Women empowerment

Since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the rights of Afghan have progressed: Women are in school, the workplace and government.
 
But those advances could well be jeopardized in coming months, according to a new report by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
 

India may boast a woman President, Prime Minister and Speaker, but when it comes to selecting candidates, key political parties still have a long way to go.

In the past 10 years, only 7 per cent or 4,148 candidates out of the 62,847 candidates were women, says an analysis. Of these, 675 won to become MPs or MLAs.

Women contestants in the fray for sarpanch elections scheduled for July 31, who are financially not too sound to woo voters with valuables, have taken up a unique stand of highlighting what other candidates failed to promise.

All-round development of their panchayat is their mantra and their promise to the voters. Women candidates in Kruthuvennu, Machilipatnam rural and Bantumilli have intensified their campaign by raising their voice against poor access to health care, basic amenities and largely better management of natural resources.

Bangladesh has started a process to set up a ‘parliamentary caucus’ to better coordinate parliament’s actions on reproductive, maternal and child health, Foreign Minister Dipu Moni has said.

Speaking at the end of the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s (IPU) two-day meet in Dhaka, Dipu Moni on Wednesday said Speaker would be in the helm of the Caucus.

Women are outnumbered in state legislatures around the country, particularly in Michigan, where female representation is at its lowest point in more than two decades.

As MLive reported Sunday, women inside and outside the state legislature are working to recruit new female candidates. But as of today, women hold only 28 out of 148 seats in the Michigan Legislature. 

Their history is the history of Chile. Michelle Bachelet and Evelyn Matthei were childhood friends whose fathers became top generals on opposite sides of the country's deep political divide.

Bachelet's father supported socialist President Salvador Allende until the 1973 coup ended one of Latin America's oldest democracies. Matthei's father ran the military school where Gen. Alberto Bachelet was tortured to death for refusing to line up behind dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Lindy Boggs was only 24 when she arrived in Washington as the top political adviser to her husband, newly elected to Congress.

Thirty-two years later, the seat became hers after Hale Boggs was presumed dead in a plane crash, and she made her own mark as an advocate for women and minorities.

Boggs died Saturday at the age of 97, according to ABC News, where Boggs' daughter Cokie Roberts is a political contributor.