Women's Leadership

As the IPU celebrates International Women’s Day, these are just some of the inspiring women MPs working actively in the IPU’s committees to promote gender equality, youth participation, peace and sustainable development.

Sahar Albazar, Egypt

President of the Board of the Forum of Young Parliamentarians

Young people make up the majority of the world’s population, but only 2.6% of MPs are under 30, which is why the work of Ms. Albazar, an Egyptian MP and President of the Board of the IPU’s Forum of Young Parliamentarians, is key. The Forum works to increase the participation of young people in democracy, and to ensure that young voices are heard. Ms. Albazar is also Deputy Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee at the Egyptian House of Representatives.

Cynthia López Castro, Mexico

Member of the IPU Standing Committee on United Nations Affairs

Ms. López Castro has been a member of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies since 2018, and is a youth champion. In 2017, at the age of 30, she helped draft a new Constitution for Mexico City, and was one of the main advocates for including a youth quota in the city’s electoral law. As a member of the IPU’s Committee on United Nations Affairs, Ms. López Castro works to ensure that at least 25% of candidates for public office at the federal level are under 29 years old. Ms. Castro was a joint winner of the first ever Cremer-Passy Prize at the 145th IPU Assembly in Kigali for her work in promoting youth in parliament.

Click here to read the full article published by the Inter-parliamentary Union on 2 March 2023.

Online hate has become a tool of the right and a lucrative business. It’s driving women out of public life, putting democracy and human rights at risk

Listening to the resignation speech of Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon this week, it was impossible not to think of the all-too similar words from former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern just a few weeks earlier.

Politicians are humans, too, as Sturgeon and Ardern reminded us, but the abuse women face online – greater and more vicious than that faced by male politicians – seem to dehumanise them, leaving some to wonder if the problem is a reflection of millennia-old misogyny, or an issue with technology.

Monetizing Misogyny, the study released this week by #ShePersisted, is the result of more than two years of research into the patterns and motives of gendered disinformation in several countries. It provides new insights into this question as well as a clear answer: the problem lies less in the misogyny per se than in its weaponisation by dark actors – and monetisation by digital platforms.

Click here to read the full article published by The Guardian on 17 February 2023.

As Nicola Sturgeon quits, online vitriol continues to leave female politicians fearing for their safety

he brutality of political life had taken its toll on her, said Nicola Sturgeon as she announced her resignation on Wednesday. That same day, a 42-year-old man was jailed for sending her an email saying she was going to “face a hanging” for treason. Two weeks earlier, a 70-year-old man was found guilty of threatening to assassinate her.

It may come as no surprise, then, that Scotland’s outgoing first minister recently described the environment for women in politics as “much harsher and more hostile” than at any time in her decades-long career.

“Social media provides a vehicle for the most awful abuse of women, misogyny, sexism and threats of violence for women who put their heads above the parapet,” Sturgeon, 52, told the BBC’s Kirsty Wark in a documentary that will air on Tuesday.

Click here to read the full article published by The Guardian on 17 February 2023.

Like ex-New Zealand PM, Scotland’s first minister speaks of duty to admit how ‘brutality’ of political life got to her

he was, she stressed, “a human being”, not just a politician. And as one who had wrestled with accepting she simply no longer had the reserves needed to do the job justice, it was her “duty to say so”.

Just three weeks after insisting there was “plenty left in the tank”, Nicola Sturgeon’s shock announcement revealed the personal toll she said eight years as Scotland’s first minister had exacted on her and her loved ones.

Could she have battled on for longer? Yes. Could she have given it “every ounce of energy that it needs?” Then the answer was “different”, she said. And she had “a duty to say so now”.

As she spelled out her reasons in detail, the echoes of another, equally surprising resignation, were impossible to ignore. When Jacinda Ardern announced last month that “I no longer have enough left in the tank” to continue as New Zealand’s prime minister, there was equal shock. She too spoke of a duty to admit her doubts.

Click here to read the full article published by The Guardian on 15 February 2023.

AMMAN — Minister of Social Development Wafaa Bani Mustafa called for increasing women's participation in political decision-making in Jordan, saying such a change would guarantee sustainable development, democracy, and the achievement of national interests.

The minister, speaking at the third annual FemParl MENA conference on Tuesday, emphasized the importance of the event as a platform for participants to network with regional and international peers and share experiences and best practices in the field of women's political, economic, and social empowerment.

The Canadian Embassy in Jordan organized the conference, which brought together lawmakers and officials from Jordan, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates.

‘Significant strides’ in women’s empowerment

During the conference, Bani Mustafa addressed women's empowerment in Jordan, noting that the Kingdom has made “significant strides on multiple fronts” to ensure that women in Jordan are able to fully participate in public life.

Click here to read the full article published by Jordan News on 8 February 2023.

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.