Politics for long has been a bastion of males and it’s not very easy for any woman to make her presence felt in Indian political arena.

In a country like India, it becomes even more difficult for a female politician as caste, creed and religion play decisive role in Indian politics.

As many as 14 women politicians from Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, the Philippines and Timor Leste called for bigger and better female political representation and participation in Southeast Asia. The call was made during the regional Women’s Leadership Forum Promoting Women’s Representation in Southeast Asia held in Kuta over the weekend.

(Source: The Jakarta Post)

The annual sessions of the National People's Congress (NPC) will open on March 5, 2013, and statistics show that the number of female deputies has risen to 699, accounting for 23.4 percent of all deputies, which is nearly 2.1 percent higher than the previous year.

(Read full article at: All-China Women's Forum)

31 January, Paris – To enhance women’s leadership and participation efforts, UN Women and the organization United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) today forged a cooperation agreement to collect local data on female political participation, to monitor local action plans on gender equality, to create a world observatory to track equality between men and women at the local level, and to adapt and upscale UN Women’s Safe Cities Programme to confront violence against women.

In one of the regions with the lowest number of women in politics, both governmental and non-governmental leaders met in Beijing for the first “Asia-Pacific Workshop on Promoting and Monitoring Women’s Political Participation.”

Jointly organized by UN Women China and the All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF), 70 participants from the Asia-Pacific region took part in this two-day workshop, from 29-30 January.

Women’s empowerment, participatory local governance and non-stereotyped approaches to wo/men’s roles are at the heart of the “Women in Local Democracy” project, which is currently being implemented by UNDP Armenia and funded by the European Union. The first few fast-paced months of the project have set a base for all three pillars through a series of rigorous capacity development and networking initiatives. Our work supporting women interested in running for local political office was tested in the autumn.

“Our women have been beaten, raped, whipped, forced into polygamous marriages, and who knows what else. They have lost their dignity, but what is man’s dignity without that of women?” These are the words of Sophie*, a displaced woman living in Bamako, the country’s capital, but originally from Timbuktu in the north of Mali.