Gender Equality

A secret review into the Liberals’ disastrous election loss in May has ruled out formal quotas for the number of women MPs in federal parliament and instead recommends a British-style recruitment drive to improve the party’s gender balance.

Recent media reports highlighted the worrying level of online harassment against poll workers around the 2022 United States mid-term elections. Ongoing work by International IDEA confirms that this phenomenon is not limited to the US. Disinformation and various forms of aggression and harassment targeting electoral officials in the information environment is a global phenomenon and poses a serious threat to democracy.

The CEO Women Radio, a non-governmental organization, Toun Okewale Sonaiya, has lamented that female politicians and leaders are not given the adequate media coverage as their male counterparts.

This was part of the submission at a two-day media training for political reporters organized by the Women Radio with support from United Nations Women and the Government of Canada held in Ilorin, the Kwara state capital, Thursday. 

Forty women from civil society organizations, women’s groups, political parties, armed movements, and academia came together over two weeks and produced a joint gender-responsive constitutional vision in a series of workshops organized by UNITAMS in close collaboration with UNDP.

Women account for just over 26% of parliamentarians worldwide according to the IPU’s latest figures. Despite progress made in recent years, significant obstacles continue to block their path to parity with their male counterparts. One of the biggest obstacles is sexism, harassment and gender-based violence.