Saudi Arabia first women councillors elected - academic resources

This week the first women councillors were elected in local elections in Saudi Arabia

Here are some useful resources for investigating this further

This is the official ministry site from Saudi Arabia (Arabic language ) which has details of local elections and electoral procedures.

National Geographic has interviews with candidates and women voters

Jadaliyya.com has discussion from women members of the Baladi campaign which supports womens political rights. This should be the home page of the movement (Arabic so unable to verify)

Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain has some reports from women in the region as well as commentary

Guardian newspaper coverage

Useful programme from NPR which considers levels of turnout


IKnow politics the International Network of women in Politics has news, comment and articles on women in politics in the region


For background on womens human rights in Saudi Arabia and how they compare to other nations see the UNDP gender inequality index on the Human development reports website. See the entry for Saudi Arabia

Human Rights Watch 2015 report on Saudi Arabia

IPU has data on womens representations in parliaments worldwide

This masters thesis from University of Washington 2014 has a useful bibliographic on womens rights

This article reviews the status of women in Saudi Arabia published in the American Journal of education has been written by Ministry of education officials

Commentary from think tanks and academic groups

Al Monitor

Middle East Policy Council

Haiti elections: are women still represented ?

Elections are due to take place in Haiti on 9th August.
One concern has been the lack of female involvement.
The Concluding observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. Haiti Forty-third session 19 January-6 February 2009 noted a low participation and called for quotas.
the amendment to the 2012 constitution introduced a  minimum 30% representation . The quotas project has some details on the initiative and the Ace project website enables you to download the full text of the current constitution in French. Article 17.1 covers representation of women.
In 2014 the Human Development reports recorded less than 4% of seats in parliament as held by women and also continuing high levels of gender inequality.
As a result UNDP has funded projects seeking to encourage female political participation. International Idea has also been involved in similar projects.

Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) has developed the country’s first national gender and elections strategy with support from the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES). see some examples of promotional materials relating to women on its website.
however despite this the Haiti election blog has raised concerns about continuing under representation.
L’ Observatoire Citoyen de l Action des Pouvoirs Publics (OCAPH) has expressed general concerns about the conduct of the elections to the press. Its website also has details of voter education campaigns.
Further discussion on women's rights and political participation can be found on the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti
For more background information on human rights and democracy in Haiti se our previous blog posting on the 2015 elections.

EU elections will they be good for women?

According to the Guardian newspaper the first Feminist Party MEP is likely to win a seat in the European Parliament this week.
The European Parliament website has official data on the distribution of male and female MEPs since 1979
it also breaks this down by country. in 2009 a Eurobarometer survey on women and Parliamentary elections
examined women‟s attitudes and behaviour towards elections in general and their opinions
about the European elections and activities of the European Parliament in particular.found that half of European women would like 50% or more of the European Parliament members
to be women
The Centre for Women and Democracy has a briefing on women in the 2014 elections which predicts gains.
Its website also has a blog and other factsheets on the political representation of women.
The findings are echoed by the Hansard Society.

the European Women’s Lobby, the largest umbrella organisation of women’s associations in the EU has set up an online manifesto for Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to pledge to act for gender equality. Its website also has a gender audit of the manifestos of the main parties.see historic materials relating to earlier elections on their 50/50

Women and the Indian elections

there has been various discussion of the role of women in the Indian elections.

India Ink blog from the New York Times states that most parties ignore women voters.

In the past women voters had a lower turnout. Statistics on this can be obtained from the Indian Election commission which compare rates over time by gender.
in 2007 Women Politicians, Gender Bias, and Policy-making in Rural India (published as a UNICEF state of the World's Children background paper)   found significant under representation. which was
in 2012 research  from Warwick University and the IMF found that Using state-level variation in the timing of political reforms an increase in female representation in local government induced a large and 
significant rise in documented crimes against women in India

However in an extract from a book. new book, 'An Undocumented Wonder: The Great Indian Election', former chief election commissioner SY Quraishi describes how the Indian Election Commission has been targetting women.

