Women's Leadership
With only one in seven countries led by a woman, global political power remains dominated by men. Women are presidents or heads of government in only 28 of the world’s 195 countries, and 101 states have never had a female leader.
The latest data from the IPU and UN Women show that political equality remains a distant prospect: women hold no more than 22.4% of ministerial posts (down from 23.3% in 2024) and 27.5% of parliamentary seats (a level that has stagnated).
Fourteen countries, including six in Western Europe (1), have achieved gender parity in their governments, demonstrating that equal representation is possible. Conversely, eight countries still have no female ministers (2).
Gender Stereotypes
Women head 90% of ministries responsible for gender equality and 73% of ministries responsible for family and children’s affairs, reinforcing long-standing gender stereotypes in political leadership. Men continue to head almost exclusively the ministries responsible for defence, home affairs, justice, economic affairs, governance, health, and education.
“At a time of increasing global instability, escalating conflicts, and a visible rollback of women’s rights, excluding women from political leadership weakens societies’ ability to meet the challenges they face,” said Sima Bahous, Executive Director of UN Women.
European ministers approved plans to allow female lawmakers in the European Parliament to delegate their vote temporarily before and after childbirth – a reform supporters say will make the institution more family-friendly.
Parliament President Roberta Metsola told Euractiv that the Council of the EU’s vote on Tuesday was “another crack in the glass ceiling” and an “important step” for women in politics.
“No woman should have to choose between serving her voters and having children,” Metsola said.
The Maltese lawmaker outlined the reform plans in June 2025, following a 2023 in-house campaign, pledging to update the rules for young mothers.
Currently, MEPs who are advanced in their pregnancy or on maternity leave must forgo voting unless they travel to Strasbourg, where plenary votes take place roughly once a month.
According to the European Parliament’s research service for members, only a handful of EU countries’ national parliaments, such as Greece and Spain, allow MEPs on maternity leave to vote while absent.
HÀ NỘI — Women’s participation in politics is widely seen as a key measure of social progress and an important driver of socio-economic development, gender equality and sustainable growth.
Speaking at the seminar themed 'Women in Politics – A Story That Belongs to Everyone', held on Wednesday in Hà Nội, Associate Professor Dương Kim Anh, deputy director of the Việt Nam Women’s Academy (VWA), highlighted the growing role of women in shaping public policy and governance.
The event was organised by the VWA in co-ordination with the Australian People for Health, Education and Development Abroad Office in Việt Nam (APHEDA) to mark the upcoming election of the 16th National Assembly and people’s councils at all levels for the 2026–31 term.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya is on a visit to Rome, where she joined the “Women of My Time” event, organized on the occasion of International Women’s Day by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the ecclesiastical advisor to Minister Antonio Tajani.
In her speech, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya emphasized that women in Belarus have historically carried a great deal of responsibility: “In Belarus, life has always rested on the shoulders of women. It was women who rebuilt the country after the wars. Women raised children alone when their husbands were taken away by war, prison, or exile. This is still happening today. It was women who, in 2020, raised the flag and led the peaceful protests. And I believe that it will ultimately be women who dismantle the dictatorship and turn our country toward democracy and the European future we are fighting for”.
She highlighted Belarusian women who show courage despite repression: “Courage is 80-year-old Nina Bahinskaya, who walks the streets with the white-red-white flag, and when the police confiscate it, she simply sews a new one. Courage is Maryia Kalesnikava, who tore up her passport at the border so the regime could not deport her. She spent five years in solitary confinement but did not break. There is always a smile on her face”.
Women contribute socially, economically and culturally, yet their voices are not adequately reflected in governance. Increasing women’s participation strengthens democracy and inclusive development,’’ the seasoned parliamentarian stated.
Jagne, served in The Gambia’s parliament from 2007 to 2017 and concurrently represented the country at the ECOWAS Parliament from 2007 to 2015. In 2010, she became the first President of ECOFEPA, transforming it into a structured regional platform for female lawmakers across West Africa.
At the national level, she was among the few women elected through the ballot in 2007 and notably seconded the landmark Women’s Act 2010, which strengthened legal protections for women.
She challenged political parties to remove structural barriers, reduce high nomination fees, and adopt gender quotas to increase female representation.
