women's role in society

In March 2013, Sophia Abdi Noor was the only woman to stand for parliament in northern Kenya, a marginalised region where Islam has a lot of sway.

She spoke about the obstacles she has faced as a female politician at the launch of a report about women’s participation in the March 2013 elections. Female candidates in Kenya face many barriers, including violence, cultural and social stereotypes, lack of money and lack of political connections.

The election of the first Baluchi woman last week as the mayor of Kalat, a city in the south of Iran, was an unprecedented event in one of the most underprivileged and conservative provinces in Iran. It is a significant step which local experts believe that can inspire Baluchi women to work for more rights and break boundaries that have been created by both the state and society.

New laws designed to increase the number of elected women in Kenyan politics had no effect on the 2013 elections because those concerned failed to implement them, the Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) said.

“We have good laws that we are not using,” said Mariam Kamunyu, the lead author of ‘Key Gains and Challenges: A Gender Audit of Kenya’s 2013 Election Process’, a report on how women fared in the polls,

While China’s air defense zone issues was topmost on everyone’s mind during United States Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Japan this week, he also had other agenda on his plate. Together with U.S. ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy and U.S. Ambassador for Global Women’s Issues Cathy Russell, he met with those who are helping advance women’s roles in the corporate world and commended Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on his policies to help make that a cornerstone of the Japanese economy.

Sen. Kirstin Gillibrand explained Wednesday how politics would be different with more women in office.

“If the Congress today — there are only 20 women out of the 100 in the U.S. Senate. … Obviously that’s not representative of America,” Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said at POLITICO's Women Rule Summit. “If it was 51 percent in the Congress, we wouldn’t be wasting time talking about access to contraception, we’d be talking about the economy.”

On the eve of elections in Delhi, women's rights activists called on political parties on Tuesday to commit to a "Womanifesto" - a gender-sensitive agenda - to combat rising crimes against women in the Indian capital.

The gang rape and murder of a physiotherapy trainee in New Delhi last December jolted many usually apathetic urban Indians into joining street protests and sparked national discussion about how prevalent violence against women is in largely patriarchal Indian society.

It is time that the percentage of Irish women attaining high levels of education is reflected in decision making roles in politics and business, the head of the EU Commission representation in Ireland told an event held in Dublin tonight.

A group of women MPs from South Sudan’s parliament were warned by a delegation of women from Eastern Equatoria that legislators that did not make the effort to visit their constituencies would face the consequences at the next election.At the public meeting in Torit the national lawmakers were quizzed about the lack of coordination between the national level MPs and their counterparts at state-level. As well as a national parliament, each of South Sudan’s 10 states has its own legislature.

Afghan authorities should ensure a large number of women take part in next year’s make-or-break elections to prevent female voters being murdered and to safeguard transparency, Afghan human rights activist Sima Samar said on Tuesday.

“If one or two women go to a polling station, then it’s easy for the opposition to the government to identify the women and kill them, but if it’s thousands of women they cannot go behind every door and kill the people,” she said.