In 2014. 70 independent civil-society activists have launched the Womanifesto 2014 to get the major parties to address issues relating to women's rights.

A pdf version with list of signatories can be viewed on the AVAAZ website.

For further details of women's rights and political participation in India try these websites.

Council on Foreign Relations analysis from 2013.
Search the Iknow politics site for references. Such as this study on the challenges women in India face.
IPU has data on womens's political participation worldwide so you can cross compare with other nations.

UN Women in India has details on projects designed to increase women's political leadership. In 2013 Norad reviewed the effectiveness of some of these and suggested plans for future development.

Saudi Arabia women win right to vote

This week it was announced that in Saudi Arabia women will soon be able to vote.

The bbc discusses some reaction from Egyptian citizens via social media sites
Global voices is a good place for finding up to date comment (In English)
Al Arabiya also has well regarded news in English for instance see this article
You can find further articles from its journalists on the Arab Insight site. Arab Insight is a project of the World Security Institute, a non-profit organization committed to independent research and journalism on global affairs.

For example this article Stuck at a Red Light
ASMAA AL-MOHAMEDJournalist and Women’s Rights Activist; Online Editor for Al Arabiya; Saudi Arabia

Other organisations who regularly comment on womens political and civil rights in the region include:
Centre for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabi
Amnesty International and Human Rights watch
General databases on womens political participation worldwide include:
Women In politics Bibliography - search for references to articles. Maintained by the IPU
They also maintain statistics on women in Parliaments Worldwide. Compare data by country

Elections and women recommended starting points for research

One of the recent issues raised by the elections in Bahrain was the political participation of women
Ypu can consider how bahrain compares with other nations by looking at the Gender gap report which is prepared by the World Economic Forum The Report examines four critical areas of inequality between men and women:
1. Economic participation and opportunity – outcomes on salaries, participation levels and access to high-skilled employment
2. Educational attainment – outcomes on access to basic and higher level education
3. Political empowerment – outcomes on representation in decision-making structures
4. Health and survival – outcomes on life expectancy and sex ratio

The IPU women in parliaments website has statistical data on gender breakdowns

Other good starting points for information on women and political participation include:
The women in Politics bibliographic database which is compiled by the Interparliamentary union (IPU) This enables you to search for references to journal articles and papers about all aspects of women and politics worldwide. unfortunately the full text is not on line.
The UN Womenwatch gateway draws together the latest statistics, reports and papers from Un agencies on all aspects of female political, social and economic life.
International IDEA is an organisation which works more specifically for women in politics. Its website has publications, details about projects and links to support networks. This includes worldwide statistics on voter turnout by gender and a global database of materials about electoral quotas for women
Iknow Politics - an international Knowledge network of women in Politics which has a wealth of resources including discussion of recent elections and interviews with women.

Bahrain elections- are human rights a concern?

Parliamentary elections are due to take place in Bahrain on 23rd October.
Recently Human Rights watch raised concerns about their conduct. Other monitors hve focussed on the lack of women in politics.
Here are some more useful starting points for getting more information.
There is an official Bahrain government election site (Arab only)
Government body Supreme Council for Women has some basic facts in English about the role of women in decision making in Bahrain.

The ACE Project has facts about the electoral system , electoral laws and recent results.
IKnow International Network for Women in Politics has issued appeals for more women to be involved. Read their news and reports Likewise the Womens Learning Partnership also has discussion of sex discrimination in Bahrain politics.

The Arab Reform Bulletin from the Carnegie Endowment has articles on politics, human rights, democracy and women which you may find useful.

The Project on Middle East Democracy also discusses the state of politics.

The Bahrain Human rights monitor is a monthly newsletter on all aspects of human rights. Its website has some recent news on the elections.

Other sources of information on Human rights are Freedom House
and the Bahrain Human Rights watch Society which is hoping to create a new site to cover events. (to date this had not appeared).