Elections
NEW DELHI: With more women participating in voting than ever before and even dominating political discourse within their households, they now find themselves at the forefront of various schemes and policies announced by political parties ahead of elections.
Aam Aadmi Party govt announced Mahila Samman Yojana in the budget, promising a monthly stipend of Rs 1,000 to women above 18 years of age, and proudly promotes their free travel in public buses.
Similarly, BJP recently launched the ‘Lakhpati Didi’ programme, aiming to make women financially self-reliant while promoting various other women-centric schemes implemented in recent years. This is perhaps the first time that BJP has fielded two women candidates in the capital.
Political analysts agree that with a higher voter turnout in parliamentary as well as assembly polls in recent elections, women will now drive the narrative ahead of all elections.
Click here to read the full article published by The Times of India on 18 March 2024.
Image source: The Times of India
Introduction
Over the last twenty years, the world has witnessed significant shifts towards greater gender equality in politics, which in turn has had positive implications for democracy and society at large.
Mexico has witnessed a systematic incorporation of gender perspective, equality, and parity in public life, signifying a transformation of women's ability to participate in the country's future. The prime example is the National Electoral Institute (INE) mandate, later ratified by the Electoral Tribunal (TEPJF), for political parties to guarantee gender parity in all upcoming gubernatorial elections of 2024: Chiapas, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Morelos, Puebla, Tabasco, Veracruz, Yucatán, and Mexico City.
Unfortunately, as women's participation in politics rises, an increase in political violence that explicitly targets women has also occurred. The 2020-2021 electoral process was the most violent against Mexican women.
Mexico´s political system is awash with political violence that explicitly targets and affects women, obstructs social justice, and hinders democracy. The advances in female political participation have been met with resistance as men, territorial interest groups, and political elites seemingly feel threatened by increasing female power and respond with violent actions to uphold the traditional system of politics to deter women’s independent participation.
Read here the full article published by the Wilson Center on 13 March 2024.
Image source: Wilson Center
In our pursuit of gender equality, the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR) is committed to exposing the hurdles faced by women in local and regional politics. Our recently released report, “Women in Politics,” provides a visual snapshot of women’s representation in elected roles across subnational levels.
A detailed breakdown of portfolios at the local level underscores the challenges that persist. The infographics also unveil the outcomes of an anonymous CEMR survey involving 2,424 participants from 31 countries. Focused on elected women in local and regional European roles, the survey delves into their experiences of violence in the political realm. These findings shed light on a disturbing reality: violence against locally elected women is a prevalent issue that demands urgent attention.
“Empowering women at the local level is pivotal in our journey towards gender equality. The ‘Women in Politics’ report, accompanied by insightful infographics and a comprehensive survey, reflects our commitment to understanding and addressing gender inequalities. Together, through the power of grassroots movements, we can build a more inclusive and equitable future for all.” – CEMR President Gunn Marit Helgesen.
Read here the full article published by Euractiv on 8 March 2024.
Image source: Euractiv
Earlier this year, the IPU announced that around 70 elections were slated to take place in 2024, in what has been dubbed a super election year. In total, thousands of parliamentary seats are up for grabs. As of March 2024, women’s representation in parliament stands at just 26.9%. There was some progress in 2023 – 0.4 percentage points year on year, but progress has slowed compared to previous years.
Will that have changed by the end of this high-stakes election year?
The extent to which women's representation will improve in the countries that go to the polls in 2024 will depend on a variety of factors. But there are some steps that countries can take to advance progress.
IPU’s analyses over the years have shown that two factors play an influential role: the existence of well-designed quotas and the type of electoral system. Specifically, proportional representation and/or mixed electoral systems tend to enable a higher representation of women compared to plurality/majority systems.
According to the IPU's latest estimates, of the parliamentary chambers due to hold elections in 2024, 27 use PR/mixed systems, 24 use plurality/majority systems and 47 use some form of quotas.
Read here the full article published by the Inter-Parliamentary Union on 6 March 2024.
Image by IPU
In 1906, Finland became the first country in Europe to grant women the right to vote, with the adoption of universal suffrage, at the same time as it won its autonomy from the Russian Empire. The following year, Finnish women were able to exercise this right in the general elections. Throughout the twentieth century, women in Europe and around the world fought long and hard to gain the right to vote without any additional conditions to those required of men. In some countries, only widows were allowed to vote as a first step towards electoral emancipation (in Belgium, for example, until 1921). In other countries, such as Bulgaria, the right to vote was initially reserved for mothers of legitimate children and exclusively for local elections. In Portugal, only women with a university degree were allowed to vote from 1931 on. In Spain it was not until post-Franco democratisation and the 1976 elections that Spanish women regained the right to vote, initially acquired in 1931 before the civil war. This year France is celebrating the 80th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote. Cypriot women won the right to vote at the same time as their male counterparts when the Republic was created in 1960. This can be explained quite simply by the fact that, at that time, such discrimination could no longer be justified. So, it took a good part of the twentieth century to get there...
