Women rights

Nova Peris has become the first Indigenous woman to be elected to the Federal Parliament. The Olympic hockey gold medal winner will take a place in the Senate representing the Northern Territory for Labor. She gave her victory speech immediately after Luke Gosling conceded in the Darwin-based Lower House seat of Solomon.

Across Canada, just one-quarter of our Members of Parliament are women. In many ridings, they’re seen as “sacrificial lambs” running for a party that’s unlikely to win. And Melanee Thomas, a two-time candidate in Lethbridge, isn’t predicting sudden change.

We invite our users to read the full article published September 6 2013

Freda Prempeh, Member of Parliament (MP) for Tano North Constituency in the Brong Ahafo region has noted with worry that culture is still an obstacle hindering many qualified women to go into politics.

Ms Prempeh is one of the two female parliamentarians out of the twenty-nine MPs from her region.

Ms Prempeh said the situation is not encouraging women who are capable to go into politics even at the local level elections to represent the various electoral areas at the Metropolitan Municipal District Assemblies (MMDAs).

Laura Boldrini, Cecile Kyenge and Emma Bonino are among those doing “far better than men”, Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta said during an interview with television channel Russian 24 ahead of the G20 summit, which gets underway in St Petersburg on Thursday.

The number of women who have entered the Italian government since Letta came on board has increased from 20 to 30 percent. “I wanted my government to have the largest number of women in Italian history”, he said.

Two months after Julia Gillard was ousted, feminist and sociologist Eva Cox looks back on the misogyny debate her time as Australia's prime minister sparked - and whether gender issues are on the election agenda as a result.

The question of female leadership still sits rather uncomfortably in discussions of power politics. The recent death of Margaret Thatcher reminded us of her politically successful tenure and re-elections, whether we agreed with her stance or not.

On Sunday night, Aminata Touré was named Prime Minister of Senegal. Whichever mineral flows through the veins of Aminata Touré, she has spent all of her adult life working as a human rights and women’s rights activist, who has worked in Senegal and around the world on women’s issues and, more generally, at the intersection of social and economic justice struggles.

State Sen. LeAnna Washington, D-4, was a high school dropout, had her first child at age 17, was a single mother, grew up in a tumultuous household, was a victim of domestic violence and received government assistance well into her adult years. However, these hardships did not stifle Washington — they motivated her to be a leader in her community.

It is often said that the protest at Greenham Common was ineffectual. The eventual closure of the US base at Newbury is deemed to have been an almost inadvertent side effect of much more important (ie male) political forces. In this version of history the bunch of women sitting near a fence in middle England 30 years ago are rendered pretty much irrelevant.

We invite our users to read the full article published September 2 2013

In Afghanistan, a female politician who escaped an assassination attempt in the south of the country says she fully intends to return to work.

Senator Rooh Gul Khirzard, speaking from her hospital bed where she has been recovering from multiple gunshot wounds, told the BBC that women would not be intimidated by Taliban attacks.

Her nine year old daughter died in the ambush and her 11-year-old remains in intensive care.