Women's Leadership
The Friedrich Naumann Foundation’s Washington, D.C. office hosted a distinguished international delegation of twelve female professionals working in politics, from May 4th – May 11th, 2024 in Washington, D.C., and Denver, Colorado. The group comprised of participants from: Argentina, Armenia, Bhutan, Bulgaria, Chile, Germany, Hungary, Jordan, Lithuania, Pakistan, Philippines, and Tanzania. The delegation met with experts across various political women’s institutions, non-profit organizations, political NGOs, legislative offices, and more specifically with The World Bank Group, researchers, journalists, and academics. The group discussed in detail initiatives and policies that have helped to promote gender equality as well as the persistent economic, political, legal, and social barriers for women.
Across meetings there was one consistent theme: we are far from reaching gender equality and there is much to do. However, the bleak outlook was countered with many examples of policies and tangible ways to take steps toward equality. One cannot start to draft policies without fully understanding the economic, political, legal, and social barriers that exist for women in the context of their home country. What might be feasible or encouraged somewhere, will not always work in someone else’s context. For the purposes of this policy takeaway, we will focus pointedly on the United States.
Read here the full article published by the Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit on 27 June 2024.
Image by Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit
This year, countries accounting for nearly half of the world’s population are holding national elections. Instead of representing a triumph of democracy, however, the results suggest something darker: in many places, voters have flocked to the polls only to elect or reelect autocratic populists. They have notched victories this year in some of the largest countries, including India, Indonesia, and Russia. And these wins come on the heels of last year’s populist victories in Argentina and Turkey.
Today, more than 70 percent of the world’s population lives under autocratic rule, and a minority of the world’s governments are democratic, according to the most recent annual report from the V-Dem Institute, an organization that studies democracy. What the report does not reveal is that a central component of this assault on democracy is the targeting of women political leaders and women’s rights by far-right extremists and elected autocratic populists who represent the leading edge of democracy’s decline. For three decades, the share of women legislators across the globe was growing thanks to mandated quotas in many countries, but the rate of increase has stalled over the past two years, a signal U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Geeta Rao Gupta calls “scary.” Women today only occupy 27 percent of the world’s legislative seats. An even starker sign is that the number of women leading countries has sharply declined in the past year.
Read here the full article published by Foreign Affairs on 3 June 2024.
Image by Foreign Affairs
India, the world’s largest democracy, has made significant strides in women’s political participation since its independence in 1947. However, a substantial gender gap persists in Indian politics, reflecting deeper societal inequalities and cultural barriers. This article examines the current state of women’s representation in Indian politics, the progress made so far, and the challenges that continue to hinder gender parity in the political sphere.
Current State of Women’s Representation:
While women constitute nearly 50% of India’s population, their representation in political bodies falls far short of this proportion. As of 2024, women make up approximately 15% of the Lok Sabha (the lower house of parliament) and 14% of the Rajya Sabha (the upper house). At the state level, women’s representation in legislative assemblies averages around 9%. These figures, though gradually improving, highlight the significant underrepresentation of women in Indian politics.
Read here the full article published by Odishabarta on 27 June 2024.
Image by Odishabarta
Mongolians go to the polls in parliamentary elections on Friday, with the ruling Mongolian People's Party widely expected to retain a majority it has held for eight years.
But for the first time in almost a decade, parties are required by law to ensure that 30 percent of their candidates are women, in a country where politics is overwhelmingly dominated by men.
As a result, more women than ever before are running this year, in a new voting system that balances proportional lists with district candidates elected directly by the people.
"The era we are living in demands the quota," Dorjzodov Enkhtuya, a 51-year-old former TV anchor running for the main opposition Democratic Party, told AFP in capital city Ulaanbaatar.
"There are almost no women in decision-making positions," she said.
"We are changing the game."
Read here the full article published by France 24 on 27 June 2024.
Image by France 24
A lack of women at decision-making tables around the world is hindering progress when it comes to tackling conflicts or improving health and standard of living, the highest ranking woman in the UN has said.
“We’re half the population. And what we bring to the table is incredibly important and it’s missing,” said Amina Mohammed, the United Nations deputy secretary general. “I think it’s why mostly our human development indices are so bad, why we have so many conflicts and we’re unable to come out of the conflicts.”
Since her appointment in 2017, Mohammed has been a constant voice in pushing back against the under-representation of women in politics, diplomacy and even the UN general assembly. Her efforts have helped cast a spotlight on the fact that women remain relegated to the margins of power around the world; last year the global proportion of female lawmakers stood at 26.9%, according to Switzerland’s Inter-Parliamentary Union.
Speaking to the Guardian, Mohammed said “flexing muscle and testosterone” often dominated at tables of power around the world.
“This win, win, win at all costs – I think that would change if women were at the table,” she said.
Read here the full article published by The Guardian on 19 June 2024.
Image by The Guardian
¨Global comparable data on women in cabinet positions, in the latest Global Gender Gap Report 2024, shows limited gains towards equal participation.
¨Most countries are far from reaching gender parity in cabinet positions, but global trends towards more inclusive cabinets can be accelerated.
¨Women ministers are leading in areas like human rights and gender equality, but remain a minority in areas such as defence, justice and home affairs.