Read here the full article published by the Foundation Robert Schuman on 5 March 2024.
Image source: Foundation Robert Schuman
In Pakistan, as in corporate boardrooms around the country women are often absent. In recent years this has changed at a glacial pace. Pakistan’s Diva magazine profiled a handful of prominent female CEOs in a 2020 article. A list of famous female CEOS in the country would largely remain the same today.
Their accomplishments are all the more suprisinging given the low rates of female participation in the workforce. Pakistan's female labor force participation is low by global standards. Perhaps as low as 20% however World Bank figures place it even lower.
This is miniscule. The number of talented women translates to a 60% potential GDP increase. A significant figure. In Pakistan women’s involvement in corporate life and the business sector is often driven by political trends.
Click here to read the full article published by Forbes on 22 February 2024.
Image source: Forbes
With more and more women running for office, races between women candidates will become the norm — not a novelty. Shared Hurdles reveals how candidates’ race, political party, and gender interact to influence voter opinion when more than one woman is on the ballot.
Research on gender dynamics in politics has seldom studied races between two women candidates. This research helps to fill that gap — and give women the tools they need to resonate with voters in races against other women. Shared Hurdles shows that in an election between two women candidates, gender biases are still prevalent, and voters hold both women to a higher standard than they hold male candidates. Shared Hurdles is a timely update on how gender shapes politics, and it provides a framework for women candidates who are campaigning against other women.
Click here to access the report.
Despite repeated warnings, Australia’s two major political parties continue to make one big mistake – and one MP has issued a scathing rebuke.
The women chosen by Australia’s two major political parties to run in the upcoming federal election are predominantly chosen for seats they are unlikely to win.
Shocking statistics gathered by news.com.au reveal a huge disparity in the chances of women entering parliament compared to their male counterparts, with men more likely to be chosen to run for a seat already held by their party.
Click here to read the full article published by News.com.au on 23 March 2022.
In December 2020, a leading Kenyan political party official, Edwin Sifuna, made vulgar remarks against a woman member of parliament. While campaigning for their political allies in a by-election, Sifuna said the woman is “not attractive enough to rape”.
In January this year, controversial bishop David Gakuyo, who is seeking election as a member of parliament, made demeaning remarks about two women politicians. He accused them of seeking votes while “swinging bare behinds”.
Sifuna and Gakuyo later made half-hearted apologies through the police after complaints were lodged about the language they used. The National Cohesion and Integration Commission, a government agency tasked with taming the excesses of politicians, was largely silent.
Click here to read the full article published by Daily Maverick on 17 March 2022.
In this In brief, the authors consider lessons learned in the aftermath of women candidates’ defeat in the 18 November 2021 general election. They identify five intractable barriers to women’s election in Tonga: voters’ expectations of reciprocity in exchange for electoral support; deeply entrenched perceptions of men’s legitimacy as political leaders; untimely support for women candidates; an inhospitable political environment for electoral gender quotas; and a lack of accountability on gender equality commitments.
Click here to read the full article.
Electoral management bodies (EMBs) are responsible for ensuring a level playing field for political representation and meaningful participation across the entire electoral cycle. Yet, International IDEA data shows that only 22% of EMBs themselves are chaired by women.
When disaggregated by regions (Figure 1.), data from 242 EMBs in 208 countries and territories shows that the percentages indicating the number of women chairing EMBs are below the global average on three continents, with Asia recording the lowest numbers (10%), followed by Oceania (11%) and Africa (19%).
Click here to read the full article published by International IDEA on 7 November 2021.
Although the landscape for female candidates in U.S. politics has improved, research continues to find that many voters possess sexist attitudes. We rely on a standard political communication framework to help reconcile sexism in the electorate with increasingly favorable outcomes for women in primary elections. Based on two national survey experiments, we first demonstrate that in the absence of gendered campaign rhetoric, sexism is a weak predictor of support for female candidates on both sides of the political aisle. We then show, however, that when a male candidate attempts to activate sexism among voters by attacking a female opponent, gender attitudes become more salient—but not to the woman’s disadvantage. In a Democratic primary, gendered attacks backfire and lead to a significant boost in support for the female candidate. On the Republican side, a male candidate does not face the same backlash, but the attacks do very little to depress his female opponent’s support. While the persistence of hostile attitudes toward women has slowed the march toward gender equality in society, our experimental results suggest that sexism exerts only contingent effects in primary elections and not systematically to female candidates’ detriment.
Click here to download the paper published by Sage Journals on 23 September 2021.