Similarly, she called for more opportunities to enhance women’s inclusion in politics, while also urging for mentorship and training opportunities so as to create safer internal party environments for women aspirants,
Exile Hub is one of Global Voices’ partners in Southeast Asia, emerging in response to the 2021 coup in Myanmar, focusing on empowering journalists and human rights defenders. This edited article is republished under a content partnership agreement.
As a Burmese filmmaker shaped by her grandmother’s quiet defiance, Verse uses storytelling to challenge gender bias and uplift women whose voices are too often erased.
Verse began her professional journey in 2018 as a reporter at a local news agency in Myanmar. She dreamed of covering political news, but quickly encountered systemic gender bias. During a major assignment, male reporters were sent to Nay Pyi Taw to cover parliament-related matters, and she was told to stay behind.
She recalled the moment: “I was told women weren’t given those opportunities. I could not accept a workplace that denied my growth simply because I was a woman.”
She left journalism and joined a women’s rights organization, shifting her focus to human rights and feminist advocacy.
Violence against women in all its forms is perceived by the OSCE as one of the most pervasive impediments to women’s full, equal and effective participation in political and public life and as a threat to human security. Yet, it is prevalent across the OSCE region, and it is especially, but not exclusively, affecting young, disabled, ethnic minority women. Women are targeted with violence not only for their political views but also to prevent current and aspiring women politicians from engaging in politics and decision-making altogether. Violence is not a price women should have to pay in order to enjoy their political and civil rights. In addition to individual suffering and violation of women’s rights, this violence weakens democratic governance, political pluralism and the inclusivity of public institutions. This toolkit provides recommendations for legislators, governments, parliaments and political parties as well as guidance for civil society and women politicians affected by violence. It consolidates existing definitions and compiles examples of promising practices on preventing violence against women in politics from a variety of States. The toolkit is based upon international standards and OSCE commitments.
Click here to access the report.
This paper proposes replacing the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Gender Inequality Index with two new gender indexes: the Global Gender Parity Index (GGPI) and the Women’s Empowerment Index (WEI).
The proposal builds on a review of concepts of gender equality in the capability approach that underpins UNDP’s human development paradigm and the international policy frameworks of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Beijing Platform for Action, and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It also implements current proposals for reform, which emphasize measuring gender inequality in capabilities (rather than institutional inputs or resources that enable or constrain these capabilities) and measuring gaps in achievements between women and men and the level of women’s potential for empowerment by different indexes.
Evaluating the options for measurement, the paper identifies several Sustainable Development Goal indicators and novel data as potentially useful in translating the selected capabilities into new indexes. The first index, the GGPI, is a relative measure of well-being, which encompasses the dimensions of health, education, decent standard of living and decision-making. The second, the WEI, focuses solely on women and measures freedom from early motherhood, reproductive choice, and freedom from intimate partner violence as well as women’s capabilities to seek education, pursue science, technology, engineering, and math degrees, have voice in national and local governing bodies, and hold economic leadership positions.
Click here to access the report.
UCC research, carried out on behalf of Cork City Council’s Women’s Caucus, has recommended that gender quota legislation be introduced before the next local government elections to help increase the number of female councillors around the country.
Gender quotas are in place for national elections but not at local government level. The authors called for legislation to introduce a 40% gender quota for the 2024 elections so that Ireland is in line with other European countries. At present any gender quotas are informal, as agreed by individual political parties.
The authors of ‘Women’s Voice in the Council Chamber’ Dr. Aodh Quinlivan, Dr Fiona Buckley, Olajumoke Olumwaferanmi Igun and John Ger O’Riordan, also recommended that maternity leave and paternity leave be extended to councillors, that of the three councillors nominated by each local authority to the Association of Irish Local Government (AILG), that at least one should be a woman. They also called for a specific mentoring programme for newly elected women councillors and community-based education around the role of local government and the councillors.
Click here to access the report.
Building on the data in the global report on Gender Equality in Public Administration (GEPA), this policy brief looks at women's participation in and leadership of environmental protection ministries as well as all ministries tasked officially with each country's response to climate change. While progress in women's participation in public administration across many other sectors has improved, there are still significant gaps – with the largest ones affecting environment and climate spheres.
Click here to access the report.
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.