Women's Leadership
Three months into her tenure as Japan’s first female prime minister, Sanae Takaichi is connecting with younger voters in a way her predecessors failed. She plays "Golden” from the film "K-Pop Demon Hunters" on the drums with South Korea’s president and takes selfies with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. In the evenings, she prefers to sharpen her policy knowledge at home rather than wining and dining Japan’s old-guard business elite behind closed doors. From her handbags to her pink pens, orders are surging for items that have unexpectedly captured the zeitgeist.
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"On the first day, I asked 'why are there no more women?'," says Hind Kabawat.
She is Syria's minister for social affairs and labour - the only female minister in the transitional government tasked with navigating the country's jagged road from war to peace.
Sectarian violence, which has killed thousands of people, has marred its first months in power, with many of Syria's minority communities blaming government forces.
Once an opposition leader in exile, Kabawat acknowledges the government has made mistakes since President Ahmed al-Sharaa's rebel forces swept into the capital on 8 December 2024, ending decades of the Assad family's brutal dictatorship.
But she insists "mistakes happen in transition".
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"Women are excluded because politics is hostile, and politics remains hostile because women are excluded."
Bangladesh is not short of women in leadership, be it in business, government offices, or academia. It is short of women in electoral politics.
Over the past two decades, women’s presence across public life has expanded steadily and measurably. Girls now outnumber boys in secondary education. Maternal and child mortality have declined sharply. Women’s economic agency has grown through microfinance and the ready-made garment sector, both of which rely overwhelmingly on women’s labour. These gains were not incidental, but the result of sustained state policy, long-term NGO engagement, and deliberate investment in women as economic and social actors.
Women’s representation has also grown within the state itself. Bangladesh has 495 upazilas, and today roughly one-third of all upazila nirbahi officers are female. Women now serve across administrative tiers: as assistant commissioners, additional deputy commissioners, and senior field-level officials—roles that were overwhelmingly male a generation ago. This shift matters because it shows something crucial: when institutions are rules-based, women advance at scale. But when it comes to party politics and elections, the numbers collapse.
Reframing the ratio of women in government affects attitudes and action.
Gender disparity in political leadership is seldom cast as the overrepresentation of men (71 percent in the United States and worldwide). Rather, in public discourse, the gender imbalance in positions of power is framed as the underrepresentation of women. Social psychologists at the New York University Social Perception, Action, and Motivation Lab find in their 2024 study, "Women underrepresented or men overrepresented?" Framing the gender gap in political leadership as "men's overrepresentation" heightens emotional reactions and motivates efforts for change.
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The political structure and processes in Bangladesh remain predominantly patriarchal and under male control. The patriarchal society of Bangladesh does not favour women's participation in the country's political framework, resulting in low female representation at all levels of political parties. Selim Jahan explores where women stand in the upcoming elections.
After the July 2024 uprising, a question that emerged was, "Where are the women warriors of July?"
This question had context. During the July uprising, women were at the forefront of the struggle—leading, demanding, and visible. There is no doubt that women's participation was a significant catalyst in the success of the July movement.
Historically, this is not new in our country. In the 1971 Liberation War of Bangladesh, women fought shoulder to shoulder with men—directly on the battlefield and indirectly across the nation.
Across the world, women are underrepresented. Globally, fewer than one in four parliamentarians are women. In many Asia–Pacific countries, including Bangladesh, systemic barriers continue to limit women’s political participation. Social norms, structural bias, and unequal access to political networks constrain both candidacy and success. Yet, without women’s meaningful representation in politics and decision-making spaces, gender balance at work is not possible. Upcoming elections highlight this critical juncture: unless parties actively support women candidates, workplace policies that enable equality will remain underdeveloped and inequitable.
It is a direct correlation. Women in Bangladesh face barriers in entering formal employment, remaining in workplaces, and advancing to leadership. Many are concentrated in informal, low-paid, and insecure jobs, often exiting the labour market due to lack of childcare, unsafe commuting, or rigid working arrangements. These workplace realities are shaped by political choices—decisions about budget allocation, labour laws, social protection, and urban safety—made predominantly by male leadership.
There is a fast-growing body of literature on women’s political representation in Africa—a continent that often challenges the existing beliefs and common understandings of women’s representation in politics developed in the Global North. A recent addition to this literature is Women and Power in Africa: Aspiring, Campaigning and Governing, edited by Leonardo Arriola, Martha Johnson, and Melanie Phillips. As a result of the research in this book, conventional wisdoms are upended. The book tackles women’s pathways into power, the gendered effects of electoral systems, media coverages of campaigns, gender stereotyping, and women’s access to campaign finances. Other variables such as educational background, family obligations, and organizational capital are also investigated. The book represents a significant contribution to the field of comparative politics and deepens the theorization of women’s representation in politics.
Click here to read the article by the Cambridge University Press on 18 August 2023.
Women have been politically active and have played key roles at times of critical turning points in Sudan’s history, but this has not been translated into official recognition in political processes or substantive representation in government.
The latest example of this is women’s active role in response to the crisis that has evolved in Sudan since 15 April 2023, when the country was plunged into violence amidst the power struggle between the two main factions of the ruling military regime, the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Click here to read the full article published by Relief Web on 14 June 2023.
