Elections

More than 550 women contested local government elections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Sunday, the election commission said.

The is the first time that local polls are being held in districts that used to be part of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) until recently. Polling started at 8am and closed at 5pm in the first phase of the polls in 17 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

There are fewer women in politics in the Pacific Islands than in any other part of the world, according to UN Women. But this year Samoa elected a woman as its head of government - only the second Pacific Island nation to do so - thanks in part to a network of women friends who supported her every step of the way.

Female candidates are overrepresented for marginal seats at the next federal election, while safe seats for both major parties remain dominated by males, an analysis by Guardian Australia shows.

While the major parties are yet to finalise all candidates for the forthcoming federal election, an analysis of those preselected so far for parliament’s 35 marginal seats shows that about 60% of the candidates across both major parties are female.

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - When political activist Laila ben Khalifa announced she was standing in Libya’s presidential race, she said the most common response was sexist jokes and patronising comments.

Even when she met one of her male rivals in the Dec. 24 election, he mocked her candidacy, she added, questioning whether she expected to win any votes.

Somalia's federal electoral agency is urging all regional polls supervisors to ensure that at least 30 percent of seats in the Lower House go to women.

In a letter to state electoral teams, the federal agency also published a table showing the number of legislators each state will vote for, out of the total 275 MPs and the respective 30 percent women legislators to come out.

A week ahead of what may be Honduras’s most consequential election since the country’s return to democracy in 1982, the leading opposition candidate for president delivered her final address to an audience of fervent supporters.

“Today we are united as an opposition to say enough! Enough of so much theft, corruption and drug trafficking,” said Xiomara Castro, 62, as she addressed the crowd in Tegucigalpa on Sunday. “Enough suffering for the Honduran people.”