Rehana Bibi, a resident of Samserganj whose husband works in Kerala’s Kochi, sums up the mood in the migrant-majority belts of West Bengal’s Murshidabad district.
Women voters in Samserganj and Lalgola are emerging as a potentially decisive force in Murshidabad, which will vote on April 23, with many saying that their concerns over jobs, migration and deletions from electoral rolls now matter more than the identity politics dominating the campaign.
Efforts to deepen grassroots political participation and strengthen women’s involvement in governance received renewed attention in Kogi State following a ward engagement tour in Igah, Olamaboro Local Government Area.
The engagement, organised by the Fawass Group, drew a large turnout of women and community stakeholders who gathered to discuss issues affecting the ward and reaffirm their commitment to political participation at the grassroots level.
Kogi State Commissioner for Youth and Sports Development, Hon. Monday Aridaojo Anyebe, who attended the meeting in his home ward, described the event as an important platform for reconnecting with the grassroots and encouraging broader participation in governance.
According to him, the gathering went beyond routine political interaction, serving as an opportunity for dialogue with community members, particularly women, whose contributions he said remain central to the social and political stability of the state.
Women’s groups have called for greater participation in politics and decision-making in Nigeria as part of efforts to strengthen inclusive governance.
The call was made at the just-concluded International Women’s Day Conference organised by the Chartered Institute of Project Managers of Nigeria (CIPMN) in collaboration with the WCCI Emerging Market Hub in Abuja.
At the event, the MD/CEO of Dominion Mothers Group, Kemi Josephine Elebute-Halle, a former governorship candidate in the Ekiti State 2022, elections, commended Nigerian women for their resilience, intellect and dedication to national development.
In her rightfully celebrated 1969 article, “The Political Economy of Women’s Liberation,” Margaret Benston articulated several of the enduring themes and theoretical insights of feminist theories, especially those developed by socialist and Marxist feminists. For example, she located the material basis of women’s secondary status in their responsibility for the production of use values for home consumption and their ensuing economic dependence upon male breadwinners; the effects of domestic responsibilities on women’s opportunities; and the material conditions for women’s liberation, that is, equal access to employment and an end to the privatized nature of housework and child rearing.2
As a graduate student in the late 1960s, I struggled to make sense of the notion that women were oppressed as women and that men or patriarchy were the source of their oppression—an idea that, at the time, seemed strange to me.3 In contrast, Benston’s perspective that the causes of the secondary status of women were structural, rooted in the capitalist economy, and resulted in women’s responsibility for child care and the production of use values for family consumption, made sense to me. It showed how the functioning of the capitalist economy, given that the organization of social and biological reproduction remained still in a “premarket stage,” placed working-class men and women in different structural positions. This, I inferred, gave some men power over women. Working-class men had to earn wages to survive economically, whereas working-class women, whether married or unmarried, could theoretically either work for wages or work at home, unpaid and dependent on the wages of the male head of the household.4 Abstractly, under capitalism, being an unpaid domestic worker is for working-class women a functional alternative to earning wages.5 In retrospect, having read her article again, I can say that my account of the oppression of women and conceptualization of what, in the early 1970s, I called the mode of reproduction, owes much to Benston’s views about the “structural definition of women” and the household as a place of production and reproduction.6
Full article here.
The 30th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action is a moment to reaffirm global commitments to gender equality
2025 is a pivotal year for women and girls. It marks three major milestones: the thirtieth anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the twenty-fifth anniversary of United Nations Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security, and the eightieth anniversary of the United Nations. Notable progress on laws, policies and some development outcomes for women and girls has occurred, especially since the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. In the final five-year stretch before the 2030 deadline of the Goals, it is urgent to accelerate action and investment.
The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, adopted in 1995 by 189 countries, laid out transformative measures across 12 critical areas of concern, serving as a foundation for progress on gender equality and the SDGs. Drawing on evidence from the thirtieth-anniversary review – including 159 Member State reports and broad consultations – UN Women has developed the Beijing+30 Action Agenda. This bold, forward-looking framework sets out six priority actions to accelerate progress on both the Platform and the SDGs. It positions gender equality at the heart of global development efforts. This section highlights this Agenda noting the investments needed and the benefits not only for women and girls, but at large for societies and economies. The rest of the report assesses gender equality under each of the 17 SDGs, spotlighting actions and investments to accelerate change.
