World News

One political hopeful in Antigua and Barbuda is commending the recently-elected Barbados government for its progress with the inclusion of women in politics, while urging the same for the twin island nation.

The second season of the reality TV show, Ms President, was launched yesterday. The show seeks to portray to a national audience the capacity and ability of women to lead effectively.

The series showcases intelligent and articulate women who are “presidential” with the aim of increasing the chances of women in Kenya taking up leadership positions.

Finland's county council elections were the first regional or municipality elections in the history of the country in which women won the majority of seats. In total, female candidates snapped up 53 percent of county councillor spots in the elections.

Women dominated the polls to the greatest extent in the Western Uusimaa municipality, where they accounted for 68.4 percent of elected candidates. Women also won over 60 percent of seats in the municipalities of Vantaa, Kerava and Central Uusimaa.

Sounding bugle for the upcoming municipal polls in Delhi, the state election commission on Tuesday notified the wards that would be reserved for Scheduled Caste and women candidates in north, south and east municipal corporations.

According to the notification, 46 of the total of 272 wards in the three civic bodies are reserved for Scheduled Caste's candidates including women, while 114 general category sears have been kept for women candidates.

On July 31, 2021, the Moroccan Parliament adopted a reform that did not receive much attention but did represent a big step forward in helping close the country's gender gap. It involved a new amended law on public limited companies to promote balanced representation of women and men in corporate governance bodies (law 19.20 modifying and completing law 17-95 related to public limited companies). It set mandatory quotas for women on the boards of publicly traded companies, with a target of (at least) 30% female representation by 2024, and 40% by 2027.

UNITAMS made further concrete steps to broaden the scope of consultations process launched earlier this month, with emphasis on engaging groups in all states of Sudan. SRSG Volker Perthes led a full day of consultations sessions, on Monday, with several Darfur-based groups including Darfur Resistance Committees, Darfur Women’s Groups, Darfur IDP representatives and Mr. Gibril Ibrahim, head of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).

There is renewed agitation for more inclusion of women in politics and governance in Nigeria. Analysts and watchers of political events in the country believe this is justifiable, considering the number of women in elected political positions since the inception of the present democracy in 1999.

To ensure that more women are included in politics and governance, some legislators recently called for reserved seats for women in the two chambers of the National Assembly.

Prime Minister Sanna Marin of Finland says she and her fellow young female ministers have been targeted with extensive hate speech for their gender and appearance while in office.

"We can see that when you are young and female the hate speech that we are facing is often sexualised," Marin told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday, a little more than two years into her term as Finland's state leader.

With COVID-19, the situation for women human rights defenders and the prospects for women's full participation in building peace, has become “vastly worse”, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Tuesday.

Michelle Bachelet was participating in a Security Council debate dedicated to the theme “Protecting Participation: Addressing violence targeting women in peace and security processes”.