Puntland regional leaders met Tuesday (May 21st) to encourage women's participation in the upcoming local council elections in July, setting a quota for desired participation, Somalia's Garowe Online reported.

The Researchers (TR) under its initiatives - Pakistan Governance Forum (PGF) and Women & Politics in Asia Forum (WPAF) - undertook observation of Election 2013 with a gender lens. This was in pursuance of organizations ten years effort to observe and document women role in electoral and political processes  since 2002. Mr. Aazar Ayaz, the Executive Director, informed that a complete report focusing women performance in pre-poll, poll day and post poll phases will be launched as soon as ECP completes election result and government formation is completed.

At a small discussion at Thursday’s World Economic Forum on Africa, the issue of gender equality in African politics took centre stage. While all panelists agreed on the need for more women in positions of leadership, Malawian President Joyce Banda was on hand to remind the audience that sometimes getting to the top is just the beginning of the struggle.

Quotas are one way to ensure that women are given a fair proportion of what is available, meaning equal spaces to influence and effect positive change while making meaningful contributions to the development of all Jamaicans. It's really a matter of fairness, human rights, active citizenship and evidence of a true democracy.

here have been five elections in the Vancouver-area riding of Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows since the district was created in 1991 and more than two dozen candidates — but only one of them, a long-shot Marijuana party candidate in 2005, was a woman. Elizabeth Rosenau, who’s running for the NDP in the May 14 election, is the second female candidate.

Enrico Letta continues the political revolution that began under Mario Monti by naming seven women in his 22-member cabinet. Arguably the most important woman in the closing months of Silvio Berlusconi's 2008-11 government was Karima el-Mahroug, otherwise known as "Ruby the Heartstealer", the Moroccan teenage runaway whose friendship with the septuagenarian former prime minister contributed to his departure from office. Berlusconi also appointed women to his cabinet.

Though female participation helps in terms of making specific policies related to women, MNA Bushra Gohar of Awami National Party thinks serving women is not the only purpose of a woman politician.“We shouldn’t be asking these questions now. Women politicians have played an active role in everyway. Why is nobody asking a male politician whether his joining politics has helped men in anyway?” she asks. Gohar believes that women make their own space in a party and that space is never available on a platter.