Samoa's Prime Minister Tuilaepe Sailele is set to push constitutional amendments through Parliament to create special seats for women.

Under the changes, at least five seats - or ten percent - of the members of parliament will be female.

Last September a striking story stole the headlines of newspapers and media outlets all across Ghana. Samia Nkrumah, the daughter of the nation's founding father, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, became the first female chairperson of a political party in the country's history as an independent state.

The event was lauded as a giant leap forward in women's political participation within Ghana and was rich in symbolism: the daughter of the fallen visionary who delivered independence to the small West African nation and made it a known entity to the rest of the world had become the first female chairperson of the political party her father founded.

The Convention People's Party (CPP) was politically powerful before President Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown in a coup in 1966. But in 2011 the CPP casts a thin shadow of its former glory - it holds only one seat in parliament and its relevance derives from its role in the independence movement and establishing the first republic. Samia's victory was a significant achievement, but it does not reflect a broader shift in the attitudes towards women in politics, within the citizenry and major political parties, but rather underscored a deeper problem within Ghana's political culture. Contrary to the celebratory newspaper headlines, the event demonstrated that the political sphere continues to be the dominion of men.

Quotas for women seem to be the hot thing in the Middle East these days. Libya just announced a 10 percent quota for women in its new election law. Tunisia used a form of quotas to enhance women's participation in its recent election. Iraq has used quotas in parliament and just expanded the use of quotas for women to the civil service; Morocco, Egypt, and Jordan have also used quotas. Over the past week, I've received several queries from blog readers about quotas: Which countries use them? How do they work? Are they democratic? Are they even effective? These are all big questions, and to answer them thoroughly is beyond the scope of this blog post, so here is just a snap-shot.

Young Arab scholars are increasingly interested in gender studies, the report shows, and their projects are as sophisticated as Western gender research in terms of methodology and theory. With the set criteria for inclusion and the compilation of data through the use of internet, 81 young scholars were located. The publication of those findings in the first edition constitutes only a beginning that will be pursued with further expansion and updating of the project.