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Women’s political advocates have expressed concern that the proposed Special Seats Bill, designed to increase female representation in Nigeria’s legislative bodies, will not influence the composition of the 2027 general elections after failing to complete the constitutional amendment process before the Independent National Electoral Commission’s timeline closed.

The bill, a constitutional amendment proposal seeking to create 182 additional seats exclusively for women across the National Assembly and state legislatures, remains at the committee stage in the National Assembly despite renewed advocacy efforts and widespread support from women’s groups.

The legislation, first introduced during the Ninth National Assembly and reintroduced in 2024, was conceived as a response to Nigeria’s low level of female political representation and draws inspiration from the Beijing Platform for Action and Nigeria’s National Gender Policy.

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While victims include anonymous women and girls, those with a public profile are particularly exposed to the danger of deepfakes. Campaigners and experts say the images are designed not only to humiliate them, but to push them out of public debate.

The attacks against Slovenian activist Nika Kovac began when she was at the centre of a major abortion rights campaign. The 33-year-old runs My Voice, My Choice, a European citizens’ initiative pushing for EU support to access abortion.

The campaign gained momentum, pushing the European Parliament and then the European Commission to take a position on the issue. That was when AI-generated sexual videos and photos showing Kovac naked begin appearing on social media, she tells RFI.

“First I thought, what will happen if my mother or father see them, if my grandparents see them?” Kovac said. 

Some of her relatives initially thought one of the videos was real.

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The Gen-Z-led uprising in Nepal did not erupt out of nowhere – it emerged from intersecting pressures that had been quietly building for decades. The first was a collective discontent with entrenched political corruption and nepotism – a system where bribery has long been normalised, taxpayer money is routinely embezzled into private pockets, and political leaders live lavish lives with little accountability. This simmering resentment found a visual language on TikTok, where young Nepalis began mirroring a trend seen across Asia: publicly calling out the children of politicians by exposing their designer clothes, luxury travel, and elite lifestyles.

The second trigger came when the Nepali government abruptly banned major social media platforms including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and X, citing regulatory failures. Many citizens however, believed the ban was an attempt to suppress the growing anti-corruption discourse ahead of elections. These two forces collided on 8 September 2025 as tens of thousands took to the streets in protest. What began peacefully turned deadly by the afternoon, when police fired live rounds into crowds. In the days that followed, the total death toll rose to 76, with over 2,000 people injured.i

The public’s anger proved uncontainable over the next two days. Protesters set fire to businesses, the parliament building, and several politicians’ homes. Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli and Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak resigned. The unrest eventually subsided only after the military assumed control, imposing a curfew of three days. Meanwhile, over 100,000 people, mainly from Gen Z, discussed and debated on Discord groups about potential interim leaders.ii

Sushila Karki, Nepal’s first female chief justice, emerged as the most popular choice due to her strong anti-corruption stance and was subsequently elected as interim Prime Minister through formal political channels, making her the first woman in Nepal’s history to hold the highest political office. Her rise was not just a response to crisis, but a reflection of how public trust, digital momentum, and political urgency began to align. These events can be explored further through three critical lenses: digital mobilisation, diaspora involvement, and gendered visibility.

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India’s democracy has grown in scale, but not quite in balance. Women today are active participants in elections, influencing outcomes in ways that were not as visible earlier. Yet their presence in legislative institutions continues to lag behind. The Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam was meant to address this gap through reservation. But its linkage with delimitation brought in an element of delay, and perhaps even a degree of distrust, raising a basic question: does this present imbalance really need to wait for a redrawing of boundaries to be addressed?

The Representation Deficit: More than Just Numbers

The gap is easy to quantify, but harder to justify. In the 18th Lok Sabha (2024), only 74 women were elected – about 13.6% of the House. This is not dramatically different from where we were years ago. Progress has been slow, almost reluctant.

Globally, women make up over a quarter of national parliaments. In India, both at the Centre and in most state assemblies, we remain well below that mark. What makes this more puzzling is that women are no longer politically invisible as voters. They turn up, they decide, and increasingly, they influence electoral outcomes. Yet, they are still missing at the table where decisions are made.

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Working in feminist communications and advocacy, Verónica sees media not simply as a profession, but as a powerful political tool. The creation of Pícara emerged from a sense of exclusion and the need to confront violence, challenge stereotypes, and reshape public narratives around women and gender-diverse people. When Verónica and her classmates graduated with degrees in communication, traditional media environments felt unwelcoming and unsafe. “It was as if we didn’t belong there,” she recalls, and participation often meant exposure to “multiple forms of violence.” Rather than accepting those conditions, they decided to create a feminist communication space that could operate differently — one that would actively work to “break stereotypes and debunk some myths.”

What united the founders of Pícara was a shared belief that communication could drive social change. They connected with other feminist colleagues who viewed media as “a tool for transformation,” and from that collective vision, Pícara was born.

Central to Verónica’s work is the power of language. “We focus primarily on the use of language as a tool for transformation,” she explains, emphasizing how words shape how experiences are named, understood, and addressed. In Argentina, feminist movements have long fought to change the narratives surrounding violence against women. One of the most significant shifts was moving away from describing the murder of women as crimes of passion to naming them as femicides.

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