Women's Leadership

The sheer tenacity of women raising their voices and organising for fundamental change has been, and will continue to be, the driving force for achieving women’s rights and a gender-equal world. Yet we cannot ignore the fundamental role that governments can play in either promoting or thwarting change.

Although women make up half the world’s population and a growing proportion of scholars and analysts, they’re often absent in convenings of “experts.” That’s true across a number of industries, according to an event management company’s report on gender diversity in about 60,000 events between 2013 and 2018 across 23 countries; the company found that 69 percent of all speakers were male.

Lisa Cameron is a member of the British Parliament. She's also a victim, and survivor, of online trolls.

Cameron was new to politics in 2015, when she was elected in East Kilbride, Scotland. She'd been a clinical psychologist, a wife, a mom, and a trade union representative — the kind of political newcomer democracies want to run for office.

When footage circulated last week of a Kenyan lawmaker, Hon. Zuleikha Hassan, being kicked out of parliament for coming in with her baby, reactions across the country were mixed, but mostly muted. A home emergency left the Kwale county women’s representative with no one that she could leave her five-month old baby with.