During the Summit for Democracy Year of Action, the S4D cohort on Gender Equality as a Prerequisite for Democracy identified recommendations for strengthening democracy by promoting gender equality, Statement and Roadmap of recommendations. The co-leads of the gender cohort – Sweden, Romania, Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security and International IDEA encourage governments and civil society to consider the recommendations and proposed actions.
The Gender Cohort strongly supports the themes for the Regional Summits for Democracy 2023. The regional themes have a critical link to gender equality and democracy nexus and the Gender Cohort has developed specific briefs on gender for each theme: Youth; Anti-Corruption; Free, Fair and Transparent Elections; Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) and Media Freedom.
Statement and Roadmap of Recommendations
The recommendations and proposed actions were identified in consultation with the cohort consisting of over 100 representatives of governments and civil society from all regions of the world. Governments and civil society are encouraged to consider the recommendations as tools for strengthening democracy by promoting gender equality. The recommendations focus on three pillars: inclusion; legislative and policy frameworks; and conflict prevention, peace and security. Each thematic pillar is fundamental for gender equality in democracy processes.
Read the statement of recommendations >>
Read the roadmap of recommendations >>
Briefs of the Democracy Cohort on Gender Equality
Gender equality is fundamental to the electoral process because it enables women—as voters, candidates and elected officials—to influence public policy and advocate for their interests. However, women face significant obstacles to political participation, including the use of targeted gender-based violence and intimidation meant to discourage them from running for office or exercising their political rights. Challenges and risks are even greater for women from historically marginalized communities. Additionally, women are less likely to be recruited and selected as candidates, are less likely to have equal access to campaign funds and face greater challenges to proportional representation.
Summit for Democracy Cohort on Gender Equality as a Prerequisite for Democracy Anti-Corruption
Corruption undermines democracy and justice because it impedes the ability of the public to benefit fully from government institutions. Combating corruption requires a gender perspective in order to gain a full understanding of its scope and impact. Women have unique (but not uniform) approaches to anti-corruption and are also impacted differently by corruption which drives inequalities and undermines opportunities for healthy democracies.
Summit for Democracy Cohort on Gender Equality as a Prerequisite for Democracy Youth
Youth are the leaders of the future. Yet, people under the age of 35 are rarely found in formal political leadership positions, with fewer women than men in these roles.2 Research by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) found that out of 2.2 per cent of parliamentarians under the age of 30, less than 1 per cent are young women. The marginalization of youth—including young women— from politics leads to missed opportunities to strengthen democracy-building processes and institutions. Gender equality as a prerequisite for democracy requires tailored efforts to engage both young women and men. Barriers to the inclusion of youth in politics must be addressed, including gendered forms of discrimination and violence.
ICTs have the potential to close gender gaps in women’s political participation. They can serve as tools for women to influence policy agendas, increase women’s access to campaign resources, strengthen networks of solidarity, and increase women’s representation in democratic agendas and processes. With social media, blogs, podcasts and promotional videos, women have bypassed traditional media outlets, such as TV and radio, to elevate their profile directly and access political decision-making.
Summit for Democracy Cohort on Gender Equality as a Prerequisite for Democracy Media Freedom
Media freedom and the safety of women journalists are fundamental to the strength of democratic processes and institutions. Yet, women are not equally represented in the media. A 2020 study of the news media in the UK, US, Kenya, India, South Africa and Nigeria found that women comprised only 15–30 percent of the subjects of news reports.
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.
Abstract
Concern over partisan resentment and hostility has increased across Western democracies. Despite growing attention to affective polarization, existing research fails to ask whether who serves in office affects mass-level interparty hostility. Drawing on scholarship on women’s behavior as elected representatives and citizens’ beliefs about women politicians, we posit the women MPs affective bonus hypothesis: all else being equal, partisans display warmer affect toward out-parties with higher proportions of women MPs. We evaluate this claim with an original dataset on women’s presence in 125 political parties in 20 Western democracies from 1996 to 2017 combined with survey data on partisans’ affective ratings of political opponents. We show that women’s representation is associated with lower levels of partisan hostility and that both men and women partisans react positively to out-party women MPs. Increasing women’s parliamentary presence could thus mitigate cross-party hostility.
Click here to access the paper.
At a time of pandemics, international economic downturns, and increasing environmental threats due to climate change, countries around the world are facing numerous crises. What impact might we expect these crises to have on the already common perception that executive leadership is a masculine domain? For years, women executives’ ability to lead has been questioned (Jalalzai 2013). However, the outbreak of COVID-19 brought headlines like CNN’s “Women Leaders Are Doing a Disproportionately Great Job at Handling the Pandemic” (Fincher 2020). Do crises offer women presidents and prime ministers opportunities to be perceived as competent leaders? Or do they prime masculinized leadership expectations and reinforce common conceptions that women are unfit to lead? We maintain that people’s perceptions of crisis leadership will depend on whether the crisis creates role (in)congruity between traditional gender norms and the leadership expectations generated by the particular crisis.
Click here to read the article by Cambridge University Press the 12 January 2023.