Women's Leadership
Black women have long played a key role in protecting voting rights and urging their communities to cast ballots. This three-part series highlights their work as they build political power and demand a seat at the table.
ATLANTA ‒ Mary-Pat Hector headed one recent afternoon down the promenade that connects historically Black colleges here, stopping at a table draped with a bright blue tablecloth. “Rise” was emblazoned across the front.
The 26-year-old leader of the nonpartisan organization checked in with organizers who had spent hours urging students at Clark Atlanta University to register to vote.
“Excuse me, queen. Are you registered to vote?’’ one organizer asked a passerby.
Before she left, Hector had collected the 263 cards from students who pledged to vote and seven forms from students who'd registered. The stop was one of many in the organization’s effort to connect with thousands of students across the country.
“It always felt like this was something I just needed to do,’’ said Hector, whose passion to protect voting rights grew during the 2016 presidential election. “I knew that there was a sense of urgency, that we were like beating down the clock ‒ the same feeling that I feel right now.”
Read here the full article published by USA Today News on 20 October 2024.
Image by USA Today News
Over half of Arizona’s voters were women in 2020, according to a CNN exit poll.
This is not a recent phenomenon. Women in the U.S. have had a higher voter turnout than men since the 1960s when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was put in place to prohibit discrimination, according to the Center for American Women and Politics. Women have longtime made significant impacts on politics, and students expect this year will not be an exception.
However, the path to gender equality in voting has not been easy, and some women still face challenges when trying to be politically active.
Why women are active voters
Ashlyn Mickelson, a junior studying sociology and the secretary of Young Democratic Socialists of America at ASU, said issues on the ballot this year have prompted more women to vote.
"Women tend to prioritize healthcare, education and reproductive rights," Mickelson said. "So one of the reasons women have been more active in politics recently is because those things are more at danger."
Read here the full article published by The State Press on 21 October 2024.
Image by The State Press
Assistant Foreign Affairs Minister Lenora Qereqeretabua said it is important for the Fiji government to be represented at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) 2024 Samoa.
Speaking to The Fiji Times, Ms Qereqeretabua said it was a great time for Fiji’s inclusion as it was important to be heard as a country.
“It is important for us to be here and to be one of the many voices in the Pacific in particular when Fiji wanted to be a leader within the region,” Ms Qereqeretabua said.
“With the Ocean of Peace, it is important that the government of Fiji is represented at the CHOGM with nearly 60 other members of the Commonwealth here.
“When the Minister’s Forum begins this Thursday, Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka will be here, but in the meantime it is great to be heard as a country.”
The Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka is expected to arrive today and will be meeting with the Fijian diaspora in Samoa.
According to the Fijian community in Samoa, Mr Rabuka will be meeting with them at the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).
Read here the full article published by the Fiji Times on 23 October 2024.
Image by Fiji Times
The We Women Want Festival And Awards by NewsX, was a power-packed session, featuring accomplished women from various fields, sharing their experiences and perspectives on empowerment.
The We Women Want Festival And Awards by NewsX, was a power-packed session, featuring accomplished women from various fields, sharing their experiences and perspectives on empowerment.
Hosted by Priya Sehgal, the panel included prominent voices like Kaveree Bamzai (Senior Journalist & Author), Naina Lal Kidwai (Chair of India Sanitation Coalition & Rothschild India), Shaifalika Panda (Trustee & Founder CEO, Bansidhar & Ila Panda Foundation), and Shama Mohamed (Congress National Spokesperson).
Read here the full article published by NewsX World on 14 October 2024.
Image credits: NewsX World
Distinguished Guests,
Dear friends,
It is an absolute pleasure to be here today with so many bright, passionate, young leaders and changemakers.
You are the driving force behind the progress we've made in recent years.
And what an incredible journey it has been!
As we kick off this Global Gateway High-Level Youth Event, I want to acknowledge the many partners that have been essential in driving this movement forward. Many of you are here today, in person as well as online.
But this is more than recognition.
It's a celebration of your passion and dedication.
Together, we have achieved so much.
Two years ago, with your help, the European Commission launched its first Youth Action Plan in External Action.
It was a landmark moment – the culmination of a collective effort that involved more than 220 international stakeholders, including young people and youth organisations.
Our goals were ambitious:
To engage young people by giving them a voice in policy and decision making.
To empower them with the resources they need to lead sustainable change.
Read here the full speech deliver by Commissioner Jutta Urpalainen published on the European Commission website on 10 October 2024.
Image by Commissioner Jutta Urpalainen
Distinguished Guests,
Dear friends,
It is an absolute pleasure to be here today with so many bright, passionate, young leaders and changemakers.
You are the driving force behind the progress we've made in recent years.
And what an incredible journey it has been!
As we kick off this Global Gateway High-Level Youth Event, I want to acknowledge the many partners that have been essential in driving this movement forward. Many of you are here today, in person as well as online.
But this is more than recognition.
It's a celebration of your passion and dedication.
Together, we have achieved so much.
Two years ago, with your help, the European Commission launched its first Youth Action Plan in External Action.
It was a landmark moment – the culmination of a collective effort that involved more than 220 international stakeholders, including young people and youth organisations.
Our goals were ambitious:
To engage young people by giving them a voice in policy and decision making.
To empower them with the resources they need to lead sustainable change.
Read here the full speech deliver by Commissioner Jutta Urpalainen published on the European Commission website on 10 October 2024.
Image by Commissioner Jutta Urpalainen
Distinguished Guests,
Dear friends,
It is an absolute pleasure to be here today with so many bright, passionate, young leaders and changemakers.
