Women's Leadership
"I really like these angry green women,” a French friend said recently, as the assembly elections approached. It’s a funny phrase, redolent of She-Hulk, but I knew exactly what – and whom – she meant.
It’s impossible to overstate my crush on Marine Tondelier, the French Green party leader. Tondelier has been a revelation in the past few feverish, fretful weeks; she has cut through French politics like a hot knife through butter. Forensically, forcefully articulate and unafraid to show her emotions, she is “cash”, as the French say – frank, funny and down-to-earth.
Tondelier comes across as a real (albeit brilliant) person, not a cautiously on-message robot. She talks, to paraphrase the musical Hamilton, like she is running out of time. I have watched endless clips of her verbally demolishing opponents with off-the-cuff zingers, relished her clinically detailing of the worst National Rally candidates and been moved by her obvious distress when a centre-right politician refused to commit his party to blocking the far right.
Read here the full article published by the Guardian on 14 July 2024.
Image by Guardian
Skopje, North Macedonia, 24 June 2024 – UN Women in North Macedonia, for a second consecutive year in partnership with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, marked the International Day of Women in Diplomacy with a high-level panel discussion highlighting the pivotal role that women play in international relations and diplomatic efforts.
By commemorating this day, we as UN Women, reaffirm our commitment to gender equality and highlight the importance of inclusive policies that encourage women’s participation in all levels of foreign policy.
A diverse panel of ambassadors spoke at the event, sharing their experiences and insights on how their countries support gender-inclusive policies and empowerment programmes for feminist foreign policy, and advocating for the advancement of women’s roles in foreign policy in North Macedonia.
“Women are still largely excluded from positions of power and diplomacy, globally only 20.54% of all ambassadors are women. This day is a call to recognize critical contribution of women and their indispensable role in diplomacy, and we all, every day shall support equal opportunities for all women in all fields of life, including in diplomacy,” said Vesna Ivanovikj-Castarede, Head of the UN Women Office in North Macedonia.
The outgoing Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, Fatmire Isaki, in her opening address underlined that “women are ambassadors of peace, they have the wisdom to soften the temper through their calmness and gentleness, speaking with their kindness. Peace reigns in their spirit and their intellect produces warmth. Therefore, it is in our collective responsibility to continue to uplift and empower women-who are the change makers across the globe. It has been proven time and time again that without the involvement of women, sustainable peace and security cannot be achieved.”
A relatively recent development in international politics, ‘feminist foreign policy’ is the result of a growing recognition of gender issues. From development policy, the gender focus has gradually extended to human rights, security, conflict resolution, and now foreign policy.
Read here the full article published by UN Women on 27 June 2024.
Another election, another round of politicians who tout the same ideas, speak the same way, wear the same suits and, possibly, the same aftershave. Another round of politicians who, a little too often, claim to represent women’s interests, or be outraged on the basis of familial connections – being a “father of daughters”, a “husband of a wife”.
Maybe I’m being cynical here, but women’s interests aren’t yet adequately represented in British politics. This under-representation can partially be attributed to a pervasive culture of misogyny, which continues to shape modern politics. It is a culture that bleeds into both women’s personal and professional lives, a culture in which former Home Secretary James Cleverley can “joke” about spiking his wife’s drink, where women are labelled, as Theresa May was, “bloody difficult”, and threats and intimidation are endemic.
Read here the full article published by Vogue on 5July 2024.
Image by Vogue
Welcome to the first installment of the new "International Election Series," where they explore the vital role women play in shaping democratic processes around the world. In this episode, they delve into the recent Mexican elections, examining how women candidates influence politics.
RepresentWomen’s Communications Director Ashley Thurston, International Research Manager Fatma Tawfik, and Mexican scholar interviewed Jennifer Piscopo and Catherine Reyes-Housholder about the historic Mexican elections.
See here the full episode published by RepresentWomen on 8 July 2024.
Image by RepresentWomen
The Friedrich Naumann Foundation’s Washington, D.C. office hosted a distinguished international delegation of twelve female professionals working in politics, from May 4th – May 11th, 2024 in Washington, D.C., and Denver, Colorado. The group comprised of participants from: Argentina, Armenia, Bhutan, Bulgaria, Chile, Germany, Hungary, Jordan, Lithuania, Pakistan, Philippines, and Tanzania. The delegation met with experts across various political women’s institutions, non-profit organizations, political NGOs, legislative offices, and more specifically with The World Bank Group, researchers, journalists, and academics. The group discussed in detail initiatives and policies that have helped to promote gender equality as well as the persistent economic, political, legal, and social barriers for women.
