Women's Leadership
By Emma Batha
LONDON, Feb 1 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Countries must put more women into leadership roles to build a stronger post-pandemic world, a top U.N. official said on Monday as data showed women could be waiting more than a century to see equality at the highest political echelons.
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, who made history as South Africa's first female deputy president in 2005, said gender-balanced cabinets made better decisions not just for women, but for society as a whole.
Global progress on getting more women into top roles is frustratingly slow, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
But she believes Kamala Harris's appointment as the first female U.S. vice president will make other countries take note and spur more women to consider running for office.
"It does help if a big country breaks the mould. It pushes other countries forward," she said.
Mlambo-Ngcuka said Harris, who is of Indian and Jamaican heritage, was a particularly important role model for young women of colour.
"They now have someone who looks like them, who they can identify with," she said, adding that she had witnessed how her own appointment in 2005 had encouraged the ambitions of a younger generation.
"It was such a fulfilling feeling to hear young women (saying) 'Wow, this is on the table. I can also go for this'," Mlambo-Ngcuka said.
Only 22 countries have an elected woman head of state or government, while 119 nations have never had a woman leader, according to U.N. Women, which said gender parity would not be achieved for another 130 years at the current rate of progress.
Click here to read the full article published by Reuters on 1 February 2021.
Leandre Dal Ponte is a Member of Parliament from Brazil.
This interview was conducted in March 2019 in the margins of the sixty-third session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW63) in New York.
It has been an unrelenting and rough year. We have faced a global pandemic that has sickened millions and caused over 300,000 American deaths, a national reckoning over systemic racism and racialized police violence, destructive wildfires and hurricanes linked to the climate crisis, and the pandemic causing economic devastation with record levels of unemployment, thousands of small businesses to close, hundreds of thousands of women to leave the workforce and worsening levels of food insecurity—and all of these factors have disproportionately affected women and people of color.
If we try to find a silver lining in all of this, it could be that these crises have dramatically exposed the many flaws, cracks and inequities in our systems, giving us a rare opportunity to rebuild in a way that creates new paradigms and values and cares for all members of society equally, as well as the earth.
I spent 2020 interviewing a diverse group of female thought leaders who shared their insights and expertise on where we must focus our efforts to ensure the world that emerges post COVID-19 is more just, sustainable and equitable. I went through these interviews and selected a small sampling to help illuminate the work ahead. There is no question that women, and particularly women of color, will need to be at the forefront to help lead the way.
Click here to read the full interview published on 15 December by Forbes.
Not long after the news of Covid-19 broke around the world, it became clear that it would be a health crisis of pandemic proportions. But it also became apparent early on that there was much more at risk than health.
While men were more likely to die from the virus by the numbers, women have disproportionately experienced the social and economic effects of the pandemic.
Fragile systems and safety nets cracked almost instantly.
Click here to read the full interviews published by The New York Times on 17 November 2020.
Gofaone Mabutho, a 28-year-old woman from Marapong is one of the few women councillors in Botswana. She toppled then incumbent councilor for her ward in the 2019 general elections, an impressive feat that has never been done before, especially considering that she is the first female councillor in Marapong and she is also a member of the opposition party coalition, the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC).
When asked about the presence of any prejudice towards her being a young female politician in her ward she said: “To be honest, apart from one or two people who say I am young, my gender has never been a factor. I think it is actually an advantage as women who make majority of economically and socially disadvantaged find it easier to relay their problems to me than they would to a man”.
She further pointed out that she has a good working relationship with the village leadership, social workers and other civil servants throughout the ward. Mabutho is the fourth councilor for the village and is the first woman to win against a male contestant in the elections. However, she declined to share the strategy she used to defeat her competitor to avoid people copying and using it to defeat her.
Click here to read the full article published by Mmegi Online on 11 December 2020.
Leaving women out of COVID-19 decision-making is not just bad for women — it’s bad for everyone. Research shows that achieving gender parity correlates with better outcomes in the pandemic overall, yet a new analysis found that only 3.5% of COVID-19 decision-making bodies have an equitable number of men and women. What does this mean for healthcare? We spoke to a panel of experts to find out.
Past outbreaks of diseases such as Zika and Ebola have taught us the same lesson time and time again: In situations of crisis, women’s rights and needs are pushed aside because they are seen as a bonus or privilege rather than a necessity.
The trajectory is always the same — women make up the vast majority of care workers and are also overwhelmed with informal care duties, yet their contribution to decision-making is lacking. According to recent research, only 3.5% of 115 COVID-19 decision-making groups across 87 countries contained an equitable number of men and women.
Click here to read the full article published by Medical News Today on 4 December 2020.
Click here to listen to the discussion with the panel of experts.
VVEngage is a Vital Voices signature fellowship supporting outstanding women political leaders making and influencing policy across the globe. Through this fully-funded fellowship, we aim to increase the capacity, decision-making power and effectiveness of women leaders in politics and government, shifting culture around women’s public leadership and moving towards equality in public representation globally. We also aim to work towards a more inclusive and equitable world by advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through policy.
Through this fellowship, Vital Voices advances women’s political leadership and the SDGs by conducting online and in-person* trainings with experts such as women leaders from the Vital Voices Global Network and professors from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. The fellowship also connects participants to a global network of peers and mentors, such as current and former female heads of state with the Council of Women World Leaders, with whom they can brainstorm and share challenges and best practices.
