Over 2.5 billion women and girls around the world are affected by discriminatory laws—laws that impede gender equality and hold women and girls back. In too many countries, there are unequal standards for women and men, whether it’s for applying for a passport or in the choice of employment, receiving inheritance and deciding when and whom to marry.

KUALA LUMPUR: The government has no intention to make it mandatory for there to be 30 per cent female involvement in government and politics, said the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry.

Its deputy minister Hannah Yeoh said that the government has no intention to make such a percentage compulsory at Parliament and state assemblies.

The just-ended harmonised elections in Zimbabwe have revealed that very few women triumphed in their quest to represent the people in both the National Assembly and in local authorities.

Ironically, women have a numerically advantage over their male counterparts as a voting bloc.

In recent months, the developing nation of Somaliland has made a number of steps towards encouraging the active participation of women throughout its institutions. As the writer of the article below notes, newly-elected President Hon. Musa Bihi Abdiand and his cabinet made several suggestions on ensuring the inclusion of women in politics through a bill that is soon to be passed.

In a year that has broken records for the number of women running for office, the primaries in eight states this week might be considered Super Tuesday for female candidates. More of them will appear on ballots for congressional and statewide executive offices than on any other single primary day in 2018 — a total of 122 women.

The Congress of Deputies of Spain has chosen a woman, Ana Pastor, as president for the 12th Legislature last July 19. Ana Pastor, a graduate in medicine and until then Minister of Public Works and Transport of Spain and Member of Parliament for the province of Pontevedra, was elected president of the lower house on second ballot.

The Organization of American States, OAS, approves a historical American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 17 years after the first meetings to sign this Declaration. Héctor Huertas, lawyer and indigenous leader of the Guna people in Panama, who participated in the first meeting of 1999, has been following the process for the last 17 years.

After the brutal raping of a 16-year old girl by 30 men in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, different women's groups have carried out actions of rejection, as this

In the framework of the XXXVII Assembly of the Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM) in Lima there were elected the new authorities that will govern the Steering Committee of the CIM from 2016 to 2019, responsible for exercising the political representation of the Commission and guide its work for the next 3 years. The Minister of Women and Vulnerable Populations, Marcela Huaita Alegre, was elected president.