Women's Leadership
The passing of the presidential sash every six years is always an important and symbolic occasion in Mexico.
But on Tuesday, when it was placed over the shoulder of Claudia Sheinbaum - the first woman to hold the highest office in the country - it was truly an historic watershed moment in more than 200 years of modern Mexican history.
It has been a long road which led the first female mayor of Mexico City to break the glass ceiling in Mexican politics again, this time at national level.
To huge cheers of “Presidenta!” ringing out both inside and outside the congressional chamber, she raised her fist in victory, savouring the moment.
She began her first speech as president by thanking her political mentor and predecessor in the top job, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, calling him “the most important political leader and social warrior in Mexico’s modern history".
He leaves office, she said, with “the greatest love of his people".
On that point, she is not wrong. López Obrador is deeply beloved by his supporters and his popularity ratings in his final days in office were higher than those of any other president in Mexican history.
Read here the full article published by the BBC on 2 October 2024.
Image credits: BBC
MEXICO CITY — Mexico inaugurated its first female president on Tuesday, reaching the milestone before its northern neighbor. Even if the United States elects Kamala Harris as president in November, it will lag well behind this traditionally macho country on broader gender parity.
The new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, will govern with a cabinet that is half female and a Congress evenly divided between men and women. Women head the Supreme Court and central bank and run top federal ministries.
Read here the full article posted by The Washington Post on 01 October 2024.
Image by The Washington Post
First of a series
MASS and social media have recently been inundated by a slew of news, "tsismis" and fake news involving Filipino women of diverse status, political color, different persuasions and atypical motivations. But these women have several distinctive traits in common. The first cluster is strong-willed and wields political influence either by fiat as occupying a singularly powerful elective post, as in Vice President Sara Duterte, or the first lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, unelected, nonetheless in a position of vast influence and potential for manipulation by virtue of being married to a perceived weak spouse. Some of these women maneuver around the periphery of power and are themselves powerful but refuse to brandish the same, like Sen. Imee Marcos, in whom many among those who lived and survived the martial law regime of the dictator see the traits of the father. For bad or good, those nostalgic for the old regime regret the Filipino voter's choice of the wrong Marcos. And then there are women who have been unseated from power through the whims of dysfunctional government institutions like the fugitive and suspected Chinese sleeper agent Mayor Alice Guo of Bamban, Tarlac.
The other category is women who, by their notoriety and their strategic personal relations, took advantage of their 15 minutes of fame, attempting to tear to shreds the reputations of the powerful and the mighty as in the disgruntled paramour revealing juicy tidbits about her former Davao politico-businessman lover who has long been removed from power and tale-telling distasteful exposés about the Malacañang "polvoron"-snorting crowd. And these anecdotes are given credence through female internet personalities who rule social media, providing pulpits through their YouTube video blogs. These "Marites" with thousands of followers lap up any scraps of gossip thrown their way, propelling the same to go viral. This is gossip in the fringes providing entertainment to the inane. These women of the second cluster are not the subjects of this column ("The spy and the paramour," The Manila Times, Aug. 14, 2024).
Read here the full article published by The Manila Times on 25 September 2024.
Image credits: The Manila Times
Launched during the 79th session of UN General Assembly, the UN Women Leaders Network unites a global intergenerational and intersectional group of women leaders advocating for gender-equal participation in leadership and decision-making.
The UN Women Leaders Network was launched this week on the sidelines of the 79th UN General Assembly. It is the first permanent network of its kind, composed of intergenerational and intersectional women leaders, and its members represent the change needed in the traditional image of leadership today.
The network includes both emerging and more established leaders across ages, regions, and professions. The network will work together to promote the increase and advancement of women in leadership and decision-making spaces worldwide, and functions as a platform to a diverse group of women leaders to discuss and exchange ideas, solutions and experiences as leaders, community-builders and decision-makers.
Read here the full article published by UN Women on 27 September 2024.
When Japan’s ruling political party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), votes on Friday for its next leader, it will effectively be choosing the country’s next Prime Minister.
A slew of scandals have plagued the tenure of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who announced in August he would step down after assuming power in 2021. From his son throwing a party at an official residence to alleged fundraising misconduct by party members, the scandals in addition to underwhelming economic reform have dented the LDP’s popularity and forced a reset.
A record nine lawmakers are standing in the intra-party election, competing for majority support among the party’s 368 members of parliament and 368 representatives of its more than a million dues-paying rank-and-file members. Most candidates, according to AP, have vowed to call for a general election, which isn’t due until October 2025, shortly after being elevated within the party, to try to capitalize on their fresh image.
Read here the full article published by the Time Magazine on 26 September 2024.
Image credits: Time Magazine
On March 14, 2024, rural women from communities in the Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria expressed concerns over women’s low inclusion in politics. The women lamented neglect and financial constraints as problems in assessing political and leadership positions. The outcome of the 2023 general elections is evidence of low women’s political leadership representation. The low participation of women in political leadership results in less development for the nation since not all capable human resources are utilised.
To build women’s capacity for greater inclusion in leadership, the Nigerian government should foster avenues for knowledge acquisition and networking. The mass media should also commit to projecting the effects of disadvantageous cultural beliefs. Sharing content that influences and shapes cultural beliefs would boost inclusivity. The Nigerian government should likewise invest in initiatives that fund and encourage women’s political dreams and aspirations.
A significant number of Nigerian women still face a lot of social and financial challenges despite having fundamental political rights. These social challenges are exemplified by disadvantageous cultural beliefs. Cultural beliefs such as early girl-child marriage disrupt girls’ education, affecting their political aspirations and dreams. A report by Save the Children International reveals that Nigeria homes 23 million girl-child brides which inadvertently results in the low representation of women. Addressing disadvantageous cultural beliefs such as this requires the full leverage of the media.
Read here the full article published by The Guardian Nigeria on 25 September 2024.
Image credits: The Guardian Nigeria
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.
Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRDs) have long played a central role in the advancement of human rights. In the fight against impunity and repression, WHRDs have been among one of the most vocal in calling for human rights to be protected and upheld. In recent years, WHRD-led movements have particularly gained traction. Their relentless work calling for justice has, however, exposed them to serious risks and threats.
In this context, the new working paper series of the FORUM-ASIA aims to put WHRD’s perspective at the centre, exploring personal reflections and case studies on how they are experiencing and promoting human rights in an increasingly challenging context.
Ongoing struggles of WHRDs in Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, as well as the coordinated actions of women garment workers advocating for their rights in Cambodia and the testimonies collected by the University of York, showcase the need for stronger support and protection mechanisms, taking into account psychosocial wellbeing. At the same time, reflections on progress made 25 years after the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action, and the advances and developments within the United Nations system indicate that a vibrant civil society is vital for WHRDs’ protection.
Click here to see the report.
Women who seek to participate in peace processes and political decision-making face many obstacles. To achieve sustainable peace and development, societies emerging from conflict must remove these obstacles. In so doing, they must recognize and prioritize that women are fully capable of active participation in all political processes. Women’s equal participation in leadership at every level and in every sector is imperative to eliminating gender-based violence, poverty and enabling sustainable peace.
In this policy brief, Women in International Security examines five main barriers to women’s participation at the peace table and in politics. And presents recommendations to the international community, state actors, civil society organizations, women’s rights defenders, and male champions to help create an enabling environment for the full participation of women in all political processes.
Click here to see the report.