Report / White Paper

Women’s political leadership is important for ensuring that women’s perspectives and experiences are included in political decision-making. Over the past 25 years, the overall percentage of women in parliaments has more than doubled.

Executive Summary

Although significant progress has been made with regard to the participation of women in political and public decision-making in Europe, such progress is too slow and uneven.

Elections in 2020 were profoundly marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in delays and cancellations, logistical challenges for candidates and election administrators and often low turnout.

This report contains an examination of global trends, persistent barriers and opportunities with regard to women’s full and effective participation and decision-making in public life, as well as the elimination of violence, for achieving gender equal

Women’s full and equal participation in all decision-making processes is necessary to achieve gender equality and drive progress towards sustainable development.

Violence against women in politics is an intolerable violation of women’s rights which poses fundamental challenges to democratic values and electoral processes.

Women Political Leaders and Kantar came together in 2018 to create the Reykjavík Index for Leadership– the first measure of perceptions of women and men in terms of their suitability for leadership.

This study applied a conceptual framework that uses a comparative and gendered approach to estimate the cost of politics, using a set of pre-identified variables regularly incurred by both candidates seeking political office and elected representatives while in office.