women leaders

Kota Kinabalu: A senior woman lawyer is set to become the new State Attorney-General, succeeding Datuk Roderic Fernandez who retired at the end of last month.

We invite you to read the full article published July 8 2013 by The Daily Express

North American experiments are showing that women have an electoral advantage. In one study in which only the names of a candidate were changed, participants rated the candidate they thought was female as stronger, more honest, and more compassionate than the male candidate. After Premier Christy Clark suddenly won the B.C. election on May 14th, I don’t remember any of the shocked pundits talking about the female factor. What happened to the polls that had apparently shown B.C. women were less inclined than men to vote for Clark?

In one episode of the Nigerian radio drama Dukan Karshe, a young man and woman decide to run for their local council to correct injustices, including government funds being diverted from schools and hospitals to line the pockets of local politicians. “It is time for us as women to take part fully in politics,” the woman says. “We are the mothers. We know what is good for our community.”

We invite our users to read the full article published June 26 2013

A political lobby group is pushing for a female candidate to replace long-term Labor MP Martin Ferguson when he steps down from politics in September.

The 59-year-old announced that he would not contest his safe inner-Melbourne seat of Batman at the upcoming election on Wednesday, prompting calls from Emily’s List, a group pushing for greater representation of women in parliament.

National co-convenor Tanja Kovac told Fairfax Media it was important to have a woman step up for the role, which has been held by Ferguson since 1996.

Wafa Bani Mustafa had already won a seat in Jordan’s parliament. But as she prepared to run for reelection, she wanted to learn more about fundraising techniques, which are not widely used in the region. So last December, ahead of her campaign, she participated in an NDI training program on advanced campaign skills for experienced politicians from 11 countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

When Laura Boldrini, 52, was elected as speaker of Italy’s lower house last month, she knew the job would come with enormous challenges. But she didn’t expect it to come with death threats. Last week, the former United Nations high commisioner for refugees Italian spokesperson sat in front of Italy’s lower house of Parliament and read some of the hundreds of squalid emails she has received since taking office. Many threatened rape, sodomy, torture, and murder. All the warnings were sexual in nature. “You need to be lynched, bitch,” one hater wrote.

“As a woman of Zimbabwe, I personally wanted a Constitution that is fit for me,” said Zimbabwe’s Deputy Minister of Women Affairs, Gender and Community Development and Member of Parliament, Jessie Majome, who participated in Zimbabwe’s Constitution-making process as part of the Select Committee of Parliament that facilitated the process.

As countries across West Africa transition to democracy following years of autocratic rulers, civil unrest, and sometimes civil war, women are frequently left out of the process. Though they make up more than half of the population, women are often excluded from politics by rigid social norms, opaque party structures and other societal hurdles.

Yet democracies with more women in power have been shown to yield more equitable societies, have less corruption, and make more advancements in education, infrastructure and health standards.