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
Public approval is a crucial source of executive power in presidential systems. Does the public support female and male presidents similarly? Combining insights from gender and politics research with psychological evidence, this study theorizes sex-based differentials in popularity based on more general expectations linking gender stereotypes to diverging performance evaluations. Using quarterly analyses of eighteen Latin American democracies, South Korea and the Philippines, the analyses compare the levels, dynamics, and policy performance of macro-approval for male and female presidents. As expected, female presidents are less popular, experience exaggerated approval dynamics and their approval is more responsive to security and corruption (though not economic) outcomes. These findings have clear implications for our understandings of mass politics, political accountability and presidentialism.
Click here to see the report.
May 3: A preliminary gender audit of the South African elections due to be held on 8 May shows that while there will be a slight increase in women’s representation, women are still missing from the top echelons of political parties and from the media.
“On World Press Freedom Day it is an indictment on South Africa that women still constitute just one fifth of those whose views and voices are heard,” said GL CEO Colleen Lowe Morna at the launch of Gender Links report.
At 55% women will constitute the majority of voters in the 2019 South African elections. Gender Links predicts using available data that the proportion of women in the House of Assembly will increase from 40% in 2014 to 44% in 2019.
But, without a legislated quota, and with vacillating commitment by political parties to gender parity, South Africa will again miss the 50% mark. Apart from Agang, the political party formed by anti-apartheid activist Mamphela Ramphele that is expected to garner less than 1% of the vote, none of the political parties contesting has achieved gender parity in its top five.
“Male leaders either oppose quotas; fail to implement them; or backslide into misogynistic slurs despite the lofty language in their political manifestos,” noted GL advisor Kubi Rama who authored the report.
A further measure of women’s lack of #Voiceandchoice in our society is the fact that women sources in news coverage persists at 22% or about one fifth of those whose views and voices are heard in the elections. Despite being one of the most pressing social justice issues of our time, gender equality represents less than one percent of media coverage, according to Media Monitoring Africa.
“The message as South African go to the polls next week are clear,” says Rama. “Political parties need to engage with the fact the women constitute 55% of the electorate and address their concerns in manifestos, party lists and in leadership. The media must do better. Women sources are available but barely accessed.”
Click here to see the report.
Including women in local councils is strongly negatively associated with the prevalence of both petty and grand forms of corruption. This reduction in corruption is primarily experienced among women. A study suggests that female representatives seek to further two separate political agendas once they attain public office: 1) the improvement of public service delivery in sectors that tend to primarily benefit women, and 2) the breakup of male-dominated collusive networks.
Main points:
- Increased representation of women in elected office can reduce both petty and grand corruption.
- Women in elected office reduce corruption both because they are risk averse and because they have a different political agenda than men.
- Women in elected office reduce petty corruption in their efforts to improve public service delivery and grand corruption because it is detrimental to their political careers.
- Women in elected office reduce the rate of bribery for public services, particularly for women.
- Donors can promote women’s representation and reduced corruption through supporting the anti-corruption agendas chosen by women.
Click here to see the study.
South Africa has made great strides in establishing a constitutional and legislative framework for building a participatory democracy. This paper seeks to explore the extent to which existing participatory mechanisms enable active participation by women in municipal processes, and possible alternative approaches and models to strengthen this. A gap in studies thus far reveals the need to examine to what extent current participation mechanisms accommodate equity issues by enabling marginalized or vulnerable groups to participate in governance, and women living in poverty, in particular. The paper commences with an assessment of the existing policy framework for public participation, and then – drawing on literature and case studies on approaches and models for strengthening women's participation – puts forward recommendations in this regard.
Click here to see the report.
Although Sri Lanka has 51% women, their participation in local governance as well as in the national parliament is 5% in total. The strong social development indicator of women in areas such as health and education has not translated into their increased political participation. As such, this study focuses on the level of women’s participation in local governance and explores why there is a low level of political participation of women in local governance. Both quantitative and qualitative methods comprising of questionnaire survey, interviews and focus group discussions were employed in this study. The findings show organized collective involvement of women was effective only in social welfare, livelihood and social security than political participation. The study also reveals that the low level of political participation by women is attributable to biological, economic, psychological, religious and political factors. Overall, it was found that although women are interested in participating in local governance, they have a lack of space for political participation.
Click here to see the report.
Women are underrepresented in most elected and appointed positions in local government in the United States. This essay details what we know about women’s representation in cities and counties, with a discussion of the factors associated with women’s higher or lower levels of representation. The effects of women’s lack of parity are then discussed including policy attitudes, the policy process, and policy outcomes. In sum, this essay organizes knowledge on women in local government, identifies gaps in what we know, and promotes future investigations to expand our knowledge of gender politics, local politics and governance, and public policy.
Click here to see the report.