The appointments of new chief whip Pemmy Majodina, a former Eastern Cape MEC, and Doris Dlakude were confirmed on Monday following the ANC's special national executive committee (NEC) meeting in Cape Town.

The African National Congress (ANC) caucus in Parliament will be headed by two women for the first time.

When Spanish deputy Clara Campoamor demanded women’s right to vote in a famous speech made on October 1, 1931, she was just one of three female members of Congress.

The number of women members of the European Parliament has doubled since direct elections were first held in 1979 but they still remain the minority, particularly in the top jobs.

Women made up just 16 percent of the 1979 parliament; in today’s outgoing assembly, they represent around 36 percent of the 751 MEPs.

Spain’s new parliament, sworn in on Tuesday, has the largest share of women in any European legislature, no small achievement for a country still reinventing itself four decades after the end of a right-wing, traditionalist dictatorship.

Women’s rights have been prominent in the political debate for over a decade and remain controversial, to the point where the far-right Vox party entered the assembly for the first time on a platform that seeks to reverse some equality laws.

The next federal parliament is set to have a record number of women but Australia still has a "long way to go" until it achieves gender parity in its corridors of power.

She didn’t plan to say it. Yvanna Cancela, a newly elected Democrat in the Nevada Senate, didn’t want to “sound crass.” But when a Republican colleague defended a century-old law requiring doctors to ask women seeking abortions whether they’re married, Cancela couldn’t help firing back.

“A man is not asked his marital status before he gets a vasectomy,” she countered — and the packed hearing room fell silent.

Swati Yadav had lost count of the number of village campaign stops she had made since her morning began — was it 27, or 28?

She was doggedly stumping for a parliamentary seat through 100-degree temperatures in the northern Indian state of Haryana this month. But the biggest struggle in many places for Ms. Yadav, 30, was to get the crowd to focus on her own campaign as much as on the political fortunes of the men at the top of her party, Jannayak Janta.