For decades, African politics has been a domain dominated by men, with women often relegated to the sidelines of decision-making. But a growing number of countries how now experienced female leadership, including Liberia, Malawi and most recently Namibia. With President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah becoming the country’s first female head of state and assembling a cabinet where women hold the majority of ministerial positions, Namibia has set a historic precedent. This moment signifies much more than symbolism; it signals a broader and hopeful shift in the continent’s political landscape, one that may pave the way for future gender equality in governance. Could Namibia be a harbinger of a wider trend across Africa? Let’s take a closer look at the evidence.
Namibia is not alone in challenging the traditional power structures that have long kept women out of high political office. In recent years, countries like Tanzania and Ethiopia have also seen women rise to top leadership roles. Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan, who took office in 2021 after the death of President John Magufuli, has already made significant strides in reshaping the country’s political and economic trajectory. However, it is important to note that she, like Malawi’s former President Joyce Banda, assumed office not through an electoral mandate but through constitutional succession. This pattern raises important questions about the actual commitment of ruling parties to gender equality when women are not fielded as primary candidates.
Full article by Democracy in Africa.
Image by Democracy in Africa
Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming our world—but when it reflects existing biases, it can reinforce discrimination against women and girls. From hiring decisions to healthcare diagnoses, AI systems can amplify gender inequalities when trained on biased data. So how can we ensure AI is ethical and inclusive? Zinnya del Villar, a leading expert in responsible AI, shares insights on the challenges and solutions in a recent conversation with UN Women.
What is AI gender bias and why does it matter?
“AI systems, learning from data filled with stereotypes, often reflect and reinforce gender biases,” says Zinnya del Villar. “These biases can limit opportunities and diversity, especially in areas like decision-making, hiring, loan approvals, and legal judgments.”
At its core, AI is about data. It is a set of technologies that enable computers to do complex tasks faster than humans. AI systems, such as machine learning models, learn to perform these tasks from the data they are trained on. When these models rely on biased algorithms, they can reinforce existing inequalities and fuel gender discrimination in AI.
Imagine, training a machine to make hiring decisions by showing it examples from the past. If most of those examples carry conscious or unconscious bias – for example, showing men as scientists and women as nurses – the AI may interpret that men and women are better suited for certain roles and make biased decisions when filtering applications.
This is called AI gender bias— when the AI treats people differently on the basis of their gender, because that’s what it learned from the biased data it was trained on.
Full article published by UN Women on 5 February 2025.
The Women and Foreign Policy program’s most recent update of the “Women’s Power Index” ranks 193 United Nations (UN) member states on their progress toward gender parity in political participation. It analyzes the proportion of women who serve as heads of state or government, in cabinets, in national legislatures, as candidates for national legislatures, and in local government bodies, and visualizes the gender gap in political representation.
Over the past year global progress toward gender parity in political representation has remained flat at 29 on the 100-point aggregate scale employed in which a 100-point score represents gender parity. The number of countries that are halfway or more to parity has remained the same. Twenty-eight countries exceeded fifty in their gender parity score, including Canada, Dominica, Moldova, and the United Kingdom in the past year. Mozambique, Peru, Rwanda, and Senegal fell below that halfway to parity mark in the past year. The U.S. gender parity score is slightly above the global average at 35. Iceland has maintained its position in first place, with a score of 86, Mexico and Andorra occupy second and third place, with scores of 75 and 73, respectively.
Progress in women’s political leadership at the national level has been stalling recently. Since the end of World War II, 82 of the 193 countries have elected a female head of state or government, with the most progress coming in the past two decades. Eleven countries elected their first woman into high office during the 2000s, twenty-five in the 2010s, and seventeen thus far in the 2020s. Most recently, Namibia elected its first woman president, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, in 2025, and Mexico elected its first woman president, Claudia Sheinbaum, in 2024.
Read here the full article published by the Council on Foreign Relations on 2 April 2025.
Image by the Council on Foreign Relations
Last Saturday, March 8th, marked International Women’s Day, when the international community celebrates the social, economic, cultural, and political accomplishments of women. In post-communist societies, where this day is often a public holiday, there is still a lot left to do to ensure better representation of women in political institutions—but the contribution of women to democracy-building efforts is undeniable.
Meet four exceptional female leaders who are shaping Eastern European politics today and learn more about women of the region fighting against war and autocracy.
Read here the full article published by the Wilson Center on 10 March 2025.
Image by Wilson Center