Women's Leadership
In this final episode of Season 1, we reflect upon what women political leaders in South Asia have told us about their career journeys with our guests. We delve into bringing role models closer to youth, especially young women aspiring to be in politics.
Listen here to the full podcast posted by the Centre for Gender And Politics South Asia on 11 November 2024.
Despite some progress over the past decade, women's representation in political leadership remains limited globally. As of 1 January 2024, only 27 out of 159 countries are led by women – a modest increase from just 18 countries a decade ago (United Nations Women Headquarters Office 2024). Women represent 23% of cabinet members heading ministries worldwide in 2024; in Europe and Northern America, this share is 33%.
On the one hand, these numbers hint at the long road ahead to reach the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal of gender equality (SDG 5), which aims to ensure equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic, and public life (United Nations 2015). On the other hand, they underscore the need to understand to what extent the underrepresentation of women politicians matters for policy choices, especially in times of crises.
Read here the full article published by the Centre for Economic Policy Research on 12 November 2024.
Image by Centre for Economic Policy Research
To many left-leaning Americans, it is resoundingly clear that women who backed Donald J. Trump in the presidential election voted against their own self-interest.
Liberal women, in particular, have spent recent days practically stunned, stewing over how other women could have rejected Kamala Harris, who would have been the first woman to lead the nation in its nearly 250-year history. Instead, they chose a candidate who spews misogyny seemingly with glee. For the second time.
One voter from Maine, interviewed after Mr. Trump declared victory, offered a takeaway shared by many. As she put it, “The sisterhood did not stand up.”
In many ways the election results seemed to contradict generations of progress made toward women’s equality and for feminism generally. Women have made strides in nearly every facet of American life in recent decades, generally making up a greater proportion of the U.S. work force than in the past, taking on high-paying jobs and outpacing men in higher education — though they remain underrepresented at the top levels of both business and government.
They now find themselves in a country where Mr. Trump won decisively with a campaign that pitted men against women, sitting down with podcasters who trade in sexism and choosing a running mate who had criticized single women as “childless cat ladies.” Mr. Trump took credit for appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned the constitutional right to abortion but appeared to pay little price at the polls. Immediately after the election social media posts were circulating by men that read, “your body, my choice.”
Read here the full article published by The New York Times on 12 November 2024.
Image by The New York Times
In elections across the globe, the spotlight has been trained on the question of women’s representation, and rightly so. How vibrant can a democracy be if half of its population does not find adequate representation in politics or in the corridors of power? Which is why, when Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee for the US presidential election, it was welcomed by those who thought it was high time that a woman — especially a woman of colour — held its highest office. Her campaign and the possibility of her victory was seen as symbolising the maturity of American democracy and an acknowledgment of its diversity.
As it turned out, a large number of African Americans, especially young men, and White women voted en-masse for Donald Trump. There are many reasons for this, but one is that mere symbolic gestures are not enough to win voters’ support. India has seen this happen in recent elections in Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Telangana and Haryana. We are seeing the end of vote-bank politics and the emergence of value-based voting. In India, women across the political spectrum have marched beyond mere symbolism and metaphors. Women have become game changers, shaping electoral politics and defining electoral gains. They have transitioned from descriptive political representation to substantive political presence, and with women-centric policies, like Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana, Beti Bachao Beti Padhao and Jan Dhan Yojana, we have seen women becoming changemakers in policy formulation. The outcome of such politics promises a brighter tomorrow by making women more skilled, employable and empowered.
Read here the full article published by the Indian Express on 12 November 2024.
Image by Indian Express
Gender quotas have become an important mechanism for promoting gender equality in political representation. This blog post explores their impact on women’s political empowerment, particularly in Malta, by discussing the historical context, current situation, and future prospects for gender equality in Maltese politics.
Understanding Gender Quotas
Gender quotas are affirmative measures designed to increase women’s participation in politics by reserving a certain proportion of seats for them. According to the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), the goal is to provide a clearer pathway for women to enter political leadership, as they have historically been underrepresented. This is particularly relevant in Malta, where, despite advancements in other areas of gender equality, political representation remains unequal.
A Historical Overview of Women’s Political Participation in Malta
Women’s political participation in Malta has a long history, tied to the broader socio-political developments of the nation. Women were first granted the right to vote and run for office in 1947, preceding Maltese men who received this right three years later. However, significant measures aimed at improving female political representation only came in the 21st century. The Gender Corrective Mechanism, introduced in 2021, was a landmark policy. It mandates an increase in parliamentary seats if female representation falls below 40%, ensuring that women have a stronger foothold in Maltese politics.
Read here the full article published by Gender On The Ballot on 11 November 2024.
Image by Gender On The Ballot
Kemi Badenoch has become the new leader of the UK Conservatives and the first black woman to lead a major political party in the UK.
Badenoch, 44, replaces Rishi Sunak as leader and has promised to lead the party through a period of renewal following its election loss to the Labour Party in July.
Badenoch won 53,806 votes from party members to win the leadership over former immigration minister Robert Jenrick, who won 41,388 votes.
Badenoch’s leadership will mark a shift to the right for the Conservatives. She has told supporters it’s time to “get down to business”.
“The task that stands before us is tough, but simple, our first responsibility as his majesty’s loyal opposition is to hold this Labour government to account,” she told party members after winning the vote.
“Our second is no less important, it is to prepare over the course of the next few years for government.”
Badenoch is the sixth Tory leader in less than 9 years. She has a professional background in banking and IT and became an MP in 2017.
