Women's political participation

Brazil's presidential race will go to a second round after incumbent Dilma Rousseff fell short of an outright victory in Sunday's election.

Photo-Ruters/Yya/Shino/Files

Photo-Toan Trinh

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has developed a curriculum aimed at assisting women at all levels to participate and make decisions on issues that concerns them.

In a perfect world, there would be no need for a media platform highlighting groundbreaking women in history. But if history has taught us anything, it's that female achievements are often forgotten or filtered out. Female journalists, spies, investigators, pilots, soldiers, and even cinematic pioneers are only now being rediscovered and added back into the historical narratives where they always belonged.

Zimbabwe currently has 85 women parliamentarians in the National Assembly compared to 185 men.

This means that the country would not meet the 2015 Sadc deadline, as the next elections in Zimbabwe are only expected in 2018.

Of the 85 women parliamentarians, only 25 were directly elected to Parliament while the other 60 are in the House of Assembly courtesy of a constitutional provision which reserves seats for women.

The Fiji Women's Rights Movement acknowledged women candidates, young women voters, the elderly and those living with disability who were part of the election on Wednesday.

The organisation congratulated all the candidates on their individual success particularly the 44 women candidates contesting under the six political party banners as well as independent candidate.

To read the full article published on September 19th 2014, please click here.

When it comes to political participation, Chinese women have made great progress during the past decades.

In 2013, women accounted for 23.4 percent of the deputies who attended the 12th NPC (National People's Congress), and 17.6 percent of the members who attended the National Committee of the CPPCC (Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference). In 2012, women accounted for 23 percent of the delegates to the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC). Each percentage set a record.