The leadership of women in politics took a new turn in 1993 when India put into place a 50 percent quota for women at the level of local governance. From 1993 onward, more than 1 million women have served on Indian village, block and district-level councils.

On March 8, the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, a bill was proposed in the Indian parliament -- and successfully passed the next day -- imposing a 33 percent quota for women in India's federal and state assemblies.

While Aung San Suu Kyi remains the most widely-known woman suppressed for her political views in Burma, the jails in that military-ruled country continue to be filled by lesser-known women dissidents being held on a range of questionable charges.

Mid-February saw the latest group of female political activists thrown into jail with a two-year prison term, including hard labour, for a "crime" they committed four months ago – donating religious literature to a Buddhist monastery, an act that the junta deemed as "disturbing the peace."

Women in the Asia-Pacific region have little economic and political power, impacting economic growth prospects of developing nations, the United Nations said in a report released Monday.

According to the UN Asia-Pacific Human Development Report to mark International Women’s Day, the region ranked near the worst in the world on issues such as protecting women from violence or upholding their rights to property.

“The key message [of the report] is that to meet any development goals that a society sets, you need the full participation and involvement of women,” Helen Clark, head of the UN Development Program (UNDP), said.

The number of women in the Angolan National Assembly repre sents 39 per cent of the total number of parliamentarians in the country and the figure meets the world's established quota, according to a report from the Angolan News Agency (ANGOP).

The was revealed Thursday in New York, US, by the Angolan MP, Faustina Fernandes Inglês de Almeida Alves, while addressing the 1-12 March Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) meeting, as part of the 54th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women which began Monday at UN headquarters.

"The election of a woman president in Costa Rica is a step forward for women in the region's political arena, and a qualitative advance in terms of political democratisation," political analyst José Dávila Membreño told IPS.

Chinchilla, of the governing National Liberation Party (PLN), became the third woman president to be democratically elected in Central America, after Presidents Mireya Moscoso in Panama (1999-2004) and Violeta Chamorro in Nicaragua (1990-1997).

"Women have been discriminated against, with a view that they should stay at home and that they are not fit for public responsibilities. But this attitude is gradually being overcome, because women have shown that when they occupy public office, the quality of politics can improve," said the political scientist.

Ms. Mu Sochua is a member of a new generation of women who are working their way into the political systems of countries across Asia and elsewhere, from local councils to national assemblies and cabinet positions.

A former minister of women’s affairs, she did as much as anyone to put women’s issues on the agenda of Cambodia as it emerged in the 1990s from decades of war and mass killings. But she lost her public platform in 2004 when she broke with the government, and she is now finding it as difficult to promote her ideas as it is to simply gain attention as a candidate.