Asia and the Pacific

As polling ended on Monday, the 2014 elections recorded the highest ever turnout with 66.38 per cent voters casting their votes to elect 543 members of the 16th Lok Sabha, beating the previous high of 64.01 per cent in the 1984-85 elections.

There is a need for women to organise themselves as a pressure group to be able to carve a niche in the political sphere, three Delhi-based women journalists said Saturday.

Women may get 79 or 14 percent of the total seats in the House of Representatives following April's legislative election; a figure that was lower than the historic high of 18 percent or 103 seats in the 2009 election, researchers said Monday.

This is despite more women candidates, accounting for 37 percent or 2,467 of the total 6,619 candidates, contesting the 560 House seats.

It is already the fifth time today that Rama makes a cross in the last column of the table that is displayed on her monitor screen. The column is reserved for sexual harassment. A 16-year-old girl has just informed her on the phone that she "was threatened with a weapon."

Rama works at "Helpline 181," an emergency service for women. "I like to work here," says the 20-year-old, adding that "in my own case, the police did not help me and I felt being left alone. By working here, I can help other women so that they have it better."

WOMEN will continue to be an integral part of the society, says Fiji Labour Party.

Party assistant general secretary Kini Marawai says FLP, since its inception almost 29 years ago, always advocated and championed the rights of women.

"The party strongly believes in giving women equal opportunities in leadership including empowerment in the political decision making processes," Mr Marawai said.

"In that stance the FLP not only talks the talk but walks the talk all these years as is manifestly inherent in its philosophies, manifestos and actions."

A lack of political support is one of the main barriers to women's participation in local government elections, speakers said at a national seminar yesterday, as data show a huge fall in the number of female candidates over past several years.
Parties' reluctance to nominate and empower their female members is seen as a reason for the decreasing participation of women in upazila and union parishad elections, they said.

Political power has not insulated women from facing gender-based violence. A recent report by the United Nations (UN) has found that verbal-sexual abuse and character assassination of women are rampant in South Asia politics. Worse, Karnataka is one of the three states in India affected by such behaviour.

Female legislative candidates grouped under the Women’s Coalition staged a rally on Saturday to protest rampant vote-buying during the recent legislative election, which they say caused many female candidates to lose.

“Our hard work was for nothing because we didn’t have money to buy votes,” said Meylina Wonatorey, a candidate from Golkar Party for the Papua Council, said in the rally in front of Aston Hotel, Jayapura, where the provincial elections commission was counting the vote.