women leaders

Few female candidates ran for seats in the by-elections for provincial and National Assembly seats in Pakistan recently, let alone won. Similarly, after the country’s general elections in May 2013, the number of women holding contested National Assembly seats fell from 16 to 6. To international observers, the numbers may make Pakistani women appear as passive observers in the country’s political landscape, complacent with the status quo. But the story of Pakistani women’s political participation is more complex.

The Congress party is revamping its frontal organisation, Women Congress, in a bid to empower grassroots level women party workers politically, socially and economically.

All India Women Congress (AIWC) has been directed to form self-help groups of women members to make them self reliant.

Politically, their credentials will be screened at different levels before their appointment on responsible posts within the organisation.

This week our Prime Minister will join the leaders of 15 Pacific Island countries at the 44th meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum.

The 16 all-male leaders will meet for three days in the Marshall Islands, and discuss important issues such as climate change and Fiji's progress towards democratic elections next year.

But let's hope they will also find time to discuss gender equality in the Pacific, and why it is that women in the Pacific are worse off, in many respects, than most other women in the world.

Senegal's former justice minister, Aminata Toure, has been appointed to replace the prime minister, Abdoul Mbaye, she announced to the press on Sunday after the former government had been dismissed.

Toure said after talks at the presidential palace in Dakar that the Senegalese head of state Macky Sall "did me the honour of asking me to form a new government... and I have accepted this post with much humility."

It was just fifteen years ago that one woman dazzled the Anambra political establishment to its foundations. Mrs. Joy Emodi, the young, beautiful and articulate lawyer who had won recognition on account of her political prowess was set to upturn the apple cart in the 1998 governorship election having become the most formidable candidate on ground.