Women are at a crossroads in the Middle East and North Africa. This is widely reflected in the current battles over the adoption of quotas aimed at improving women's chances of being elected into parliaments. Although women's quotas were introduced as early as 1979 in Egypt, there are new efforts underway in the Middle East to implement them. Last year, Tunisia adopted a law requiring that party lists alternate between men and women. In a more restrained manner, Libya recently drafted an election law that gives women only 10 percent of the seats. However, the struggle for quotas has also met with resistance as in Egypt, which abandoned a 2010 quota law altogether that would have ensured the presence of 64 women in the parliament.  

Very few female candidates ran in the nation’s parliamentary elections and even fewer have been elected: 10 took the oath last Monday.

Eight women elected and two appointed women make up less than two percent of the 508 seats in the powerful lower house of parliament. Considering the proportion of women who applied, the chances weren’t big. In the capital for example, only 80 women ran compared to 1,010 men.

Echoing the concern that parties were playing politics early on was Omaima Kamel, one of the newly elected parliament members under the Freedom and Justice Party. “Women are put to fulfill criteria on the list,” she said, explaining that parties were worried women won’t have a positive impact on the lists in terms of attracting voters.

Reservation for women in leadership positions in Indian villages is having a positive role model effect and has changed the way young girls and their parents think about female leadership, a new research has said.

In villages with two terms of female leadership, gender gap in parents' aspirations for their children's career and education closed by 25 percent, as compared to villages that never had a female leader.

Similarly, the gender gap in career and education aspirations closed by 32 percent in adolescents.

A landmark bill aimed at guaranteeing 22 women-only seats in the parliament of Papua New Guinea has failed to get the votes required as the nation's political crisis continues.

PNG's current political crisis, with the two rival camps each maintaining they are the government, saw Mr O'Neill fail to have the the necessary two thirds majority of 109 MPs required for constitutional changes.

Dame Carol Kidu, the country's only female MP who has fought courageously for this bill, cut a lonely figure as she sat in opposition benches, the only MP from the Somare camp who turned up today.

The vote was rescinded and rescheduled for debate next year.