She has talked about returning the party to “first principles”, and has been described as having a no-nonsense style of communication and holding “anti-woke” values.
During the campaign for the Conservatives leadership, Badenoch sparked debate on maternity pay, when she said it was “excessive” . She spoke about how she believes in personal responsibility and “the answer cannot be let the government help people to have babies”. She later clarified that she believes in maternity pay.
Read here the full article published by the Women's Agenda on 4 November 2024.
Image by Women's Agenda
UN Women organized an Expert Group Meeting (EGM) on “Data and violence against women in politics” (VAWP) on 4–5 December 2019, in New York, as a part of its ongoing efforts to tackle this issue. More than 40 experts attended the meeting, including academics, gender equality advocates, Members of Parliament, representatives of electoral management bodies, civil society organizations, and international organizations, as well as UN agencies.
Being recognized as one of the key deterrents to women’s political participation, VAWP has captured global attention, but comparative data remains unavailable. Internationally agreed indicators and data collection methods to measure incidence or prevalence do not yet exist. The EGM helped map existing knowledge tools, databases, and surveys as sources of data on VAWP, and facilitated the exchange of lessons learned, experiences, and good practices in data collection.
This follow-up EGM on data was a recommendation of the Violence against Women in Politics Expert Group Meeting in March 2018.
Click here to see the report.
This report aggregates over five hundred pieces of academic and institutional research on the ways in which women’s political careers differ from their male counterparts, what stands in their way, and what impact their political presence has on democracy and policy. Parity of political presence between women and men is fundamental for a representative, legitimate and accountable democratic system, and this report points to the diverse and important ways that women’s political representation improves and contributes to democratic institutions and processes. It also highlights methods and approaches which address their underrepresentation. Bringing this research together in this way gives us a holistic understanding of the political recruitment and impact of women politicians that will provide a platform for future research and action.
Click here to see the report.
RepresentWomen tracks women's representation and leadership in the United States and around the world to identify the "best practices" for creating a more representative government. Our research indicates that even as more women run, electoral rules and systems play a major role in determining electoral outcomes. As seen in both our 2016 and 2020 reports, we find that electoral outcomes for women and people of color are overall better in jurisdictions that have implemented ranked choice voting (RCV).
The 2020 ranked choice voting report, "In Ranked Choice Elections, Women WIN" provides a thorough review of ranked choice voting in the United States and how it is impacting women's representation in the cities that have implemented it. Over the last decade, 19 cities and counties have used ranked choice voting to elect sitting city officials, including 13 mayors and the city councilmembers in 14 jurisdictions. Over the last decade (2010-2019), women have won 45% of all municipal ranked choice elections. As of April 2020, nearly half of all mayors (46%) and 49% of all city council seats decided by RCV are held by women.
Click here to see the report.
A century on from women winning the right to vote in the U.S., our nation has made huge progress on many fronts. But plenty more is needed—and above all in the political sphere. The U.S. compares badly to most other countries in the world in terms of gender equality in politics—including to our nearest neighbors, Canada and Mexico.
Measuring gender equality
The 2020 Global Gender Gap Report from the World Economic Forum ranks progress toward equality in 153 countries around the world. The U.S. is in a disappointing 53rd place, compared to 25th place for Mexico and 19th place for Canada. WEF calculates gender equality in each country based on four equally weighted domains: educational attainment, health and survival, economic participation and opportunity, and political empowerment. WEF calculates the degree of gender equality in each domain, drawing on a range on indicators for each, where each indicator ranges from 0 to 1, with 1 indicating parity.
Click here to see the academic article.
- Since 1995, the world has made important strides in advancing gender equality. The increase in female representation in parliaments across the globe has been driving these advances, although there has been some progress on other indicators used to measure Gender Equality in the Global State of Democracy (GSoD) Indices.
- Democracies provide better guarantees for gender equality. Out of 29 countries that scored highly in the GSoD Indices on Gender Equality in 2018, 28 of them are democracies.
- There are wide regional variations in Gender Equality, with North America and Europe seeing the highest scores, and the Middle East the lowest. However, the greatest progress over the 25-year period has been achieved in Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean.
- The representation of women in parliament is considerably better today than 25 years ago. The world average has increased from 10 per cent in 1995 to 23 per cent in 2018 (and 24 per cent in 2019). The percentage of women legislators is highest in Latin America and the Caribbean (28 per cent), and lowest in the Middle East (11 per cent).
- Despite progress made to date, at the current rate it will take another 46 years to reach gender parity in all parliaments.
- Civic space is shrinking across all regions of the world and across all levels of democratic performance. The shrinking of civic space has had severe effects on women’s participation in civil society, as women’s organizations tend to be the most vulnerable, the least well-resourced and the least networked.
- Over the 25-year period since 1995, the global average of women’s participation in civil society organizations has seen very slow improvement. While the Middle East is the lowest performer, North America and Europe have the highest scores, although Europe has witnessed some declines in the last five years.
Click here to see the academic article.
Gender-based violence (GBV) increases during every type of emergency – whether economic crises, conflict or disease outbreaks. Pre-existing toxic social norms and gender inequalities, economic and social stress caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with restricted movement and social isolation measures, have led to an exponential increase in GBV. Many women are in ‘lockdown’ at home with their abusers while being cut off from normal support services.
This briefing note provides concrete actions and strategies that UNDP, UN agencies and other development partners can take to prevent and address GBV in the context of COVID-19. It includes recommendations for adapting dedicated GBV services and support to the crisis context, and for mainstreaming GBV prevention and response in 'non-GBV specific' interventions.
Click here to see the report.