Quotas

Turkey's first women-only party was established on June 26 after a group of women has submitted a petition to the Interior Ministry, allowing it to participate in parliamentary elections held in 2015.

The party demands the construction of democratic political parties, transparency in election laws and a reduction of the electoral threshold to 3 percent.

Benal Yazgan, the head of the Women Party Initiative stated that what they want is to take the initiative a step further and turn it into a political party.

Gender quotas have worked to increase the number of women getting elected in politics and should be looked at along with other measures to encourage women to become candidates, Northern Ireland MLA, Anna Lo of the Alliance Party told a Sinn Féin summer school at the weekend.

The Department of Justice has reported to the United Nations that there are too few women in politics and other decision-making roles in Ireland.

In a gender equality report submitted to the UN’s Economic Commission for Europe, violence against women is described as a “persistent challenge” in Ireland.

The document also points to “gender segregation” in both education and the work force, “which may be impacting on the advancement of women into decision-making roles and on closing the gender pay gap”.

A measure rewarding municipal parties with women on their lists became law Monday night, with 57 in favor and 14 against it, despite outspoken haredi opposition.

Last week I was in Tahiti (yes, I know) for PIPSA, the biannual Pacific Islands Political Science Association conference, to discuss China's role in the region and the influence Pacific island governments have in negotiating Chinese financing (more on that research in a forthcoming post).

India's 16th General Election has been the most expensive exercise of its kind in the country's history. One estimate puts the figure at Rs 30,000 crore, a tad shy of the bill notched up in the 2012 US presidential polls. What does this tsunami of money power that brought Narendra Damodardas Modi to power mean for the faceless, voiceless Indian? The answer will unfold over the next five years, but what is clear is that for India's women, the more things change the more they remain the same.