A free press, crucial to any democracy, plays a significant role in shaping public attitudes.  It can reinforce voter stereotypes about certain types of candidates, or it can help dispel the kinds of opinions that for many years in many places have hampered efforts by women to become full partners in the political process.

Patrick Merloe, NDI director of electoral programs, testified July 9 before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific. Representative Steve Chabot, chairman of the subcommittee, presided over the hearing, “Cambodia’s Looming Political and Social Crisis.”

Other witnesses included John Sifton, director of Asia Advocacy for Human Rights Watch; Evi Schueller, legal consultant for the Cambodian League for the Promotion of Defense of Human Rights; and Daniel Mitchell, chief executive officer and managing director for SRP International Group.

Hodan Ahmed and her family were forced to flee Somalia in 1991. The civil war that drove them from their home would go on for two decades. Ahmed live abroad in India and then in Kenya, where she got her education and began her career, but her dream was to return to Somalia to give her children the chance to grow up where she could not.

In one episode of the Nigerian radio drama Dukan Karshe, a young man and woman decide to run for their local council to correct injustices, including government funds being diverted from schools and hospitals to line the pockets of local politicians. “It is time for us as women to take part fully in politics,” the woman says. “We are the mothers. We know what is good for our community.”