Women's Leadership

Decades of research has debated whether women first need to reach a “critical mass” in the legislature before they can effectively influence legislative outcomes. This study contributes to the debate using supervised tree-based machine learning to study the relationship between increasing variation in women's legislative representation and the allocation of government expenditures in three policy areas: education, healthcare, and defense. We find that women's representation predicts spending in all three areas. We also find evidence of critical mass effects as the relationships between women's representation and government spending are nonlinear. However, beyond critical mass, our research points to a potential critical mass interval or critical limit point in women's representation. We offer guidance on how these results can inform future research using standard parametric models.

Click here to read the full article published by Cambridge University Press on 21 September 2021.

When women gain power in national legislatures such as the U.S. Senate or Israeli Knesset, countries begin to spend more on priorities like education and health care.

That’s the conclusion of new research led by CU Boulder and published this fall in the journal Political Science Research and Methods.

The study comes as women are winning more seats in parliaments and national assemblies around the globe, but still struggling to gain a majority in many countries.

In Rwanda, for instance, women fill 56%, or 59 out of 106, of the seats in the nation’s parliament—the largest representation of women in any national legislative body in the world. Lebanon, Sri Lanka and Nigeria, meanwhile, join a host of countries where the representation of women languishes in the single digits. The United States falls in the middle with women holding 27%, or 143 out of 535, House and Senate seats. 

Click here to read the full article published by University of Colorado Boulder on 26 October 2021.

Abstract

Social norms that legitimise men as political leaders, and undervalue women’s leadership, are a tenacious barrier to women’s representation globally. This article explores the circumstances under which women dynasty politicians, whose legacy connections have provided them with an initial pathway into politics, are able to disrupt these norms. We test a proposed typology of normative change – one that progresses from norm acceptance, to norm modification, then norm resistance – among women dynasty politicians in the Pacific Islands. We find that norms of masculinised political leadership are strong, and in many cases the election of wives, widows, daughters and other relatives of male political actors reinforces these norms through their positioning as ‘placeholders’. Yet some women dynasty politicians can, and do, challenge and extend social norms of leadership. This is especially the case when the ‘legacy advantage’ is a springboard from which women demonstrate – and their publics accept – their own articulation of political leadership.

Click here to access the paper.

This report reflects the main arguments presented during the high-level seminar, organized by UN Women in collaboration with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, on “Strengthening women’s participation in peace processes: What roles and responsibilities for states?” in Rome, Italy, on 3 and 4 December 2019. The main arguments include the persistent barriers to women’s meaningful participation in peace and mediation processes and the opportunities that exist to remove them.

Specifically, seminar participants discussed challenges related to limited political will, the link between women’s underrepresentation in politics and their marginalization in peace processes, the complex balance between women’s representation and promoting gender equality, and the barriers to sustainable civil society involvement.

Second, the report highlights perspectives and lessons learned that representatives of the United Nations, Member States, regional organizations, and civil society shared on how to enhance women’s meaningful participation in peace processes. Two strategies were emphasized: the design of inclusive peace processes and the role of regional networks of women mediators in bridging peace processes across tracks. The case studies of Colombia, Syria, and Cyprus are also included, offering insights on some successful strategies to increase women’s participation.

Finally, the report describes the key policy recommendations that emanated from the seminar, with a view to addressing ongoing barriers to women’s participation and using innovative and comprehensive strategies to achieve more gender-responsive peace processes.

Source: UN Women 

Peruvian President Pedro Castillo accepted the resignation of his prime minister Wednesday and replaced him with a female environmental activist.

Under Peruvian law, the prime minister's resignation automatically triggered that of the entire cabinet.

Hours later, Castillo swore in environmental and human rights activist Mirtha Vasquez, 46, as his new prime minister in a move seen as a sop to the moderate wing of the informal leftist coalition that supports him.

Castillo gave no reasons for replacing Guido Bellido as premier, who was a more hardline leftist. Bellido's resignation letter said he was acting at Castillo's "request."

The leftist president, who used to be a rural school teacher, called for "unity" from Peru's economic, political and social sectors to "achieve common objectives" such as reactivating the economy.

Click here to reach the full article published by Yahoo on 7 October 2021.

Najla Bouden Ramadhane, a university engineer with World Bank experience, has been lifted from political obscurity to become Tunisia's — and the Arab world's — first female prime minister.

Ramadhane was named to the post Wednesday after Kais Saied, who became president two years ago, dismissed her predecessor in July and suspended parliament, Reuters reported.

Saied justified his actions as temporary measures to help in tackling the country's economic crisis and COVID-19 emergency. However, since then, coronavirus cases in the country have tailed off, while Saied — a former professor of constitutional law — has continued pushing for more unilateral power that his opponents view as a coup.

The new prime minister is a 60-something professor of geosciences at the National Engineering School in Tunis, according to The National, based in the United Arab Emirates. She will leave her current post as director general in charge of quality at the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, where she is overseeing World Bank programs, the news agency said.

Click here to read the full article published by NPR on 29 September 2021.