women leaders

The emergence of three female Democrats as competitive Senate candidates has party activists optimistic the 2014 election cycle will end with a record number of women in the upper chamber.

West Virginia Secretary of State Natalie Tennant, who officially launched her Senate bid Tuesday, joins fellow Democrats Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky and Michelle Nunn in Georgia as high-profile recruits in states Democrats consider winnable next year.

Former Education Minister Sarah Teather's decision to stand at the next general election highlighted a long-running problem for the Liberal Democrats.

The party only has seven women MPs, and five of those are in the party's 12 most vulnerable seats.

We invite our users to read the full article published September 17 2013

Tony Abbott's cabinet in Canberra is running short on girl power, but it's the sisters who continue to run the show in the Mackay region.

With 18 blokes and only one woman, Mr Abbott's choice of LNP frontbenchers has been heavily criticised for a lack of female representatives.

Mackay Regional Council Mayor Deirdre Comerford said, regardless of the sex, time would be the only way to tell if Mr Abbott's choices were worthy.

In the year that New Zealand marks 120 years since women won the vote, the number of women vying for local body seats is stagnating.

Nationally, only 30 per cent of candidates are women, a number that has been the same since 2004 after dropping from a high of 32 per cent in 2001.

That was despite the number of women standing steadily increasing from 22 per cent in 1989, and just 3 per cent - and none elected - when records began in 1959.

Liberal senator Sue Boyce has criticised as ''shocking and embarrassing'' the appointment of only one woman to the new federal cabinet. Only foreign affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop made it into the 19-member cabinet announced by prime minister-elect Tony Abbott on Monday.