Political Parties
Professor Sanjay Kumar, Director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), told Moneycontrol that to ensure the effectiveness of the Women’s Reservation Bill, political parties must start motivating women to take part in active party politics.
He noted that they should not restrict women to softer positions.
“Parties need to give at least 1/3rd of tickets to women candidates. To get these numbers, parties should start motivating women to take an active part in party politics.”
Click here to read the full article published by Moneycontrol on 28 September 2023.
“The problem is that when a woman is attacked, she gets attacked for her character, but never for her policymaking,” Union minister and BJP leader Smriti Irani. There were ludicrous claims of a tunnel running between her and a senior leader's home, writes journalist Nidhi Sharma in her recently published book ‘She, The Leader -- Women in Indian Politics’. She adds the rumours never bothered the minister.
Click here to read the full article published by India Today on 22 September 2023.
September 6 was a groundbreaking day for Mexico. It’s not just because that’s when governing Morena coalition announced that a woman—former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum—would be its presidential contender. After all, Mexico witnessed a woman make a bid for the presidency for the first time in 1982 and had its first candidate for a major party in 2012. But this time around though, Sheinbaum’s selection came a few days after the Frente por México opposition coalition announced its candidate would also be a woman: Senator Xóchitl Gálvez. Given that Sheinbaum and Gálvez will be the two names representing the country’s main political forces, it’s likely that after voters cast ballots in the June 2024 election that the next president of Mexico will be a woman.
Click here to read the full article published by Americas Society/Council of the Americas on 14 September 2023.
Key political parties in Ghana have pledged to create space for active girls and young women participation in politics as a strategy to promote their involvement in decision-making at all levels of national endeavour.
They believe it was the way to ensure inclusive governance which encompassed all interest groups, especially the vulnerable and marginalised in society.
The parties made the pledge at a sensitisation meeting on the involvement of girls and young women in leadership with political parties as part of the implementation of the “She Leads” project.
Click here to read the full article published by Business Ghana on 13 September 2023.
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Audrey Young’s recent series in the Herald examining post-election hypotheticals has been a balm. It’s reminded campaign-weary travellers that there will be an after, and thrown up interesting questions about the political landscape beyond recent hypotheticals involving Winston Peters. Her speculation on who might take up roles within cabinet in both election eventualities is like fantasy football for political nerds.
Click here to read the full article published by The Spinoff on 30 August 2023.
As Republicans keep jumping into the 2024 race for president, one demographic group seems notably lacking: women.
More than a dozen candidates are seeking the nomination, including several long shots who announced their bids in recent weeks, in what is the party’s most diverse presidential field ever. Yet Nikki Haley, a former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor, is the only woman in the bunch.
Click here to read the full article published by PBS News on 2 July 2023.
The Women's Network of the Union of Latin American Parties (UPLA) is a political platform that seeks to promote and strengthen the participation and positioning of women in public decision-making roles in Latin America and the Caribbean.
UPLA prepared a report for the electronic discussion on the role of political parties in the promotion of women in politics.
Click here to see the report.
Political parties are a cornerstone of democracy, providing critical pathways for citizens’ political participation and engagement. They mobilise citizens behind ideologies and policies, select candidates for representative posts, lead electoral campaigns, form legislative blocs in parliaments and, if elected, implement a program of government. Their role in defining key political institutions - policy formation, elections and parliaments - mean political parties have traditionally been important springboards for women's political participation. However, because of history, tradition and gender norms, many have found it difficult to provide women with meaningful and equal access to leadership positions or party platforms. Political parties also tend to be ‘protected’1 public spaces, allowing and enabling violence against women within their ranks to take place.
