Asia and the Pacific

India is far below these countries with 11 per cent women in the Lower House.
“Despite frequent attempts to introduce a similar policy of reserved seats for the Lower House (Lok Sabha) of the national Parliament , these initiatives have repeatedly failed.

Human Rights Watch urged Iran on Saturday to lift restrictions on women attending university and enrolling in certain academic fields.

Thirty-six universities across Iran have banned women from 77 different majors, including accounting, counseling, and engineering, for the school year that begins on Saturday, Iran's Mehr news agency reported in August.

The focus on a few specific men in the history of Mongolia can be attributed to the long focus on a monarchy-led country—with few leaders exercising great control over the majority. Socialism changed this focus to a degree, investing in educating both women and men; however women’s representation was still limited. Democracy even further transformed the social landscape of Mongolia, yet women’s ability to create change has been largely formed within organizations, rather than political representation.

The UN Development Program (UNDP) says women's presence in parliaments in Pacific Island states is the lowest in the world, lagging even behind Arab countries.

A UNDP study just released says economic progress will be limited in the Asia and the Pacific without equal opportunity for men and women to influence political and economic decision-making.

The number of women working for the National Assembly (NA) in Viet Nam has declined in the past ten years, proven by its falling to 44th in the world rankings, according to a United Nations Development Programme study released yesterday.

Speaking at the launch of the study, UN Resident Co-ordinator and UNDP Resident Representative Pratibha Mehta said that in 1997, Viet Nam ranked amongst the top ten countries with the highest number of women in parliament in the world.

It will be 50 years before parliaments in the Asia-Pacific region achieve gender balance if women’s participation remains at its current pace, according to a new report from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

A gritty woman in Gujarat is silently taking her fight for empowerment of Muslim women to the political arena.

An entrepreneur who turned to politics, Falguni Rajput, 39, felt she wasn’t getting anywhere despite spending five years as a treasurer in the women’s wing of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in Vasai-Virar, Maharashtra. Then she found out about a course at IIM-Bangalore promising to churn out “professional politicians” in three months.