Parliaments & Representatives

Hon Catherine Gotani Hara, a lawmaker with the main opposition Malawi Congress Party, MCP, has been elected speaker of the country’s parliament becoming the first woman speaker.

Multiple local media portals have reported that she won a closely contested poll on Wednesday beating former first deputy speaker Esther Mcheka Chilenje.

South Africa's president on Wednesday named a trimmed-down Cabinet that is 50% women, making the country's one of few in the world to be "gender-balanced."

President Cyril Ramaphosa's announcement followed similar moves by Ethiopia and Rwanda last year.

The number of women members of the European Parliament has doubled since direct elections were first held in 1979 but they still remain the minority, particularly in the top jobs.

Women made up just 16 percent of the 1979 parliament; in today’s outgoing assembly, they represent around 36 percent of the 751 MEPs.

Spain’s new parliament, sworn in on Tuesday, has the largest share of women in any European legislature, no small achievement for a country still reinventing itself four decades after the end of a right-wing, traditionalist dictatorship.

Women’s rights have been prominent in the political debate for over a decade and remain controversial, to the point where the far-right Vox party entered the assembly for the first time on a platform that seeks to reverse some equality laws.

The next federal parliament is set to have a record number of women but Australia still has a "long way to go" until it achieves gender parity in its corridors of power.

The IPU and UN Women held a joint parliamentary event at the 63rd Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW63) on 13 March 2019 in New York. Participants at the event discussed ways of making social protection programmes more gender responsive.

How do we know whether women are achieving equitable levels of political representation? For many years, scholars have focused on women’s representation in legislatures. But in many African states power is in fact concentrated in the executive branch.