Charmaine Rodrigues is the Pacific Regional Legislative Strengthening Expert at the UNDP Pacific Center based in Suva. The Center services 3 Pacific country offices and covers a parish of 15 Pacific Island countries. Ms.
A report published in New Delhi states that women are the most vulnerable survivors of the 2004 tsunami. The report links severe hardships suffered by these women to the discrimination politics existing in the Indian Ocean countries.
Asia, a sprawling continent which has produced the world's largest number of female heads of government, lags far behind both in gender equality and gender empowerment.
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Setting quotas designed to have more women in politics and government may not have been the magic formula for more balanced political representation in many countries, but it has certainly been a key first step in many cases.
The women's movement over the last decade has revealed how legislative guarantees and policy reforms do not necessarily result in opening institutional spaces, and that participation does not necessarily translate into influence.
53 tribal women leaders and representatives from government and civil society organizations participated in the State Level Tribal Women Leaders' Summit held in India.
Women in south-east Asia, especially in the Muslim countries of Malaysia and Indonesia, are facing the challenges of both modernisation and growing conservatism.
Any balanced attempt to describe the position of women in West Asia needs to take into account differences in geography, class and education.