Across meetings there was one consistent theme: we are far from reaching gender equality and there is much to do. However, the bleak outlook was countered with many examples of policies and tangible ways to take steps toward equality. One cannot start to draft policies without fully understanding the economic, political, legal, and social barriers that exist for women in the context of their home country. What might be feasible or encouraged somewhere, will not always work in someone else’s context. For the purposes of this policy takeaway, we will focus pointedly on the United States.
Read here the full article published by the Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit on 27 June 2024.
Image by Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit
This year, countries accounting for nearly half of the world’s population are holding national elections. Instead of representing a triumph of democracy, however, the results suggest something darker: in many places, voters have flocked to the polls only to elect or reelect autocratic populists. They have notched victories this year in some of the largest countries, including India, Indonesia, and Russia. And these wins come on the heels of last year’s populist victories in Argentina and Turkey.
Today, more than 70 percent of the world’s population lives under autocratic rule, and a minority of the world’s governments are democratic, according to the most recent annual report from the V-Dem Institute, an organization that studies democracy. What the report does not reveal is that a central component of this assault on democracy is the targeting of women political leaders and women’s rights by far-right extremists and elected autocratic populists who represent the leading edge of democracy’s decline. For three decades, the share of women legislators across the globe was growing thanks to mandated quotas in many countries, but the rate of increase has stalled over the past two years, a signal U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Geeta Rao Gupta calls “scary.” Women today only occupy 27 percent of the world’s legislative seats. An even starker sign is that the number of women leading countries has sharply declined in the past year.
Read here the full article published by Foreign Affairs on 3 June 2024.
Image by Foreign Affairs
This publication is the latest instalment in the annual series jointly produced by UN Women and UN DESA. The report provides a comprehensive analysis of gender equality progress across all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Halfway to the end point of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the world is failing to achieve gender equality, making it an increasingly distant goal. If current trends continue, more than 340 million women and girls will still live in extreme poverty by 2030, and close to one in four will experience moderate or severe food insecurity.
Click here to read the full article published by UN Women on 8 September 2023.
There is a fast-growing body of literature on women’s political representation in Africa—a continent that often challenges the existing beliefs and common understandings of women’s representation in politics developed in the Global North. A recent addition to this literature is Women and Power in Africa: Aspiring, Campaigning and Governing, edited by Leonardo Arriola, Martha Johnson, and Melanie Phillips. As a result of the research in this book, conventional wisdoms are upended. The book tackles women’s pathways into power, the gendered effects of electoral systems, media coverages of campaigns, gender stereotyping, and women’s access to campaign finances. Other variables such as educational background, family obligations, and organizational capital are also investigated. The book represents a significant contribution to the field of comparative politics and deepens the theorization of women’s representation in politics.
Click here to read the article by the Cambridge University Press on 18 August 2023.
Women have been politically active and have played key roles at times of critical turning points in Sudan’s history, but this has not been translated into official recognition in political processes or substantive representation in government.
The latest example of this is women’s active role in response to the crisis that has evolved in Sudan since 15 April 2023, when the country was plunged into violence amidst the power struggle between the two main factions of the ruling military regime, the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Click here to read the full article published by Relief Web on 14 June 2023.
During the Summit for Democracy Year of Action, the S4D cohort on Gender Equality as a Prerequisite for Democracy identified recommendations for strengthening democracy by promoting gender equality, Statement and Roadmap of recommendations. The co-leads of the gender cohort – Sweden, Romania, Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security and International IDEA encourage governments and civil society to consider the recommendations and proposed actions.
The Gender Cohort strongly supports the themes for the Regional Summits for Democracy 2023. The regional themes have a critical link to gender equality and democracy nexus and the Gender Cohort has developed specific briefs on gender for each theme: Youth; Anti-Corruption; Free, Fair and Transparent Elections; Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) and Media Freedom.
