women's rights

The gaping underrepresentation of women of color on the political stage deeply undermines the American ideal of democratic representation.

That’s a conclusion reached by the Center for American Progress and detailed in an article titled, “Why We Need a Political Leadership Pipeline for Women of Color.”

The article, part of the Center’s Women in Leadership project, was unveiled during a panel event featuring prominent women of color scholars, organizers, and professionals.

Camellia Lubis, a 28-year-old dangdut singer popularly known as Camel Petir (Thunder), is one of 2,467 women legislative candidates vying for a seat in the House of Representatives.

The legislative candidate from the Indonesian Justice and Unity Party (PKPI), who will be standing for the second Jakarta electoral district, says she has been greatly underestimated due to her background as a singer with no political experience.

California boasts two female senators.

We are the only state to advance women's reproductive rights in the last few years.

The state is rapidly moving forward on the Affordable Health Care Act and there has been paid family leave in California since 2002, though it is underused.

But don't be misled. Even here we have a political gender gap that is actually widening, not closing.

Women make up just 9 per cent of Hungarian members of parliament. In this regard Hungary ranks 122nd out of 140 countries. Upcoming parliamentary elections have sparked public discussion of the role of women in politics, family life, and in the country as a whole.

Mrs Freda Prempeh, Member of Parliament (MP) for Tano North, at the weekend emphasised that a “Legislative Quota Seat” system is urgently required in Ghana’s electoral laws to consolidate the country’s fledging democracy.

“Legislative Quota Seat “, she explained, is a system that allocates specific percentage of parliamentary seats to women.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview in Sunyani, Mrs Prempeh regretted that women participation in politics continued to dwindle though they represented about 52 percent of the national population.

When they did venture beyond their four walls, they wafted through crowded markets covered from head to toe in the all-encompassing burqa. While most women in conservative Afghanistan may still wear the burqa, today's Afghan woman has choices she didn't have during the Taliban rule that lasted from the mid-1990s to 2001 — like running for parliament.

In the last elections in 2010, 69 women won seats in Afghanistan's 249-seat parliament. The next parliamentary vote will be held in 2015, but first are the April 5 presidential and provincial council elections.

One of the big headlines for the 2012 elections was the historic number of women elected to state and national offices. New Hampshire became the first state to elect an all women congressional delegation and a woman governor. The U.S.

As the May 23 local and European elections draw nearer, the National Woman's Council of Ireland (NWCI) has formulated six key questions to tease out the ways in which potential candidates are committed to promoting gender equality in political arenas and across all aspects of Irish life.

Louise Glennon of NWCI said that “for far too long Ireland has been known for the lack of gender equality in its political decision making...there is no time for lengthy solutions. We need change now.”

“Men are from Mars and women are from Venus” may have been the title of a best-selling book, but it also emphasizes how women have always been depicted differently to men. It also happens in politics. Physical and psychological differences aside, women are indeed a special group in politics, women’s rights activists say.

We invite you to read the full article pulished March 28, 2014