ISLAMABAD: To add to the hype surrounding local bodies elections, non-government organisation and human rights groups have urged the election commission to prepare and release gender disaggregated data. 

Addressed to the Prime Minister, Senate chairman and chief ministers, the letter demands categorised data to strengthen democratic culture.

Nouakchott, Mauritania - An African Union (AU) observer mission to the Mauritanian municipal and legislative polls, led by former Algerian Prime Minister, Ahmed Ouyahia, has recommended that the Mauritanian government should create an environment which will allow more women participate in the country's political process.

Speaking Tuesday to the media, Ouyahia, who monitored the elections in November and December, said the measure would put the country on the international map as one which encourages gender parity.

Though disallowed from the 2014 presidential race, Fawzia Koofi is optimistic about her political career in Afghanistan. Yet it is not clear what will happen to the state of women's rights before the next one.

Afghanistan remains one of the most dangerous places anywhere in the world to be a woman, or to be a politician, and Fawzia Koofi, a deputy speaker of its national assembly, is both.

At least once a week, she receives a death threat from the Taliban or a warning from the security services about plots to assassinate her.

When Chileans vote Sunday for their next leader, they will choose between a former president seeking to expand access to higher education broadly and a staunch conservative opposing tax increases aimed at reducing Chile’s high levels of inequality.
The fact that both candidates — Michelle Bachelet, a former president who narrowly missed a first-round victory in November, and Evelyn Matthei, her right-wing opponent — are women reveals an area where Latin America is surging: the empowerment of female leaders in politics.

The MPs making obscene gestures at Sarah Champion and other women in the Commons are the backbench nonentities.

New laws designed to increase the number of elected women in Kenyan politics had no effect on the 2013 elections because those concerned failed to implement them, the Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) said.

“We have good laws that we are not using,” said Mariam Kamunyu, the lead author of ‘Key Gains and Challenges: A Gender Audit of Kenya’s 2013 Election Process’, a report on how women fared in the polls,