NDI has revised its long-standing Win With Women political party assessment tool, including by adding guidance on measuring levels of and dealing with the violence that women members face within their parties. The No Party to Violence: Political Party Assessment includes survey, focus group and in-depth interview tools to be used with women and men in the leadership and membership of parties in order to develop action plans to root out the violence targeting women within their own political party
Over the last year, this new approach has been piloted with a number of the larger political parties and civil society in Côte d’Ivoire, Honduras, Tanzania and Tunisia. The outcomes from this piloting represent the first assessment of women party members’ experiences of violence within political parties, thus providing important new insights on the phenomenon, which has never been systematically studied previously. It offers a unique cross-country analysis of the current understandings and perceptions of men and women party members around the types, levels, and impact of violence against women within these institutions. This important information is being used to create party- and country-specific recommendations to improve awareness, action and accountability to end violence against women within political parties, thereby strengthening women’s membership and their roles on a basis of enhanced equality. The piloting process has also created a safe space for multi-party dialogue in ways which have not exposed any party to the political risk of negative commentary from the issue being aired in public and/or used by their competitors.
Click here to see the report.
Taking the opportunity provided by its 2017 review of political party strengthening, "Reflect, Reform, Re-engage: A Blueprint for 21st Century Parties," NDI has revised its long-standing Win With Women political party assessment tool, including by adding guidance on measuring levels of and dealing with the violence that women members face within their parties. The No Party to Violence: Political Party Assessment includes survey, focus group and in-depth interview tools to be used with women and men in the leadership and membership of parties in order to develop action plans to root out the violence targeting women within their own political party.
Over the last year, this new approach has been piloted with a number of the larger political parties and civil society in Côte d’Ivoire, Honduras, Tanzania and Tunisia. The outcomes from this piloting represent the first assessment of women party members’ experiences of violence within political parties, thus providing important new insights on the phenomenon, which has never been systematically studied previously. It offers a unique cross-country analysis of the current understandings and perceptions of men and women party members around the types, levels, and impact of violence against women within these institutions. This important information is being used to create party- and country-specific recommendations to improve awareness, action and accountability to end violence against women within political parties, thereby strengthening women’s membership and their roles on a basis of enhanced equality. The piloting process has also created a safe space for multi-party dialogue in ways which have not exposed any party to the political risk of negative commentary from the issue being aired in public and/or used by their competitors.
This report provides a preliminary analysis of the topline findings from the surveys of men and women party members in the four countries. This briefing will be followed by an analysis of the accompanying focus group and in-depth interviews that were carried out as part of the No Party to Violence: Political Party Assessment pilots.
Click here to read the report.
This paper considers the emergence of women’s parties, their nature, and development in a comparative framework. Using an original dataset derived from European electoral commissions, statistical offices, national libraries, media archives, party records, and interviews of experts from the respective countries, the author documents and describes 30 such parties contesting elections at the national level in Europe since 1987. She then conducts a series of tests on this panel data to determine when and under what conditions women’s parties are likely to emerge. The author argues that women’s parties are indications of failures of the established political parties to include and represent women’s interests. Additionally, she demonstrates that women’s parties are more likely to appear where women are empowered unevenly than where they are already included or their marginalization is consistent.
Click here to read the paper.
Quotas aren't anathema to meritocracy: they increase competence levels by displacing mediocre men, write Timothy Besley, Olle Folke, Torsten Persson and iKNOW Politics Expert Johanna Rickne in their paper. The abstract is provided below.
Abstract
We develop a model where party leaders choose the competence of politicians on the ballot to trade off electoral success against their own survival. The predicted correlation between the competence of party leaders and followers is strongly supported in Swedish data. We use a novel approach, based on register data for the earnings of the whole population, to measure the competence of all politicians in seven parties, 290 municipalities, and ten elections (1982-2014). We ask how competence was affected by a "zipper" quota, requiring local parties to alternate males and females on the ballot, implemented by the Social Democratic party in 1993. Far from being at odds with meritocracy, this quota raised the competence of male politicians where it raised female representation the most. We argue that resignations of mediocre male leaders was a key driver of this effect.
Click here to read the paper.
Click here to read an LSE blog post based on the paper.
The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) has designed this Framework in order to assist political parties and gender equality advocates in their efforts to develop comprehensive policies to advance gender equality within political parties. Political parties have come to embody a central element of modern representative democracies—voluntary associations of citizens that aggregate and represent the interests of the people. Not only have they become indispensable for democratic governance, they have thus become the key gatekeepers for accessing political power and voice in governmental decision-making.