Skip to main content

Parliaments & Representatives

In a compelling dialogue from a GZERO Global Stage discussion on gender equality in the age of AI, Lucia Nicholsonová, former Slovak National Assembly vice president and current member of European Parliament for Slovakia, recounts her harrowing personal experiences with disinformation campaigns and gendered hate speech online.

Ms. Nicholsonová read example messages she receives online, such as, "Damn you and your whole family. I wish you all die of cancer."

She also has faced false accusations of past criminal activity through deliberate online misinformation campaigns, which she says led to endured public humiliation and threats, even experiencing strangers spitting on her in the streets. These attacks were fueled by misogyny and prejudice and took a toll on her mental well-being and family life. 

As Ms. Nicholsonová recalls, “It was a real trauma because I mean, at some point I wasn't able to go out of my home because I felt so threatened.”

The conversation was presented by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft and the UN Foundation. The Global Stage series convene heads of state, business leaders, technology experts from around the world for critical debate about the geopolitical and technology trends shaping our world.

Read here the full article published by GZERO Media on 21 March 2024.

Image source: GZERO Media

As part of Strathclyde Women's Week 2024, we are focusing on the work of Humanities & Social Sciences academics whose research relates particularly to the experiences of women and girls.

Dr Stefanie Reher is a Reader in Politics at the University of Strathclyde, working within the Department of Government & Public Policy. Dr Reher's research focuses on political representation, behaviour, and attitudes.

She is currently working on several projects about the representation of disabled people in politics. Last year - in collaboration with Prof. Elizabeth Evans of the University of Southampton - she published Gender, disability and political representation: understanding the experiences of disabled women in the European Journal of Politics and Gender.

We asked Dr Reher about the barriers disabled women face to participation in representative politics, the methods behind the research and what needs to be done to improve inclusion. 

Click here to read the full article published by the University of Strathclyde on 20 March 2024.

Image source: University of Strathclyde

It is common knowledge that despite the invaluable contribution of women to Nigeria’s electoral process since the return to civil rule in 1999, the system has not given them their fair share of reward and recognition that they deserve. 

Nigeria’s women have historically had low participation rate in political party positions, whether elected or appointed. 

More than two decades after the Beijing Declaration from the Fourth World Conference on Women, governmental and non-governmental groups have tried to boost female engagement in politics. Unfortunately, the issue of underrepresentation has remained. 

In every election circle, many women submit nominations for various political offices, only a few receive the nod of their parties to run in the general election due largely to financial limitations, cultural preconceptions and socio-political marginalisation by men. 

Click here to read the full article published by the Business Day Nigeria on 18 March 2024.

Image source: Business Day Nigeria

SPOKANE, Wash. – International lawmakers met on March 13 to discuss ways of increasing women’s political participation as disparities in representation between men and women continue on local, national and international levels.

The 68th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women, which included US, Canadian, Colombian and British leaders, focused on broad strategies to increase women’s civic representation.

“[Experts] highlighted how longstanding barriers to women’s political participation and leadership—including lack of access to political networks and resources as well as gender-based violence both online and offline—continue to undermine their inclusion and advancement in democratic processes,” the US Department of Justice (DOJ) said.

According to Pew Research Center data from March 2023, less than a third of United Nations member states have ever had a woman leader.

Click here to read the full article published by Fox 28 on 16 March 2024.

Image source: FOX 28

Thailand was once regarded as one of the most progressive in fostering gender equality. It was the second country in Asia to grant women the right to vote, as far back as 1932. A recent report, “Freedom in the World 2024”, however, shows that women in Thailand remain overlooked in politics and government at all levels.

The study by Freedom House, a US-based political advocacy organisation, said that women’s interests are generally not prioritised in political life.

The Kingdom got two out of four points in the report’s “political rights and electoral opportunities for various segments of the population” section.

“If we [women] do not work outstandingly either while working in a [House] committee or debating in parliament, we won’t be interested. It seems like we need to try harder than the men,” says Sasinan Thamnithinan, a Move Forward Party MP, in an interview with The Nation.

"Women are not decorative flowers in politics," says Sasinan, 34. “We are capable of talking about serious social issues in parliamentary debates like the men do, such as police and army reform, not just so-called feminine topics like household violence,” she says.

The lawmaker is among 32 female politicians, out of the total of 151, who secured their MP seats under the Move Forward banner in the May 14 general election. Move Forward has the highest number of women MPs among all parties.

Click here to read the full article published by The Nation Thailand on 16 March 2024.

