Women's Leadership

International IDEA organized the Inter-Regional Roundtable on the Intersections between Gender and Political Finance in Brussels on 16-17 October 2019. The Roundtable provided a forum for female and male politicians and practitioners from about 20 countries to discuss the interlinked dimensions of gender and political financing and how they influence gender equality in politics at all levels.

Monday’s federal election saw a new record – the most female Members of Parliament elected to the House of Commons.

Global News counted a total of 98 women MPs that were elected across all parties, an increase of 10 from the 2015 election and seven from the 91 female-held seats at the time parliament dissolved.

Elected women also saw a general increase of representation in their respective parties.

Mumilaaq Qaqqaq, 25, was the youngest candidate running for federal MP in any of the three territories.

Early Tuesday morning, she became one of the youngest MPs in the country.

With 55 of 59 polls counted, the NDP candidate sat at 3,717 votes — nearly 1,000 more than her closest challenger, Liberal Megan Pizzo Lyall.

Women parliamentarians and other leaders in politics, on Sunday, discussed how people generally are less likely to recognise leadership qualities in women and stressed on the urgency to break this gender gap with female journalists, in Kathmandu.

Local Government New Zealand today confirmed what many local election commentators have observed; that more of the voting public cast their ballots in favour of women candidates than ever before.

Women now make up over 42% of all local government elected members, above the percentage of women board directors in New Zealand’s private sector (24%) as well as the number of women in Parliament as at the most recent election (38%).

Observers say female candidates systematically threatened with physical, sexual violence to deter them from running.

Several women leaders in Maharashtra are contesting the Vidhan Sabha polls but in terms of numbers the representation has reduced. This time 235 women are contesting of which only 39 are from the four mainstream political parties - the BJP,  Shiv Sena, Congress and NCP. The BJP has fielded the maximum women candidates 17, followed by the Shiv Sena and the Congress, which have fielded eight each, and the NCP six.

On October 11, the UBC Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions and UBC School of Public Policy and Global Affairs (SPPGA) hosted a panel discussion on women’s representation in Canada.