Women's political participation

Women should have at least 100 of the 444 seats in the next parliament, the National Council for Women said in a statement Thursday.

Representation of women should be proportionate to their weight in society and their wide-scale participation in the constitutional referendum, NCW said, adding that an opportunity should be given to women to change the stereotypical idea of their role.

POLITICAL PARTIES HAVE been busy over recent weeks and months making selections for the upcoming local elections.

Research from Women for Election shows that of the 1278 selections made already by political parties, just 24 per cent are women.

Not all selections have been made, but to date, the majority of the large political parties are seriously lagging behind in achieving gender balance for their local candidates.

Photos from election day in Costa Rica, February 2, 2014

We invite you to see the full article published February 2, 2014

It happened at around 3pm on Saturday, in one of the conference rooms at Munich's Bayerischer Hof hotel, where politicians from around the world had gathered for an annual security conference.

Japanese women held a record-high ratio of senior positions in the central government, but at 3 percent, they are still well behind their counterparts in other developed nations, government figures showed Jan. 31.

The administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has set a goal of raising the figure to around 5 percent by the end of fiscal 2015, part of the “opportunities for women” pillar of his economic growth strategy.

We invite you to read the full article published February 1, 2014

If someone would have told me five years ago that I’d be co-directing a website with a state representative, connecting with progressive women leaders from around the country, and going to conferences to speak on young women in politics in 2014, I would have started laughing hysterically. But this is my life today.

Jenny Pierce's recent piece about El Salvador on the Inter-American Development Bank's blog, Sin Miedos, questioned where women's voices fit into discussions surrounding the (in)famous gang truce brokered in 2012.

Mariam Milad was the first Christian woman to found an Egyptian political party. She has run for parliament, and lost, three times. Undaunted, she is now preparing for her fourth parliamentary election, to be held sometime after the as-yet unscheduled presidential election.

We invite our users to read the complete article published January 31 2014

A state of emergency, streets paralyzed with protesters, the fatal shooting of a leading pro-government activist and an election campaign teetering on chaos may not sound like the script from a rising Southeast Asian economic powerhouse.

But for Thailand -- which manages to combine economic success and political mayhem in equal measure -- this weekend's elections are just another page in an eight-year struggle between supporters and opponents of Thaksin Shinawatra.