Click here to learn more and to access application details.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has developed a 10-Point Action Agenda for Advancing Gender Equality in Crisis Settings (10PAA), a roadmap to guide its development programming towards results that will help transform and advance gender equality in crisis contexts and achieve the Women, Peace and Security agenda. The 10PAA is central to UNDP’s new Crisis Offer, as well as its new Gender Equality Strategy 2022-2025. It represents a strong corporate commitment to addressing the most stubborn roots of gender inequalities.
The 10PAA is the result of a broad consultation process that aimed at finding entry points to strengthen gender-transformational results and women’s leadership and participation in crisis contexts. It is grounded in the understanding that deep-rooted, intersectional discrimination sits at the heart of the multiple challenges humanity faces and reinforces models of dominance that exclude and leave women behind, especially in crisis settings.
Click here to access the publication.
Online violence against women in politics (OVAW-P) poses a deepening challenge to democracy, serving as a key tool of illiberalism and democratic backsliding across the globe. OVAW-P encompasses all forms of aggression, coercion, and intimidation seeking to exclude women from politics simply because they are women. This online behavior seeks to achieve political outcomes: targeting individual women to harm them or drive them out of public life, while also sending a message that women in general should not be involved in politics. This online violence has a chilling effect on the political ambitions and engagement of women and girls, decreasing their presence and agency in politics and public life. Stopping gender-based attacks online is a solvable problem, and it is the fastest and clearest investment toward building an internet that enables everyone to be politically engaged.
This report includes a list of interventions that technology platforms, governments, civil society organizations, and the media can take to make meaningful progress towards ending online violence against women in politics.
Click here to access the report.
The Women in Government Fellowship is a six-month program that is focused on capacity-building, training, and mentorship of women in politics. It seeks to enhance and improve the quality of political participation of women.
The fellows will undergo in-person workshops, intensive virtual learning sessions, and hands-on mentorship by seasoned women politicians. This three-pronged approach will provide an academic grounding of democratic frameworks and policy-making, up-skill them with practical know-hows of electioneering, build the fellows' personal brands through personalised Public Narrative trainings by coaches from Harvard Kennedy School, and learn the ropes of politicking directly from a mentor who is undergoing the realities and tackling the challenges of being a woman in public office.
Application deadline: 30th November 2022
Shortlisted applicants' interviews: 5-15th December 2022
Selected Fellows list: 21st December 2022
Click here to learn more.
A compendium of ideas to reach gender parity in municipal politics
How can we begin to overcome the countless obstacles that are preventing women from fully participating in municipal politics?
The suggestions in this Inventory were compiled following consultations we carried out across Canada, as part of FCM’s Toward Parity Project.
These actions are not official FCM recommendations. They are potential strategies that need to be assessed to determine whether they can be adapted to fit local realities and opportunities.
Click here to access the guide.
To inform our own programming on advancing gender-balanced appointments and to establish a scalable, replicable, transformative model for advancing gender-balanced appointments, RepresentWomen gathered learnings from five similar initiatives around the country.
The following summary reviews these conversations:
- Key ingredients for success
- Stumbling blocks
- What they wish they knew
- Common tactics
Click here to access the guide.
For its inaugural Solutions Summit, RepresentWomen gathered experts in election administration, voting rights, and democracy reform to discuss the viable, scalable, and transformative initiatives that will strengthen our democracy. Over the course of three days, they held sessions on fair elections, fair access, and fair representation, ending each day with ways we could take actions to advance the solutions discussed that day.
They compiled all of those ideas, resources, and guides into one place to create this 2022 Solutions Summit Resource Guide, which provides a plethora of take-action options so you can be a part of the solution.
Click here to download the guide.
The internet is a tool that can simplify and encourage democratic engagement, but the rise of online disinformation challenges even the world’s most robust democracies. While the most recognizable disinformation campaigns are related to national politics, disinformers frequently employ narratives targeting women’s gender and sexuality in order to disrupt democracy. This is often then amplified by media agents and the general population, who may not have the intent to drive disinformation nor the capacity to discern it. NDI’s robust research in this field concludes that gendered disinformation is the use of false information to confuse or mislead by manipulating gender as a social cleavage to attack women and/or to sway political outcomes. It has three primary goals: to keep women out of politics; to change the views of women and men about women’s political participation; and specifically to change party policies or political outcomes. In short, it aims to undermine women’s free and equal participation in politics to the detriment of inclusive, resilient democracy.
Based on research conclusions, this paper outlines recommendations for NDI, its partners and those working globally to mitigate the democratic harms of disinformation, to ensure women’s safe participation and leadership in politics, and to monitor the social media and information environment in elections.
Click here to access the guide.
This guide is designed to increase the understanding of the legal obligations of countries in the West and Central Africa (WCA) region to achieve gender equality in decision-making. It focuses on strengthening efforts to improve the legal framework in the region to ensure that laws are clearly drafted, implementable and effective. Special focus is devoted to the processes by which laws supporting political participation of women are developed, negotiated, drafted, passed and implemented. It aims to strengthen law-making processes that build and secure the legal rights of women who want to run for elections and who are ready to take over leadership positions in their parliaments and governments. Legal instruments are presented that can be used to advance the political participation of women.
The comparative experiences presented in this guide address both examples of good practices and laws that have failed because their regulations are imprecise, unclear and/or lack effective sanctions. The guide presents also various provisions of laws resulting from different constitutional requirements or electoral systems, assessing their advantages and disadvantages.
Click here to download the guide published by UN Women in 2021.
This Handbook has been developed as publication by register of Political Parties with support from the Papua New Guinea Election Commission and the United Nations Development Programme in Papua New Guinea. This is part of UN Women Make the Change programme funded by the Australian Government’s Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Development Programme.
Click here to download the report.