Women's Leadership

One political hopeful in Antigua and Barbuda is commending the recently-elected Barbados government for its progress with the inclusion of women in politics, while urging the same for the twin island nation.

The second season of the reality TV show, Ms President, was launched yesterday. The show seeks to portray to a national audience the capacity and ability of women to lead effectively.

The series showcases intelligent and articulate women who are “presidential” with the aim of increasing the chances of women in Kenya taking up leadership positions.

On July 31, 2021, the Moroccan Parliament adopted a reform that did not receive much attention but did represent a big step forward in helping close the country's gender gap. It involved a new amended law on public limited companies to promote balanced representation of women and men in corporate governance bodies (law 19.20 modifying and completing law 17-95 related to public limited companies). It set mandatory quotas for women on the boards of publicly traded companies, with a target of (at least) 30% female representation by 2024, and 40% by 2027.

UNITAMS made further concrete steps to broaden the scope of consultations process launched earlier this month, with emphasis on engaging groups in all states of Sudan. SRSG Volker Perthes led a full day of consultations sessions, on Monday, with several Darfur-based groups including Darfur Resistance Committees, Darfur Women’s Groups, Darfur IDP representatives and Mr. Gibril Ibrahim, head of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).

Armed men have arrested prominent Sudanese women’s rights campaigner Amira Osman in a night-time raid on her home in Sudan’s capital Khartoum, her sister said. Osman’s arrest comes amid, what activists say, a campaign of arrests of civil society and pro-democracy figures since a military takeover in October.

The United Nations mission in Sudan said on Twitter it was outraged by Osman’s arrest, citing a “pattern of violence against women’s rights activists” that risked reducing their participation in politics.

At the COP26 climate summit, the leaders of Estonia, Tanzania and Bangladesh were the first to sign the Glasgow Women’s Leadership statement, calling for countries to support the leadership of women and girls on climate action at all levels of society and politics. Yet these three women comprised nearly a third of all female leaders at the conference, out of 140 heads of delegation.