Women's Leadership

Women and girls with disabilities, who make up almost one-fifth of the world’s population of women, face significant barriers to accessing justice, due to discrimination on the basis of both gender and disability, accessibility barriers to the justice system, and lack of reasonable accommodations throughout judicial proceedings. Compared to both men with disabilities and women without disabilities, women with disabilities are disproportionately excluded from legal protection and are more likely to have their credibility questioned, owing to harmful gender and disability stereotypes. Women with disabilities also encounter barriers to attaining positions as lawyers, judges, and other officials in the justice system, and may be excluded from serving on juries. Such barriers not only limit the ability of women with disabilities to use the justice system, but also limit their ability to contribute to the administration of justice to society as a whole. Access to justice is interdependent with a number of fundamental rights. Effective access to justice is essential for challenging human rights violations, such as discrimination in employment or deprivation of parental rights. Lack of access to justice can reinforce vulnerability to rights violations, particularly where perpetrators may feel emboldened when they know the justice system is unlikely to respond to complaints by women with disabilities. Access to justice also depends on the fulfilment of other rights—realization of the right to accessibility, for instance, will often determine whether women with disabilities have effective access to the justice system.

Click here to see the factsheet.

By Ruth Igielnik and Kim Parker,

As moms across the United States celebrate Mother’s Day this weekend, five of the six women vying for the Democratic residential nomination are themselves mothers.

These women, all seeking the same high political office, became mothers at different points in their careers – some while they were starting out in politics and others long before that.

Roughly half of Americans (51%) say it’s better for a woman who wants to reach high political office to have children before entering politics, according to a 2018 Pew Research Center survey on gender and leadership. About a quarter (26%) say it would be better to wait until she is well-established in her political career, while 19% say it would be better for a woman not to have children at all if she plans to seek higher office.

Click here to read the full article published by the PEW Research Center on 9 May 2019.

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.