Women empowerment

Speakers stressed on the need for education, awareness and training to enhance participation of women in the electoral politics. They were speaking at a conference titled ‘Enhancing the Role of Women for Participation in Electoral Process’ organised by the UN Women in collaboration with the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Tuesday.

The Honourable Lynne Yelich, Minister of State (Foreign Affairs and Consular), announced Canada's contribution to two projects that will encourage the participation of women in the political process in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

Director of Appropriate Communication Techniques for Development (ACT) in Cairo, since 1990 Kamel has prepared Egyptian women to run for political office while advocating laws that uphold women's rights and criminalize domestic violence.

When Diah Pitaloka took over the youth wing of Indonesia’s third-biggest political party two years ago, her male colleagues addressed her as “Pak,” which in Indonesian means “Mr.”

The world’s most populous Muslim country will now penalize political parties that fail to meet a requirement for females to make up at least 30 percent of candidates in the elections as it seeks to halt a widening divide between the sexes.

Indonesia ranked 97th of 135 countries last year on the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index, down from 90th in 2011.

When 2013 began, there was a fair amount of hope that women could make up for their relatively measly representation in local offices nationwide by capturing the mayoralty in three of the nation's five largest cities.

In all the U.S. cities with populations above 30,000, only 17 percent have women serving as mayor. EMILY's List, the political action committee that seeks to elect pro-choice women, hopes to change that.

Pengerang Member of Parliament (MP) Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said has been selected as the Chairperson of the Malaysian Women's Parliamentary Caucus.

Azalina said as the chairperson of a women's caucus, she would definitely ensure that women-related issues would continue to be raised in the Dewan Rakyat.

 In a country where they have been playing second fiddle to men for centuries, women candidates outnumber men in the ongoing polls to the West Bengal village councils, the third tier of India's electoral democracy.

An estimated 90,000 rural women are contesting the pollls out of a total of 169,000 candidates, that is over half the total number of candidates in the elections that would decide representatives in 58,865 seats.