Elections

Six female members of the Vermont House of Representatives flanked former Democratic Gov. Madeleine Kunin Monday as she announced the launch of Emerge Vermont, an organization that will recruit, train and mentor Democratic women to run for political office.

Kunin said Vermont could be proud that 41 percent of the Vermont Legislature is female and half the 96 Democratic seats in the House are held by women. 

We invite our users to read the complete article published September 23 2013

Last May, Afghanistan’s upper house of parliament quietly removed an electoral law that stipulated that a quarter of all provincial council seats should be allotted to women. When women politicians found out nearly a month later, they fought to have the bill recalled. In July, the lower house reinstated the law, but lowered the allotment to 20 percent.

We invite our users to read the full article published September 18 2013

High-profile mayoral elections this year have already proved that the steps to City Hall remain steep for female candidates.

Only one of the nation's 10 largest cities is run by a woman: Annise Parker of Houston, who faces re-election in November. Just 12 of the 100 largest cities have women in the top job, including Fort Worth, Baltimore and Las Vegas.

We invite our users to read the full article published September 19 2013

Women's representation in parliaments is most likely to increase where there is some sort of system of quotas, an analysis of international elections held last year shows.

The just concluded parliamentary elections featured women who didn't ask for equality and leadership to be handed to them on a platter. They chose to fight it out with male candidates for their respective positions. They spent weeks of vigorous campaigning and some of them were evaluated according to their previous performance.

We invite our users to read the full article published September 18 2013

Why are there so few female elected officials in the second largest city in the country? Of 18 elected positions in City Hall, only one is held by a woman — Nury Martinez, who joined the council in July.

By comparison, at least 36 percent of the New York City Council is female (at least, there are 18 members of the women’s caucus, and with 50 council members, do the math) as is the speaker, Christine Quinn.

Women make up 34% of the 8th Parliament of Zimbabwe, with 32% in the National Assembly and 48% of Senate. Although the quota for women in parliament led to the dramatic increase from 19% in 2008 to 34%, the number of women who actually won, fell from 34 to 26. The cabinet appointments were the country's last opportunity to bolster the numbers of women in power.

We invite our users to read the full article published September 18 2013