Statement and Roadmap of Recommendations
The recommendations and proposed actions were identified in consultation with the cohort consisting of over 100 representatives of governments and civil society from all regions of the world. Governments and civil society are encouraged to consider the recommendations as tools for strengthening democracy by promoting gender equality. The recommendations focus on three pillars: inclusion; legislative and policy frameworks; and conflict prevention, peace and security. Each thematic pillar is fundamental for gender equality in democracy processes.
Read the statement of recommendations >>
Read the roadmap of recommendations >>
Briefs of the Democracy Cohort on Gender Equality
Gender equality is fundamental to the electoral process because it enables women—as voters, candidates and elected officials—to influence public policy and advocate for their interests. However, women face significant obstacles to political participation, including the use of targeted gender-based violence and intimidation meant to discourage them from running for office or exercising their political rights. Challenges and risks are even greater for women from historically marginalized communities. Additionally, women are less likely to be recruited and selected as candidates, are less likely to have equal access to campaign funds and face greater challenges to proportional representation.
Summit for Democracy Cohort on Gender Equality as a Prerequisite for Democracy Anti-Corruption
Corruption undermines democracy and justice because it impedes the ability of the public to benefit fully from government institutions. Combating corruption requires a gender perspective in order to gain a full understanding of its scope and impact. Women have unique (but not uniform) approaches to anti-corruption and are also impacted differently by corruption which drives inequalities and undermines opportunities for healthy democracies.
Summit for Democracy Cohort on Gender Equality as a Prerequisite for Democracy Youth
Youth are the leaders of the future. Yet, people under the age of 35 are rarely found in formal political leadership positions, with fewer women than men in these roles.2 Research by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) found that out of 2.2 per cent of parliamentarians under the age of 30, less than 1 per cent are young women. The marginalization of youth—including young women— from politics leads to missed opportunities to strengthen democracy-building processes and institutions. Gender equality as a prerequisite for democracy requires tailored efforts to engage both young women and men. Barriers to the inclusion of youth in politics must be addressed, including gendered forms of discrimination and violence.
ICTs have the potential to close gender gaps in women’s political participation. They can serve as tools for women to influence policy agendas, increase women’s access to campaign resources, strengthen networks of solidarity, and increase women’s representation in democratic agendas and processes. With social media, blogs, podcasts and promotional videos, women have bypassed traditional media outlets, such as TV and radio, to elevate their profile directly and access political decision-making.
Summit for Democracy Cohort on Gender Equality as a Prerequisite for Democracy Media Freedom
Media freedom and the safety of women journalists are fundamental to the strength of democratic processes and institutions. Yet, women are not equally represented in the media. A 2020 study of the news media in the UK, US, Kenya, India, South Africa and Nigeria found that women comprised only 15–30 percent of the subjects of news reports.
This book addresses the central question of how right-wing women navigate the cross-pressures between gender identity and political ideology.
The hope has always been that more women in politics would lead to greater inclusion of women’s voices and interests in decision-making and policy. Yet this is not always the case; some prominent conservative women such as Margaret Thatcher have rejected the feminist label while others such as Angela Merkel have reluctantly accepted it. Republican women in the U.S. Congress have embraced social and economic policies contrary to what many consider to be women’s issues while EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen is a staunch supporter of feminist ideas. Other conservative women, such as Marine LePen in France strategically use feminist ideas to justify their conservative stances on immigration. This brings up an interesting yet understudied question: under what circumstances do conservative women become feminist allies and when do they toe the party line? It is this tension between women’s political representation and conservatism that this edited volume explores.
Click here to access the book.
Abstract
Concern over partisan resentment and hostility has increased across Western democracies. Despite growing attention to affective polarization, existing research fails to ask whether who serves in office affects mass-level interparty hostility. Drawing on scholarship on women’s behavior as elected representatives and citizens’ beliefs about women politicians, we posit the women MPs affective bonus hypothesis: all else being equal, partisans display warmer affect toward out-parties with higher proportions of women MPs. We evaluate this claim with an original dataset on women’s presence in 125 political parties in 20 Western democracies from 1996 to 2017 combined with survey data on partisans’ affective ratings of political opponents. We show that women’s representation is associated with lower levels of partisan hostility and that both men and women partisans react positively to out-party women MPs. Increasing women’s parliamentary presence could thus mitigate cross-party hostility.
Click here to access the paper.