Global data gaps on women in political decision-making positions are being closed, providing much needed evidence to assess countries’ progress toward gender equality. Most recently, the measurement of women’s representation in cabinet positions was strengthened by UN Women by defining clear and transparent criteria for global comparisons, based on agreed concepts, mapping of legislative frameworks on cabinet compositions in all countries, and expert technical meetings. These criteria are practical to implement and reduce the space for interpretation of what needs to be measured, thus ensuring feasibility, reliability, comparability and quality of the global data.
Read here the full article published by the World Economic Forum on 24 June 2024.
Image by WEF
increase gender parity in politics, global efforts have struggled to ensure equal female representation. This is likely tied to implicit gender biases against women in authority. In this work, we present a comprehensive study of gender biases that appear in online political discussion. To this end, we collect 10 million comments on Reddit in conversations about male and female politicians, which enables an exhaustive study of automatic gender bias detection. We address not only misogynistic language, but also other manifestations of bias, like benevolent sexism in the form of seemingly positive sentiment and dominance attributed to female politicians, or differences in descriptor attribution. Finally, we conduct a multi-faceted study of gender bias towards politicians investigating both linguistic and extra-linguistic cues. We assess 5 different types of gender bias, evaluating coverage, combinatorial, nominal, sentimental and lexical biases extant in social media language and discourse. Overall, we find that, contrary to previous research, coverage and sentiment biases suggest equal public interest in female politicians. Rather than overt hostile or benevolent sexism, the results of the nominal and lexical analyses suggest this interest is not as professional or respectful as that expressed about male politicians. Female politicians are often named by their first names and are described in relation to their body, clothing, or family; this is a treatment that is not similarly extended to men. On the now banned far-right subreddits, this disparity is greatest, though differences in gender biases still appear in the right and left-leaning subreddits. We release the curated dataset to the public for future studies.
Click here to read the full article published by Plos One on 26 October 2022.
The Gender Equality Index developed by the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) in 2013, is recognised in the European Union as an important tool for analysing the state of gender equality in a society as well as comparing current trends and the current situation at the European Union (EU) level. Since 2016, the Agency for Gender Equality of Bosnia and Herzegovina within the Ministry of Human Rights and Refugees of Bosnia and Herzegovina together with the Agency for Statistics of Bosnia and Herzegovina have been engaged in activities that have led to the development of a Gender Equality Index for Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Gender Equality Index for Bosnia and Herzegovina 2022 presents the full index scores for two full domains, Knowledge and Power and the partial index scores for the domains of Work and Health. With the development of this report, Bosnia and Herzegovina will for the first time be able to rely on a statistically legitimate, objective and up-to-date statistical tool for the comparison of the state of gender equality in the country wth countries in the region and in the EU. The combined efforts of the Agency for Statistics of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Agency for Gender Equality of Bosnia and Herzegovina within the Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees of Bosnia and Herzegovina, under the invaluable guidance of EIGE and supported by UN Women and financed by the European Union, have resulted in the development of this Gender Equality Index.
Click here to access the report.
In December 2020, Sustineo was engaged UN Women under the Women in Leadership in Samoa (WILS) Project to lead the design and implementation of Research on Leadership Pathways of Women in Samoa.
The purpose was to better understand the barriers that hinder Samoan women’s access to leadership roles across different levels of society and to identify innovative strategies to support women’s access to leadership.
The research had four objectives:
- To identify pathways of leadership for Samoan women.
- To identify factors that facilitate women’s access to leadership in Samoa and factors that create barriers.
- To identify strategies used by Samoan women leaders to gain access to leadership positions.
- To identify innovative strategies for development partners on how to support and encourage an increase in women’s access to leadership in Samoa.
These research objectives were investigated through a mixed-method approach, drawing primarily on qualitative data.
Click here to access the report.
This chapter surveys the literature on gender and politics in Portugal, focusing on explanations for gender differences in political participation and representation. We map trends in women’s inclusion in key areas of political life: from conventional to unconventional political participation, to the election of women to parliamentary parties (descriptive representation), and responsiveness to women’s policy demands (substantive representation). Examining Portugal in comparative perspective, we highlight the crucial roles of state feminism, women activists within parties, and strategic incentives for parties to advance gender equality. We propose several avenues for developing future research which leverages the Portuguese case, including the downstream impacts of political gender quotas, intersectional and non-binary analysis, and the symbolic impact of women’s inclusion in public life.
Click here to access the article.
Gender equality and women’s empowerment are central to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Community Vision 2025 of the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). They are also key to fostering a more sustainable and inclusive region. Providing women with equal access to decision-making power and leadership not only supports their well-being, but also enables their contribution towards regional progress and inclusiveness.
Data, however, shows that substantial progress is needed to empower a new generation of ASEAN women leaders. This factsheet explores, through available official statistics, the various leadership roles that women play in the ASEAN region, and sheds light on areas where improvement is needed.
Click here to access the report.
Latinas are serving in record numbers across levels of elective office, but we are still vastly underrepresented when compared to our numbers in the population.
Data from the 2020 U.S. Census shows that those identifying as Hispanic or Latino accounted for more than half of the country’s population growth in the previous decade, with the greatest increases in Texas, California, and Florida. Latinas are key to that rise. But has representation in elective office kept pace with that population growth? This report helps to answer that question. It provides a review of the current status of Latinas in elective office in the U.S. within a historical context and with attention to what is possible in the 2022 election
Click here to access the report.