gender equality

With 59 winners of the total 556 contestants, women candidates seem to have had a dream run in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. May 16 will tell if their success story repeats this time too.

Women not only outnumber men on electoral rolls in the state, they also outscored them in casting votes. The Election Commission on Saturday said 2.03 crore women — 73.86% of the total women voters — cast their votes in the Lok Sabha elections held on Thursday. In comparison, 2.02 crore men (73.51%) turned up at polling booths. But of 3,341 transgenders, only 419 (12.5%) voted.

Group and individual proponents advocating for increased participation of women in governance, have been urged to brace up for another round of advocacy, as the local government elections, approaches later this year.

Ms. Esther Tawiah, Executive Director of Gender Centre for Empowering Development (GenCED) made the call on Tuesday in Ho during a validation workshop on the Local Governance Network’s Position Paper on the participation of civil society organisations (CSO) in local governance.

GENDER minister Inonge Wina says the government is committed to increasing women participation in politics and decision-making positions.
Speaking when she officiated at the third Gender Protocol Summit and Awards ceremony in Lusaka yesterday, Wina said the government's commitment to gender equality was evidenced by the introduction of the National Gender Policy, which had strong commitments to regional and international instruments.

Egyptian women today still suffer from cultural, social and political discrimination with no indication from policymakers for progress. Though women attained the right to political participation in 1956, significant development has been minimal. The January 25 and June 30revolutions marked a significant change as women were at the forefront throughout.

Nadine Moussa, Lebanon’s first female candidate for the presidency, insists that Lebanon needs a “new social contract,” with women holding half of all parliamentary and governmental posts.

“I know what Lebanese women are capable of, and I know how much they can contribute,” Moussa told The Daily Star.

Moussa, a lawyer who has worked to promote women’s rights for over a decade, is the first female to officially run for president of Lebanon.

What’s the role of the police in a community? Is it to serve the citizens by ensuring their security or to maintain public order by coercive power?

 Lawyers, human rights activists, journalists and citizen-based groups deliberated over these vital questions on Monday in a seminar where they presented a draft of the Sindh Police Act 2014, a preliminary dossier based on the aspirations of the citizens in the province and drafted by legal experts. 

In late March, Raveela Gangula rallied a dozen women to stop a drunken man from savagely beating his wife in Muthangi, a village in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Although they restrained him and called the police, he was released that evening without charges.

“The police should have locked him up for at least a week and scared him from ever touching another woman like that again,” Gangula said. “The government does not support us.”