women leaders

Julia Gillard may be out and 'sexygate' may be rumbling on, but let's not forget there are incredible female politicians in Australia

Tony Abbott was criticised last week for referring to Liberal candidate Fiona Scott's "sex appeal", but he's back at it. This morning he praised Scott's answer to a question about his economic plan with the comment: "obviously from that answer she ain't just a pretty face."

Speaking at the Stand With Us International Women’s Conference in Jerusalem, Shalev described serving as a woman in the male dominated United Nations. She said that whenever she was called into the UN Security Council to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, she was surrounded by men in black suits with grim looks on their faces. It was an uncomfortable feeling for her, yet these experiences inspired her to become even more Zionist and feminist.

Next up in our Women in Politics series is high profile Greens Senator for South Australia, Sarah Hanson-Young. The Liberal Party have let it be known that the 31 year old Senator is in for the fight of her political life at the next Federal Election on September 7.

Possibly the most controversial inclusion in our Women in Politics series is Fiona Patten, Senate candidate for Victoria and Leader of the Australian Sex Party.

A woman leader of the Awami National Party (ANP), who was a candidate on reserved seats for women, was shot dead inside her house in Hayatabad on Friday night.

Najma Hanif Jadoon’s spouse and former Tehsil Nazim, Hanif Gul Jadoon, was killed along with a 16-year-old son and a gunman in a suicide attack on his car in Swabi on the Eid day in November 2011.

WITH two years to go for Southern African Development Community (SADC) member countries to meet the 50-50 target for gender parity in decision-making positions, it seems many states in the region are not on course to meet this target. Only five countries – South Africa, Seychelles, Mozambique, Tanzania and Angola – are on course to meet the target at Parliamentary level only.
Zambia, together with Swaziland, Malawi, Congo DR among others, have shown low representation of women in parliament, meaning that women have no say on matters that affect their lives.

The two biggest parties have chosen their candidates: Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, of the center-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), and Anne Hidalgo of the Parti Socialiste (PS).

Two other women are also widely expected to fight for the mayor seat against candidates from several smaller parties: Marielle de Sarnez of the centrist MoDem and the Green party leader Cecile Duflot.

A civil society group, Gender Studies and Human Right Documentation Centre (GSHRDC) is calling on Government to fulfill its promise of having majority of women occupying decision-making positions in the country.

The call was necessitated by the failure on the part of both present and past governments to give more woman chance in government.

We invite you to read the full article published August 16, 2013

If you knew nothing else about the Republican Party, two days at the Republican National Committee's Summer Meeting would convince you that it's a party taking its recovery seriously, having bottomed out with embarrassing polling and technological failures in the fall of 2012, along with major deficits in appeal to key demographic groups...