There cannot be sustainable women empowerment in development and politics if women lobby groups leave out culture in their campaigns, Chikwawa District Commissioner Lawford Palani has said. He said most organisations lobbying for greater women representation were forgetting culture as a crucial component in the quest to achieve the SADC 30 percent women participation goal, set in Blantyre in 1997.

Gender activists breathed a sigh of relief when a long-delayed gender protocol was signed at the Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit this weekend. The protocol calls for 50 percent representation by women at all levels of government by 2015 and further calls for member states to put in place legislative measures which guarantee that political and policy structures are gender sensitive.

Nearly a third of candidates in Angola's upcoming parliamentary elections are female, thanks to a new quota imposed by the government. The 30 percent rule was designed to bring more women into the country's parliament, but as campaigning gets under way, women continue to stay in Angola's political shadows, barely visible at rallies and with few holding senior party positions.

The third Gender and Media (GEM) summit ended in Johannesburg yesterday, Tuesday, 12 August 2008, with a call for the adoption of the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development that includes strong provisions for achieving gender balance and sensitivity in the media. The summit took place on the eve of the annual meeting of leaders of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), 16 - 17 August, where the protocol that has been in the making for several years is expected to be adopted. Among the targets in the protocol are the achievement of 50% women in all areas of decision-making; reduction of gender violence by half of the current levels; ensuring that all constitutions in the region have a provision for gender equality that is not contradicted by any law or custom; and a range of targets for the economic empowerment of women by 2015.

The Philippines House of Representatives and Senate are nearing passage of a 'Magna Carta for Women' - a Bill that will codify the UN Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). According to the Bill's sponsor, this legislation will "reaffirm the state’s commitment to the participation and empowerment of women in all aspects of the family, society and government.”

On 18 July 2008, councillors of the District Council of Moka-Flacq committed themselves to ensuring that the village elections of 2010 would end with 30% women as District councillors. Women councillors make up a mere 3.7% in the Moka-Flacq District Council. This is the lowest figure not only in Mauritius but also in the SADC region.

Nancy Pelosi, the first woman Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, in her new book 'Know your Power', urges young women to determine their own fates. "If I can go from the kitchen to the Congress, women with a goal can do anything they set out to do" says Pelosi in an interview about her new book.

Lifetime Networks today announced the launch of the 'Every Woman Counts' bus tour to engage women in the political process this election season and beyond. At each tour stop, women will be able to upload videos to Lifetime's YouTube(TM) Channel declaring what they would do if they were president, highlighting the issues most important to them this historic presidential election year.

Sudan's new electoral law grants women 25 percent of seats in parliament and introduces proportional representation in what has been billed as a road towards democratic transformation.

The most powerful woman in Israeli politics and a former spy, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, is now a frontrunner for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's job after he announced his forthcoming resignation today.