Political Parties

Indonesia’s new president Joko Widodo has appointed eight women to his cabinet, vastly outdoing the Australian government when it comes to female representation.

The humble furniture maker-turned president, more accustomed to carving wooden cabinets than those of the political kind, will embark on his reformist agenda with plenty of female input, including from former Indonesian ambassador to the Netherlands Retno Marsudi as Foreign Minister.

President Dilma Rousseff has promised to re-unite Brazil after narrowly winning re-election to a second term in office with 51.6% of the vote.

She said "dialogue" would be her top priority after a bitterly fought campaign against centre-right candidate Aecio Neves, who got 48.4% of the vote.

The left-wing leader said she wanted to be "a much better president than I have been until now".

Tunisia, despite being the most advanced Arab nation in terms of women's rights, is still fare from adhering fully to the principles enshrined in the January 2014 Constitution and from abiding by the ratification of international treaties in daily life. Though 47% of candidates for Tunisia's parliamentary elections scheduled for Sunday are women, only 12% of them are on top of the electoral lists of candidates. This is a slight improvement on the previous elections, when the figure was 7%, but still shows a lack of equal opportunities for women.