Women's Leadership

Highlighted Resources

Women MPs at the 144th IPU Assembly in Madrid 2021 (Picture IPU)

Generation Equality: IPU milestones one year on

The IPU has made bold commitments and taken steps towards ensuring women and girls’ voices are heard in decision-making, and that young women are politically empowered. The IPU collaborates with strong partners such as the Generation Equality Forum (GEF), a civil society-centered global coalition...

UNDP’s Gender Equality Strategy 2022-2025

UNDP’s Gender Equality Strategy 2022-2025, aligned with its Strategic Plan, guides UNDP in its efforts to assist countries in accelerating progress on gender equality and the empowerment of women over the next four years. It aims to move beyond piecemeal efforts and to instead help countries to...

Southern Sudanese women vote during the independence referendum. Image credit: Silke Tittel, Flickr

South Sudan: Taking steps towards the inclusion of women in peace-building

In South Sudan, Africa's youngest nation, women's political participation remains low when there are calls to have more women in positions of power globally. The Republic of South Sudan gained its independence on the 9th of July 2011 but slid into political violence within barely two...

UNDP launches ambitious plan to speed up progress on gender equality and women’s empowerment

The new strategy puts gender equality at the heart of UNDP’s efforts to expand people’s choices and to realize a just and sustainable world.New York - The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has launched an ambitious new plan to help countries to accelerate progress over the next four years...

Paraguay: Political training school for women leaders earns award by the global network on electoral justice

The women’s training programme, led by the national Electoral Management Body in cooperation with International IDEA, earned an Honorable Mention in the Gender Equality category in the first edition of the Global Network on Electoral Justice Awards for meeting the main criterion of contributing to...

Kyrgyzstan hosted the second "Women's Leadership – A Breakthrough into a New Era” National Forum

On 21-22 August, women leaders, politicians and civil servants from all provinces of Kyrgyzstan gathered at the second National Forum Women's Leadership – A Breakthrough into a New Era. The forum served as a platform for dialogue about the importance of women's contribution to the development of...

Bolstering women’s political power: lessons from the EU’s Gender Action Plan II

In December 2020, the European Commission released its third Gender Action Plan (GAP III), which lays out how the European Union should promote gender equality in its external relations over the following five years. Just like its predecessor, the new plan highlights women’s equal political voice...

Overrepresentation of men in UN climate process persists

New reports published ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference COP26 in Glasgow in November show that decision-making and technical panels under UN Climate Change (known as “constituted bodies”) are increasingly integrating a gender perspective into their work, but that male...

Effective, decisive, and inclusive: Women’s leadership in COVID-19 response and recovery

This working paper is part of UN Women’s research efforts to highlight the importance of women’s leadership and participation in decision-making during the pandemic and beyond. The working paper tackles the question of how women leaders at the national and subnational levels of government managed...

2021 Report by the OSCE PA Special Representative on Gender Issues highlights surge in violence against women journalists and politicians

Special Representative on Gender Issues Hedy Fry (Canada) issued the 2021 Report today with a thematic focus on “Violence against women journalists and politicians: a growing crisis,” shedding light on intensifying and widespread offline and online violence against women in two public...

Point break: using machine learning to uncover a critical mass in women's representation

Decades of research has debated whether women first need to reach a “critical mass” in the legislature before they can effectively influence legislative outcomes. This study contributes to the debate using supervised tree-based machine learning to study the relationship between increasing variation...

Can women dynasty politicians disrupt social norms of political leadership? A proposed typology of normative change

AbstractSocial norms that legitimise men as political leaders, and undervalue women’s leadership, are a tenacious barrier to women’s representation globally. This article explores the circumstances under which women dynasty politicians, whose legacy connections have provided them with an initial...