Image source: The Nation Thailand

TOKYO -- A study group headed by Mari Miura, a professor at Sophia University's Faculty of Law in Tokyo, with an objective to achieve gender equality in Japan from local levels, has compiled a Japanese gender gap index by prefecture. Using the same method as the global gender gap index, the group collects data on women's participation in local politics, economy, education and administration. Based on the latest data for the year 2023, the Mainichi Shimbun looked into factors contributing to gender inequality across Japan and efforts to tackle the issue.

Tomoko Kogoshi, 60, served as a Yamanashi Prefectural Assembly member for four terms spanning 16 years and retired in spring 2023. For the latter half of her time in the prefectural assembly, she was the only female member.

Click here to read the full article published by The Mainichi on 19 February 2024.

Image source: The Mainichi

A Qualitative Study on Violence against Women in Politics in Türkiye, prepared in cooperation with UN Women and Terra Development Cooperative, was introduced at an event organized in Ankara. A qualitative study, which provides important findings on the causes, occurrence, and consequences of violence against women in politics, was presented to the representatives from civil society organizations, public institutions, local governments, and political parties.

The Study on Violence against Women in Politics in Türkiye, which was started to be prepared by Prof. Dr. İknur Yüksel Kaptanoğlu, Project Coordinator of Terra Development Cooperative, together with her study team in 2022, was carried out within the scope of the project "Advancing Gender Equality and Women's Leadership in Political and Business Life” implemented by UN Women and financially supported by the Sweden through Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA). In her opening speech, Swedish Ambassador to Ankara Malena Mård emphasized the importance of a political environment free from all forms of violence, especially for young people.

Click here to read the full report published by UN Women on 10 January 2024.

A Glimpse into the Life of a Women in Politics: CEMR Unveils First Data Coming from 31 Countries

The Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR) has released the first infographics showcasing critical insights from their latest report, "Women in Politics."
 
The data offer a visual snapshot of the representation of women in elected roles across various subnational levels. Additionally, a detailed breakdown of their portfolios at the local level is provided. The second slide of the infographics unveils the results of an anonymous CEMR survey involving 2,424 participants from 31 countries. Focused on elected women in local and regional European roles, the survey explores their experiences of violence in the political realm.

Click here to see the infographic published by the Council of European Municipalities and Regions on 14 December 2023.

For a country with a significant female population, Nigeria has been poor in ensuring gender parity in elected and appointed leadership positions. Since 1979, the country has practiced a presidential form of government, with a devolved form of government across three tiers—federal, state and local levels. Yet, despite the number of elective constituencies available, there has been little to no women elected to these positions. Nigeria has never elected a female president, vice-president or a governor in any of its thirty-six states. Women elected to the national legislature have been a scant percentage in any of the ten constituted sessions of either chamber, with none emerging as president of the senate and a roughly five-month stint for the only woman to emerge speaker of the house of representatives (Polgreen, 2007).

Click here to read the full report published by the Centre for Democracy and Development on 27 November 2023.

Are the preferences of women and men unequally represented in public policies? This simple yet fundamental question has remained largely unexplored in the fast-growing fields of women’s representation and inequality in the opinion-policy link. Our study analyzes gender biases in policy representation using an original dataset covering 43 countries and four decades, with citizens’ preferences regarding more than 4,000 country-year policies linked to information about actual policy change. Our analysis reveals clear and robust evidence that women’s policy preferences are underrepresented compared to those of men. While this skew is fairly modest in terms of congruence, women’s representation is driven mostly by the high correlation of preferences with men. When there is disagreement, policy is more likely to align with men’s preferences. Our analyses further suggest that women’s substantive underrepresentation is mitigated in contexts with high levels of female descriptive representation and labor market participation. In sum, our study shows that gender inequality extends to the important realm of policy representation, but there is also meaningful variation in unequal representation across contexts.

Click here to read the full article published by the Cambridge University Press on 26 October 2023.

Women’s Collective Ireland – Limerick are delighted to launch their new report Addressing Sexism in Politics: Creating Safe, Inclusive and Accessible Political Spaces for Everyday Women, this report is a collaboration between Women’s Collective Ireland – Limerick and TUS research group EDGE.

Since 2019, WCI Limerick has been working specifically to strengthen and increase women’s participation and representation in local politics. In that time, they have worked with over 150 women and were instrumental in the establishment of the Limerick Women’s Caucus, the first of its kind a local level in the country. This work and the feedback they have been receiving from women led them to draft this report.

Click here to read the full report published by the Women's Collective Ireland – Limerick on 17 October 2023.

Independent states in the Pacific region have the lowest levels of women’s political representation in the world. Fewer than seven percent of Pacific politicians are women, compared to 27 percent globally. The absence of women’s voices in political decision-making has been an issue 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 Institute of International Affairs on 17 October 2023.