women's rights

The Cook Islands finance minister says interventions may be needed to fast track greater participation by women in politics.

Mark Brown is chairing the 12th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women, being held in the Cook Islands capital, Rarotonga, this week.

Two hundred delegates from across the region have gathered for the summit, which is focusing on the link between gender equality and successful development.

No less than 35 percent of the newly elected MPs in Zimbabwe are women, thanks to a special electoral quota system to increase women's representation in Parliament. At age 29, Tionei Melody Dziva is the youngest of them. She has a strong desire to uplift the lives of women and youths.

It's raining machismo in France. Chucking it down, in fact.

From parliament to local councils, via national media and regional newspapers, storms have erupted as French men indulge in misogynist outbursts that could have come from the cave age.

Now, thanks to the name-and-shame tactics of social media networks, France's long-suffering women, who might previously have shrugged off such attacks as everyday sexism and machismo, are hitting back.

Remarks of Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Women Executive Director, at the UN Broadband Commission Working Group on Gender, New York, 20 September 2013.

We invite our users to read the complete speech here

Five months ago, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's passing reference to 50% quota for women triggered a raging storm in political circles and the tremors were felt in the saffron camp. Rival Congress also panicked at the possible repercussions.

Her: A simple pronoun and basic linguistic tool in the everyday English vernacular.

But, in the context of women in politics, “her” is more than a grammatical component. It is a symbol of slowly rising equality in representation — too slowly, in both the national and student government political arenas.

We invite you to read the full article published October 17, 2013

The four female incumbents in the field of about 30 governors seeking reelection in November 2014 are doing something considered incumbent upon any female executive who wants her job back: playing up their accomplishments. The quartet includes three Republicans: New Mexico's Susana Martinez, Oklahoma's Mary Fallin and South Carolina's Nikki Haley. The lone Democrat is New Hampshire's Maggie Hassan. All are emphasizing their ability to get things done as evidence of why they deserve to be reelected to second terms next year.