Asia and the Pacific

The heady days when Sydney women looked up to a female prime minister, female premier, governor and governor-general are long gone.

There is just one female cabinet minister in Canberra. And now the NSW parliament is likely to emerge from the next election with its worst result for women’s representation in the upper house in decades.

NSW Labor has ignored Labor’s rule that 40 per cent of candidates pre-selected for winnable seats must be women. The Nationals and Liberals' merit-based promotion of female candidates has similarly failed.

A lawmaker in the Japan Restoration Party was jeered during a meeting at parliament and told by a male lawmaker she “should give birth to a baby.”

urmese women’s rights activists and government officials aim to finish drafting a bill by the end of the year to prevent violence against women, activists say.

“Once enacted, it would be the first law to ensure the protection of women from all forms of violence, including physical, mental, sexual and verbal violence,” May Sabe Phyu, a peace activist and coordinator of the Gender Equality Network (GEN), a large network of civil society organizations, told The Irrawaddy on Friday.