Women's Leadership

It would appear that women in Israel have broken through the glass ceiling. Women have filled positions of prime minister, foreign minister, deputy defense minister, justice minister, Bank of Israel governor, state comptroller, Supreme Court president, as well as of lower courts, Knesset speaker, university president, chair of the board of directors of leading banks and more.

You might think that with more women entering politics the media would have become less likely to report on the appearance, fashion choices and relationship status of female prime ministers.

But research from the Australian National University shows the opposite is true: the media obsession with female PMs' gender is worsening.

The Serbian Parliament has announced an amendment to its electoral laws with a new minimum quota of 40 per cent of candidates on electoral lists for parliamentary and local elections from the less-represented gender.

It has long been seen as one of the flukes of American political history: For three decades after the American Revolution, the women of New Jersey had equal voting rights with men.

The state was the first — and for a long time, the only — to explicitly enfranchise women, in laws passed more than a century before the 19th Amendment enshrined the principle of gender equality at the polls in the United States Constitution. But this being New Jersey, things quickly came to mischief.

It's an offer candidates shouldn't refuse. 

M.M. LaFleur, which designs professional women's attire, has announced it will be lending free clothing to women candidates running for office — whether for Congress or town council.

Female political prisoners held in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison wrote in a statement: "It is up to us to leave their elections for themselves and remain in the real square of popular elections.

“I don’t matter to Knesset members,” says Elana Sztokman in a campaign video for the new women’s party she just co-founded. She rattles off a list of issues that she says are routinely ignored by lawmakers – from gender issues to education and health care, to the women murdered by boyfriends and relatives. “Do you feel like you also don’t matter? Join us,” she concludes.

The most profound change in American politics today and in the years to come will result from a massive movement of women into the Democratic Party. As this realignment takes place Hillary Clinton may well go down in history as this century’s equivalent of Al Smith. Al Smith was the Democratic nominee for president in 1928 and the first Roman Catholic ever nominated by a major political party.