Hundreds of people have protested in Blantyre in Malawi about attacks on women for wearing trousers.

Some women were this week beaten and stripped by vendors on the streets of the capital, Lilongwe, and Blantyre for not wearing traditional dress.

A BBC reporter says women wore trousers and mini-skirts to the demonstration to show their outrage.

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.

The August 2012 elections in Kenya will open doors to massive political participation by women for the first time ever. The new constitution in effect since August 2010 contains a provision that should radically change political representation for women in this East African country.

Women's rights activists in Kenya are confident that as a result of constitutional Article 81 (b), which states that "not more than two-thirds of the members of elective public bodies shall be of the same gender," their problems of under- representation in key government bodies will become a thing of the past.

Under a new gender quota law introduced in Mauritius, at least one-third of the candidates in local elections must be women. But the adoption of a national quota is not yet on the horizon, even though just 18% of legislators are women and there are only two female cabinet ministers.

The new quota came into effect on 1 January. The next local elections are due by April in the five towns and 108 villages in this island nation of 1.3 million people.

Background:

The International Knowledge Network of Women in Politics (iKNOW Politics) is a joint Project between UNDP, UN Women, IDEA, IPU and NDI. iKNOW Politics, is designed to increase the number and effectiveness of women in political life by utilizing a technology enabled forum to provide access to resources, expertise, dialogue, and knowledge creation on women’s political participation.

Despite some encouraging data and statistics on women’s participation in politics, women still lack access to political leadership opportunities and resources at local, national and regional levels. In order to provide a mechanism to share best practices on women’s political participation and leadership, UNDP, UN Women, NDI, IPU, and IDEA established a global knowledge network for women in politics (iKNOW Politics). iKNOW Politics brings together women involved in politics around the world in order to gain access to valuable resources and advisory services, share interests and experiences, participate in training and development, network and collaborate on issues of interest. Network members have access to a cadre of experts and practitioners that can advise candidates and elected officials on how to develop and implement successful campaign and lobbying strategies with the goal of getting more women involved in politics. 

The use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for Development can play a catalytic role in the achievement of key development goals. By providing innovative solutions to existing traditional challenges and gaps, ICTs can be strategically deployed to tackle some of the most burning issues on a large scale and at relatively low cost per beneficiary. However, an exclusive focus on the so-called “digital divide” will not help advance this agenda. iKNOW Politics bridges this gap through the online network connecting members in 4 languages and providing a host of resources and features to facilitate global knowledge creation on supporting political participation.

This year’s election in Nigeria saw some important gains in women’s political participation. President Goodluck Jonathon appointed 33% of cabinet positions to women (up from 10% in the last government), including the ministerial portfolios of finance and education. This is in keeping with Nigeria’s commitments to gender equality, encapsulated in the National Gender Policy, which sets the benchmark for women’s seats in Parliament at 35% - 5% higher than the international standard.

Yet this achievement is precisely so remarkable because of the ongoing challenges women in Nigeria face in becoming politically active from the bottom-up through elections. As the Summit of All Women Politicians in Nigeria have declared: ‘women of Nigeria have noticed with utter dismay the almost complete deterioration of our political and social values, born out of more than three decades of continued male-dominated and-oriented misrule, and have concluded that enough is enough; the time for positive change has arrived.’