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Elections

Washington —  When Suriya Bibi was running for a seat earlier this year on the Khyber Pakhtunkwa provincial assembly, she faced numerous challenges beyond being a woman and hailing from a minority sect in Pakistan's remote district of Chitral.

Another obstacle appeared when the Election Commission randomly assigned a hen symbol as her identifier on ballot papers — such symbols are tools to aid illiterate voters. In January, Pakistan's Supreme Court barred her political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, from using the cricket bat symbol associated with former Prime Minister Imran Khan.

The hen symbol inadvertently perpetuated the stereotype that women in Chitral were better suited for poultry farming than politics. Her opponents capitalized on their good luck, ridiculing her and mocking the symbol's association with domesticity.

In a phone interview with VOA, Bibi said that there was no shame in poultry farming and rejected the attempt to diminish her worth based on her election symbol.

Read here the full article published by Voice of America on 23 March 2024.

Image source: Voice of America

It’s presidential campaign season in Senegal’s capital city and all over town the candidates’ faces beam down at voters from posters tacked to light poles and plastered on billboards. Eighteen people are running, and at times, their images seem to blend together: a sea of older men in dark, dour suits. But one face stands out.

In her pastel blue headwrap and green dress, Anta Babacar Ngom cuts a strikingly different figure. For one thing, at 40 years old she’s a generation younger than many of the other candidates. For another, she’s a she.

Although no one expects Ms. Ngom to become the next president, her presence in the race speaks to the increasingly forceful role of women in the politics of Senegal, which has one of the highest percentages of female legislators in the world.

Read here the full article published by The Christian Science Monitor on 22 March 2024.

Image source: The Christian Science Monitor

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 lifesignifying 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 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

Ahead of the parliamentary elections in Georgia, UNDP and Sweden are supporting political parties to empower women politicians and explore effective strategies for attracting, engaging, and promoting women candidates.

These targeted efforts envision consultations and training on introducing internal gender policies, while also fostering professional development opportunities for party members. 

Additionally, UNDP and Sweden assist in strengthening women's wings within political parties and support the establishment of these entities where they are lacking. As of 2023, parties such as “For Georgia”, “Georgian Dream”, “Lelo”, and the “United National Movement”, have initiated the integration of Women's Political Organizations into their structures, with more planning to follow suit in 2024.

Click here to read the full article published by UNDP on 21 February 2024.

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 lifesignifying 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

Independent states in the Pacific region have the lowest levels of women’s political representation in the world. Fewer than 7% of Pacific politicians are women, compared with 27% globally. The absence of women’s voices in political decision-making has been consistently raised in regional forums, although progress has been slow. Yet, in November 2022, a milestone was reached: for the first time, there was at least one elected woman in every Pacific parliament.

Click here to read the full article published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute on 17 October 2023.

Women’s representation in political offices continued to decline in the 2023 elections. Four main factors help explain why Africa’s largest economy is such a difficult space for women candidates.

Women’s representation in Nigerian politics has been on a downward slide since 2011, and the 2023 elections in Africa’s largest economy confirmed the expectations of poor outcomes for women. The number of women in Nigeria’s National Assembly has fallen by 19 percent compared to the last assembly, with women now occupying 3 percent of seats in the Senate and 4 percent in the House of Representatives.

To understand why Nigerian women performed so poorly in the recent elections, the 2022 primary elections provided insight into the challenges and barriers faced by women aspirants and candidates. The results of the various parties’ primary elections highlight enduring limitations to women’s representation in competitive politics in Nigeria. The country ranks in the bottom ten globally in women’s representation in national parliaments, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). This challenge of representation persists in spite of the near parity of voter registration between men and women in past election cycles.

Click here to read the full article published by Carnegie Endowment For Peace on 09 May 2023.

Online abuse has a profound impact on the health of democratic societies, threatening progress on diversity and representation in politics. Research has shown that abuse can deter women and individuals from minority groups from pursuing careers in politics, and drive those already engaged to step down from political life. The 2022 midterm elections in the US saw a growing number of candidates from minority backgrounds running for office. Faced with growing public pressure, social media companies took steps to amend their policies and community standards to address illegal and harmful content and behavior on their platforms. Evidence has shown, however, that abusive image and video-based content can fall through the cracks of content moderation, pointing to a lack of adequate response from social media platforms. In the run-up to the November 2022 midterm elections, ISD investigated abusive content on Instagram and TikTok targeting prominent women in US politics. Researchers analyzed hashtag recommendations served to users on both platforms when searching for content related to several key women in US politics in the days before the election. This report finds that platforms recommend abusive hashtags when people search for the names of these female political figures, and also promote abusive content that violate their own terms of service, showing that harmful and abusive content targeting women running for, and in-, office remains in plain sight of the platforms.

Click here to access the report.

Diagnosing women’s under-representation in electoral politics often involves a “blame game,” seeking to identify the primary factor responsible for depressing the share of women among candidates as well as elected officials. The Danish electoral system – in which parties present ordered lists of candidates but voters have the option to cast preference votes that can rearrange the list order – provides an opportunity to assess the relative role of elite versus voter bias in shaping women’s electoral fortunes. Using data from local elections in 2009, we find greater evidence for elite bias against women. We also observe, however, that voters do not widely exploit their preference votes. In an original post-election survey, we discover that “candidate gender” is less important for male and female voters than a host of other characteristics when deciding for which candidate to cast a preference vote.

Click here to access the article.

From a gender perspective, three main lessons can be learnt from the general election. First, gender issues are on the rise, a fact shown not least by the appointment of the first-ever women running mate for one of the two main presidential candidates. Second, although the ratios of women representatives at all levels are slowly but steadily increasing, the gender quota is just window dressing, which the parties blatantly ignore or work around by nominating women candidates to top-up lists. Third, violence against women in politics poses a serious threat to women’s political inclusion and citizenship.

On 9 August, Kenyans headed to the polls to elect the country’s president. In addition to the executive, Kenyans also elected 290 members of parliament, 47 governors, 47 senators, 47 women representatives and 1,450 members of county assemblies in the elections. However, the executive race was the focus of attention. Both online and offline, the two presidential contenders William Ruto and Raila Odinga engaged in rhetoric to disparage the other, a tactic that succeeded because of – and was perpetuated by – the spread of misinformation.

Click here to access the report.