Women's political participation

International donors and state authorities need to stop merely supporting charitable activities for Malayu Muslim women in the deep South and start properly engaging them in the peace dialogue, it has been claimed.

Panellists at the launch of the "Strengthening the Role of Women Peacemakers" report argued that women's voices are being overlooked amid attempts to tackle insurgency in the region.

A Solomon Islands politician says women in her country are fed up with not benefitting from any of the money that passes through the hands of her male counterparts.

Rhoda Sikilabu is a former deputy premier of Isabel province and now a provincial assembly member who is standing in next year’s general election.

She has just completed an exchange to Melbourne under the Pacific Women’s Parliamentary Partnerships scheme - something she says is proving vital in helping her to improve the lives of her constituents.

 Liberal MEP Ramona Manescu was named Transport Minister, after Romanian president Traian Basescu approved the proposal made by the Prime minister Victor Ponta earlier on Monday (August 26). Manescu was already sworn in, and will start her mandate on Tuesday, August 27.

Romania’s National Liberal Party PNL recently made two nominations for the Transport Minister position, namely Liberal MP Nini Sapunaru and MEP Ramona Manescu (in picture).

To eliminate gender discrimination, the political parties should ensure 33% of the positions allotted to women in their party hierarchical structure by 2015, and include this in their election manifesto ahead of the 2014 general elections.

The call came at a meet the press on Saturday organised by Bangladesh Alliance for Women Leadership (BDAWL) at the National Press Club.

The Election Commission has a vital role to play in ensuring women’s participation as well as achieve the target by 2015, they said.

“It’s true that as a woman leader you attract probably a disproportionate amount of influence because there are so few of us,” says Helen Clark, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Liberal MP Teresa Gambaro learnt what it meant to have guts long before she went into politics. Her parents, who immigrated to Australia from Italy after World War II, ran a small fish store in Petrie Terrace, an inner-city suburb of Brisbane. Far from the seafood industry, Ms Gambaro is now scaling the political ladder – but the fight to retain the seat of Brisbane, one of the most marginal electorates in the country, will definitely require some guts.

Nigeria and Senegal are planning to provide women at grassroots level with leadership and advocacy skills that would enable them contribute meaningfully to the development of their countries.

To this end, a three-day capacity building workshop has been scheduled for November this year in Dakar, the Senegalese capital, to train women on strategies that would reposition them as leaders.

Also, they would evolve on participating effectively in the political and socio-economic development of their communities and the nation.

Hattie Carraway [...] was the first woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate. On Dec. 9, 1931, Carraway filled the seat vacated by her late husband. She was elected to a full term in 1932 and served as a Democrat from Arkansas through 1944.

Right now, there are 20 women in the U.S. Senate, the most in history. Thirteen are the first females ever elected to represent her particular state in the Senate.

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