Women candidates must place a particular emphasis on raising the funds necessary to run a successful campaign. Fundraising, an inevitable part of any political campaign, allows the candidate to pay for items such as nomination fees, candidate deposits, promotional activities, transportation and a multitude of other expenses.
The International IDEA political finance database contains information on political finance control provisions in more than 175 countries around the world. That makes it the largest collection of such information.
The information in this database shows the use of different types of regulations in individual countries, but it can also be used to compare the prevalence of various provisions between countries and regions. It is our hope that this database can be used by all who are interested in how the role of money in politics is regulated, be they legislators, regulators, political party officials, civil society activists, journalists or concerned citizens.
Please note that this database deals exclusively with regulations of political finance, not with how such regulations are respected or enforced. As with many areas, the passing of a law does not automatically bring compliance. The world over, scandals concerning money and politics illustrate that laws are breached and loopholes utilized. In other situations, governments may abuse regulations to further their own goals. These facts do not negate the value of collecting the global political finance regulations, it simply means that we cannot assume that these provisions are adhered to or enforced in a manner we might anticipate. Without regulations, there is however nothing to adhere to or enforce; meaning that these provisions present the natural starting point for any study of money in politics.
Women continue to be under- represented in public offices. Government has also reneged on its assurance of appointing at least 40 percent women to public offices.
Under-representation of women in Ghana has been attributed to factors including historical, cultural and financial resources, among others.
For more information, see AllAfrica.
How women participate in political parties – and how those parties encourage and nurture women’s involvement and incorporate gender-equality issues – are key determinants of women’s political empowerment. They are also key to ensuring gender-equality issues are addressed in the wider society. If strategies to promote women’s involvement in the political process are to be effective, they should be linked to steps parties can take across the specific phases of the electoral cycle – the preelectoral, electoral and post-electoral phases – and to the organization and financing of the parties themselves. 
There are many definitions of the word politics but because I had a choice I picked up the definition by Bahram Maskanian because it appeared to be very close to what I will be talking about. Bahram defines politics as an art and science of managing and governing one’s entire social, cultural and economic affairs. He goes on to say that politics is the activity and interaction engaged in by any given society’s citizen’s to build and maintain a community and establish communal social services for all people.
"If I had only known that when I was young," or "if they had only told me" are just some of the statements made by many women who seek assistance at the centre for victims of gender violence set up by the local government in a town on the outskirts of the Argentine capital. The survey on gender violence among adolescents noted that one out of four women in Argentina has been the victim of some kind of violence, and that in 2010, at least 260 "femicides" – murders in a context of gender violence – were committed in this country of 40 million people, almost all of them by the victims' current or former partners.
For more information, please visit: IPS
Originally developed a decade ago by NDI's staff team in Russia, this manual traveled the globe numerous times with localized updates. NDI's team of political party experts in Malaysia edited the version you hold for that specific context. In 2004, Indonesia's candidates ran campaigns using this manual and, later, candidates and their teams similarly followed the formula in that country's first directr elections for governors and mayors. In 2007, in the landmark elections required by the peace agreement in Aceh after a forty-year, conflict, a more substantial update to the manual gave candidates greater confidence to compete in the ever-changing world of campaign politics. The updates made to the manual reflect advances in targetting, message development and the use of technology in campaigns in every country; the lesson for all of us is that political campaigning is, quite simply, about effective planning. Campaigning techniques are refined over time. The lesson of political practitioners everywhere is to learn from each others' victories and mistakes. And, to make sure the campaign we run is appropriate to the context in which we are competing.
The National Women’s Organizer of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Otiko Afisah-Djaba is proposing that some funds in the national kitty be allocated for women participation in politics.
Otiko, who identified raising funds by women as one of the factors bedeviling their active involvement in politics, opined that when politically-inclined women in politics have access to more funds, they will not need to fall on a man.
To read the complete news story please visit Peace FM Online.
This manual brings together training material used in Vital Voices advocacy and campaign skills trainings across the globe. You can contact the editor at sfoster[at]stepheniefoster.com.