You are the driving force behind the progress we've made in recent years.
And what an incredible journey it has been!
As we kick off this Global Gateway High-Level Youth Event, I want to acknowledge the many partners that have been essential in driving this movement forward. Many of you are here today, in person as well as online.
But this is more than recognition.
It's a celebration of your passion and dedication.
Together, we have achieved so much.
Two years ago, with your help, the European Commission launched its first Youth Action Plan in External Action.
It was a landmark moment – the culmination of a collective effort that involved more than 220 international stakeholders, including young people and youth organisations.
Our goals were ambitious:
To engage young people by giving them a voice in policy and decision making.
To empower them with the resources they need to lead sustainable change.
Read here the full speech deliver by Commissioner Jutta Urpalainen published on the European Commission website on 10 October 2024.
Image by Commissioner Jutta Urpalainen
Distinguished Guests,
Dear friends,
It is an absolute pleasure to be here today with so many bright, passionate, young leaders and changemakers.
You are the driving force behind the progress we've made in recent years.
And what an incredible journey it has been!
As we kick off this Global Gateway High-Level Youth Event, I want to acknowledge the many partners that have been essential in driving this movement forward. Many of you are here today, in person as well as online.
But this is more than recognition.
It's a celebration of your passion and dedication.
Together, we have achieved so much.
Two years ago, with your help, the European Commission launched its first Youth Action Plan in External Action.
It was a landmark moment – the culmination of a collective effort that involved more than 220 international stakeholders, including young people and youth organisations.
Our goals were ambitious:
To engage young people by giving them a voice in policy and decision making.
To empower them with the resources they need to lead sustainable change.
Read here the full speech deliver by Commissioner Jutta Urpalainen published on the European Commission website on 10 October 2024.
Image by Commissioner Jutta Urpalainen
It’s 2024, but power still looks like a man. Despite Australia’s claim to egalitarianism, achieving equal political participation and representation remains a formidable challenge for women. Concerningly, the persistent and ingrained obstacles in women’s way are affecting the aspirations of the next generation of female leaders.
According to 2022 research spanning 29 countries, including Australia, satisfaction among young females aged 15-24 with their leaders’ decisions on issues they care about stands at a mere 11%. An overwhelming 97% acknowledged the importance of political participation. Yet, only 24% of those aspiring to engage in politics could see themselves running for office.
Worse still, 20% have been personally discouraged from political involvement. This is often because they’re either considered to be less qualified or that they will inevitably face discrimination and gendered violence.
I crunched the numbers to assess the situation in Australia. While much has been said about the mistreatment of female leaders, how does this play into the psyche of female constituents?
Read here the full article published by The Conversation on 7 March 2024.
Image source: The Conversation.
Abstract: While the passage of the 2018 Gender Parity Law was a step in the right direction, progress on women’s political empowerment in Japan has been slow. With a combined effort from advocacy groups, political parties, and the international community to include more women on ballots and support them to electoral success, Japan can move the needle on gender equity in politics.
The annual Group of Seven (G7) meeting invites opportunities for multi-national collaboration but also comparison amongst the attending states. The G7 countries (Canada, the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, France, and Japan, plus attendance from the European Union) indeed share many things in common: they are all relatively wealthy, liberal democracies committed to working together on global issues. Yet the photos from this year’s meeting highlight another questionable commonality: where aren’t there more women in positions of leadership? A deeper look reveals varying levels of gender equality in politics across G7 members with Japan continuing to lag significantly behind.
Click here to read the full article published by The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus on 10 December 2023.
Image by The Asia-Pacific Journal
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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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Men still dominate political decision-making in the United Kingdom. Women hold just one or two seats on prestigious select committees in the House of Commons, like Defence, Foreign Affairs, and Justice. No women sit on the Domestic and Economic Affairs cabinet committee. And 95% of all local councils have majority-men membership.
Yet voters do care about women’s leadership in elected office. My research shows that when women are absent from political decision-making, voters view governments as less legitimate.
Click here to read the full article published by the Electoral Reform Society on 21 November 2023.
Image by Electoral Reform Society
To what extent has the glass ceiling in global governance been shattered? To answer this question, we need to look beyond the numbers on women’s representation and study how far women are perceived as inspiring and visionary leaders in global governance. This article offers an analysis of perceptions of inspiring and visionary leadership in global multistakeholder initiatives from a gender perspective. Based on 467 interviews with participants in a leading multistakeholder initiative, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), it presents four findings: (1) respondents identify more men than women as inspiring and visionary leaders, with the difference roughly corresponding to the share of women in leadership roles; (2) respondents tend to ascribe more leadership attributes to women than to men when explaining why they find them inspiring and visionary; (3) both feminine and masculine leadership traits are appreciated in relation to both men and women leaders at ICANN; (4) female respondents identify more women as inspiring and visionary leaders than male respondents. These findings contribute novel insights into gendered perceptions around leadership and the importance of role models in global governance. They also shed much-needed light on the demands and expectations from leadership in global multistakeholder arrangements.
Click here to read the full report published by the Cambridge University Press on 26 October 2023.
RepresentWomen is committed to researching and identifying the best practices for increasing women’s representation in politics, drawing from evidence around the world. Part of this work leads us to closely track parliamentary elections and compare the outcomes from year to year. In 2021 and 2022, we identified 43 elections where women achieved record highs for their representation in parliament. The purpose of this analysis is to bring attention to how election rules and voting systems shape opportunities for women to enter politics.
Click here to read the full report published by RepresentWomen on 11 October 2023.