Women's Leadership

FREDERICTON -- Kassim Doumbia says he always wanted to get involved and be active in his community. He moved to Shippagan 14 years ago, and has spent the last nine years on the town’s council.

Tuesday night, Doumbia became New Brunswick’s first Black mayor. He calls it a dream.

“That means the citizens of the municipality see me as one of them,” he said in an interview with CTV Atlantic. “The colour doesn’t matter, they see the person. They see what I can bring to the community, they see what I can bring to the table. They see my involvement in the community…wow. It’s just, a lot of things happening in my mind right now.”

His election was one of many historic changes across New Brunswick's local governments.

For the first time, three of the largest cities all elected women as mayors at the same time.

Long-time councillor Donna Reardon was elected in Saint John – and the city of Moncton re-elected Dawn Arnold.

For Fredericton, it was the first time the city ever elected a female mayor.

Click here to read the full article published by CTW News Atlantic on 26 May 2021.

(CNN)- Samoa's first female Prime Minister-elect has had a strange inaugural week in office.

When Fiame Naomi Mata'afa turned up to the Pacific island nation's Parliament on Monday to be sworn in, she found the building locked. The 64-year-old went ahead with the oath-taking ceremony anyway -- inside a tent on Parliament grounds.

"(Though) it was disappointing, we weren't surprised," she said from her office in the capital Apia. "But we were very resolved that a convening and swearing-in ceremony needed to take place." Monday was the final day a new parliament could be sworn in following the April 9 election under Samoa's constitution.

Click here to read the full article published by CNN on 30 May 2021.

Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, and I all had better campaign win-loss records than any of the leading men. But the question was never whether a man could be elected. Despite our stronger records, it was always, “Can a woman win?” —excerpt from PERSIST by Elizabeth Warren (Metropolitan Books, May 2021). 

“Why doesn’t she smile more?” “Could you see yourself getting a beer with her?” “Do people like her enough to win?” Every election cycle, questions like these become a common refrain when a woman—or more than one woman—runs for office. These inherently sexist questions come with revealing misogynistic expectations in politics, but also have real electoral consequences. 

Women candidates are scrutinized and picked apart based on assumptions about their lack of appeal to voters. This constant debate about electability is detrimental to women’s candidacies and U.S. politics as whole, as it focuses on the quagmire of a candidate’s image rather than their policy positions. Men don’t need to be liked to be “electable”—women do.

What Does “Likability” and “Electability” Mean?

Likability is a key component of electability along with establishing a candidate’s qualifications. Often seen together, likability and electability refer to how a candidate is perceived by a voter and whether or not that voter believes they can win an election.

Click here to read the full article published by MS Magazine on 24 May 2021.

Chileans to elect 155-strong assembly made up of equivalent men and women to set out new framework and enshrine equal rights

Women’s rights activists in Chile say that the country’s new constitution will catalyze progress for women in the country – and could set a new global standard for gender equality in politics.

In a two-day vote this weekend, Chileans will elect a 155-strong citizens’ assembly to write a new constitution for the country – the first anywhere in the world to be written by an equal number of men and women.

“It’s a game-changing moment, like when women won the right to vote,” said Antonia Orellana, 31, who is running as a candidate in the capital, Santiago.

Click here to read the full article published by The Guardian on 14 May 2021.

The rape of Vasfije Krasniqi-Goodman was one of thousands during Kosovo's 1990s war, but she is still the only victim to have spoken out publicly and now is pushing for a radical shake-up of a society long dominated by men.

Krasniqi-Goodman was part of a record intake of women MPs elected to Kosovo's parliament earlier this year, propelled to power on a wave of anger over domestic violence, lack of economic opportunities and ingrained prejudices.

Europe's youngest democracy also chose a woman president, chiming with a global push for women to be more involved in public life, embodied by the #metoo movement.

Click here to read the full article published by RFI on 6 May 2021.

Image by RFI

Some 60 percent of protesters against the military coup are women who fear their hard-won rights hang in the balance.

Every day at sunrise, Daisy* and her sisters set out to spend several hours in the heat cleaning debris from the previous day’s protests off the streets of Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city.

Protests have erupted around the country since the military seized control of the government after arresting democratic leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, on February 1, and declared a year-long state of emergency.

According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), a non-profit rights organisation formed by former political prisoners from Myanmar and based in Thailand, 715 civilian protesters have been killed and more than 3,000 people have been charged, arrested or sentenced to prison for taking part in protests. March 27 marked the deadliest day of the anti-coup protests so far, with more than 100 deaths in a single day.

Click here to read the full article published by Al Jazeera on 25 April 2021.