The Global Assault on Women in Politics
Source: Foreign Affairs
This year, countries accounting for nearly half of the world’s population are holding national elections. Instead of representing a triumph of democracy, however, the results suggest something darker: in many places, voters have flocked to the polls only to elect or reelect autocratic populists. They have notched victories this year in some of the largest countries, including India, Indonesia, and Russia. And these wins come on the heels of last year’s populist victories in Argentina and Turkey.
Today, more than 70 percent of the world’s population lives under autocratic rule, and a minority of the world’s governments are democratic, according to the most recent annual report from the V-Dem Institute, an organization that studies democracy. What the report does not reveal is that a central component of this assault on democracy is the targeting of women political leaders and women’s rights by far-right extremists and elected autocratic populists who represent the leading edge of democracy’s decline. For three decades, the share of women legislators across the globe was growing thanks to mandated quotas in many countries, but the rate of increase has stalled over the past two years, a signal U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Geeta Rao Gupta calls “scary.” Women today only occupy 27 percent of the world’s legislative seats. An even starker sign is that the number of women leading countries has sharply declined in the past year.
Read here the full article published by Foreign Affairs on 3 June 2024.
Image by Foreign Affairs
This year, countries accounting for nearly half of the world’s population are holding national elections. Instead of representing a triumph of democracy, however, the results suggest something darker: in many places, voters have flocked to the polls only to elect or reelect autocratic populists. They have notched victories this year in some of the largest countries, including India, Indonesia, and Russia. And these wins come on the heels of last year’s populist victories in Argentina and Turkey.
Today, more than 70 percent of the world’s population lives under autocratic rule, and a minority of the world’s governments are democratic, according to the most recent annual report from the V-Dem Institute, an organization that studies democracy. What the report does not reveal is that a central component of this assault on democracy is the targeting of women political leaders and women’s rights by far-right extremists and elected autocratic populists who represent the leading edge of democracy’s decline. For three decades, the share of women legislators across the globe was growing thanks to mandated quotas in many countries, but the rate of increase has stalled over the past two years, a signal U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Geeta Rao Gupta calls “scary.” Women today only occupy 27 percent of the world’s legislative seats. An even starker sign is that the number of women leading countries has sharply declined in the past year.
Read here the full article published by Foreign Affairs on 3 June 2024.
Image by Foreign Affairs