Political Parties
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 20th Chinese Communist Party National Congress, held in October 2022, caught the world’s attention—not least because there wasn’t a single woman among the politburo’s 24 members, breaking a tradition of two decades. While the number of women in key political roles globally is steadily improving, female representation in the CCP has worsened over time.
Patriarchal norms undoubtedly contribute to Chinese women’s underrepresentation in political leadership, but this is not a situation that Chinese women alone face. In many societies, women pursuing a career in politics are challenging their traditional gender roles.
Click here to read the full article published by The Australian Strategic Policy Institute on 26 May 2023.
THE Zimbabwe Gender Commission has revealed that women’s participation in all political parties is regressing with no gender equality in practice. This is despite an elaborate legislative and policy framework in Zimbabwe pushing for their participation.
Addressing delegates during a High-Level lnter-Generational dialogue on women’s political participation on Monday, the commission’s chairperson Margret Mukahanana-Sangarwe said: “Statistics from the 2018 harmonized elections reveal regressing low women representation with 31.5% in the National Assembly (85 women, 60 of them coming in through the quota, making those directly elected, effectively only 11.9%) and a mere 13.3% in Local government (267 women against 1689 male councillors).
Click here to read the full article published by New Zimbabwe on 17 May 2023.
The monetisation of politics in Africa is impeding the effective participation of women in political and electoral processes, Ayisha Osori, a democracy and governance expert, has said.
Madam Osori, who is the Director of Open Society Foundations, a civil society organisation, observed that many women on the continent did not have the ability to raise the needed capital to fund their political activities.
Speaking to journalists at the opening of a conference on Increasing Women’s Political Presence in West Africa at the University of Ghana (UG), Legon on Tuesday, she said bankrollers of political parties and activists were mainly men and thus, made it difficult for women to overcome the monetary barriers.
Click here to read the full article published by News Ghana on 16 May 2023.
(CNN) — Lori Chavez-DeRemer sat in the gallery of the House nearly two decades ago with her mom and her twin daughters – tourists peering down at lawmakers on the floor of the chamber.
“I’d really love to be here someday,” the Oregon Republican recalled telling her mother, who encouraged her to think about a run. She’d recently been elected to her city council, but she had her doubts. “I said, ‘Everybody on the floor there probably has a law degree. I’m a stay-at-home mom.’”
But Chavez-DeRemer flipped a Democratic seat in November, helping Republicans win a narrow House majority. She is now among a record 42 Republican women in Congress and one of the first two Latino members of Congress from Oregon.
The trail she has blazed is emblematic of the progress that the Republican Party has made in electing women over the past decade – hard-fought milestones reached only after outside groups began playing a larger role in primaries.
Click here to read the full article published by CNN on 14 January 2023.
Preventing Violence Against Women in Politics – Benchmarks for Political Parties (2022) is a joint paper by democracy organisations working with political parties, which presents interventions for political parties on how to prevent and address any form of violence against women in politics (VAWIP) in order to strengthen women’s participation and representation in politics and political decision-making.
The paper is produced by Demo Finland, International IDEA, The Oslo Center and The National Democratic Institute (NDI) as part of the Political Party Peer Network (PPPeer).
Click here to access the report.
Are women in Congress really more likely than their male counterparts to work together and get things done, regardless of party lines? Or are they first and foremost partisan creatures? This Political Parity report was authored by researchers Jennifer Lawless, professor of government at American University, where she is also the Director of the Women & Politics Institute, and Sean Theriault, professor of government and university distinguished teaching professor at the University of Texas. This comprehensive study of gender and cooperation on Capitol Hill is a first cut at assessing the conventional wisdom that women of both parties are more likely than their male co-partisans to be “problem solvers” – people who create a climate for passing legislation rather than serving partisan goals. Click here to read the full report and here to watch a webinar in which the authors discuss their findings.
The objective of this publication is to critically assess progress and efforts in advancing women’s political participation in the OSCE region. This compendium brings together existing knowledge and good practice while considering what needs to be done to promote faster progress towards gender parity in politics, and recognizing the importance of embedding those practices in the hands of the authorities of participating States.Aimed at gender experts, human rights activists, development workers, diplomats and politicians, as well as academics, the compendium uses data from published sources to identify recent trends in women’s political participation. The publication explores different aspects of participation of women by focusing specifically on political parties, elections, local politics and parliaments. Drawing on presentations from a meeting of international experts in Warsaw in May 2015, it looks at the reasons behind varying levels of representation and identifies gaps in information and understanding. Click here to read it.
This report, published in 2015 by the International Institute for Electoral Assistance and Democracy presents findings from a study on political party financing and equal participation of women in Kenyan electoral politics. It was conducted with the objective to assess the formal and informal barriers that women face in relation to exercising their political rights. The study specifically looks into the role and extent to which access to financial resources determines the success of women running for elective positions in Kenya. It discusses the main findings on financial barriers for women politicians in Kenya, and makes recommendations to facilitate reforms in this area.
This e-book with the title “The Success and the Barriers to Women’s Representation in Southeast Asia: Between State Policies, Political Parties and Women’s Movement” is a result of analysis of four regional researches conducted in a USAID Program called IKAT US Component 1 (“Building Sustainable Partnerships to Promote Women’s Political Representation in SEA”). The goal of the program is to strengthen women’s political rights and democracy, by advocating the promotion of better women’s political representation through regional partnership initiatives. To achieve this goal, the program has been working toward the following objectives: (1) to increase the capacity to conduct and collaborate on activities for the promotion of democracy in Southeast Asia; (2) to advocate policy frameworks towards the progress of achieving a minimum target of 30 percent women’s political representation in Southeast Asia.
This e-publication highlights the significance of women’s representation in the parliament, state’s political system and women’s representation, patriarchal system and barriers to women political participation, women’s movement for political affirmation and challenges to women’s representation.