Women's political participation

The worth of any civilisation can be judged from the position it gives to women, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan today said as she asked countries to accord top priority to women's empowerment, key to a better life for all.

Somali women have been facing formidable challenges and complain about marginalization in politics but they in turn played a pivotal role in securing peace deals between warring forces on the ground. Among the stumbling blocks are cultural and strict religious beliefs, lack of distant goal, psychological backwardness, rape and domestic violence.  

Following Somali state collapse in 1991, women braced up for arduous tasks by putting their lives on the frontline to make urgently pressing priorities possible and shape their own destinies.

Photo-Al Jazeera

After years of activism, Amal Basha's demands for guarantees of greater representation for women in the political system has finally edged closer to reality.

"Women have been fighting for it for a long time," said the prominent Yemeni human rights advocate, referring to the more than decade-long battle she and others have waged to secure women representation in public office in Yemen.

Lawyers, entrepreneurs, academics and civil servants are some of the female candidates standing in Fiji's upcoming elections. Fijians will vote on 17 September, the first elections since the 2006 military coup.

There is so much conventional wisdom about women in politics that it is often hard to wade through what’s true and what’s simply taken as truth but is actually a baseless, outdated stereotype.  Part of the problem, at least at the national level, is that there just isn’t enough information to go on because only a handful of women have run for president – 13 women to be exact, dating back to 1872. The entire GOP field will probably be about that size come 2016, but I digress.

Photo-I ama Huam Society

Reinforcing the political participation of women with disabilities is the goal of a new initiative launched by the "I am a Human Society", which advocates for the rights of people with disabilities.

The "I am a Woman... Half of Society" initiative began at the end of July in collaboration with the Stars of Hope foundation (Nujoom al-Amal) in Jordan and partners including ministries, organisations, women's unions and the Higher Council for Affairs of Persons with Disabilities.

The recent upheaval in Selangor over the post of Menteri Besar (MB) has suddenly led the country to a situation where we might soon be witnessing a major breakthrough for women in politics.

Over the years we have seen women slowly occupy positions in the political arena. Data from the Ministry for Women, Family and Community Development shows that in 2013 women made up only 13.1% of local councillors, 28.8% of senators, 11.3% state legislative assembly members, 10.4% members of parliament and 12.3% of cabinet ministers and deputy ministers.

Photo-stephaniechang.com

When Stephanie Chang began knocking on doors in and around Detroit in pursuit of a statehouse seat in the Michigan legislature, the most common question she received didn’t have anything to do with her policy positions or her decade of experience as a community organizer.

“How old are you, anyways?” voters asked. Chang is 30, but admits to looking a more youthful 20.

Photo-AFP

Some accused it of being predictable and even boring - a presidential election in which the incumbent was all but guaranteed of being re-elected without, perhaps, even the need for a second round of voting.

But then tragedy intervened and changed everything.

We simply do not know what kind of president Eduardo Campos, the presidential candidate for Brazil's Socialist Party who was killed in a plane crash last week, would have been.