Gender, Women and Democracy

Ambassador Russell: We Must Work Together to Achieve Lasting Gender Equality

“Increasing women’s meaningful participation in political and public life is about changing cultural norms about women and changing the culture of politics,” Catherine Russell, U.S. ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues, said in remarks delivered at NDI in Washington last week.

A revision to Nicaragua’s law on municipal elections last year required political parties to put up equal numbers of women and men as candidates for mayor and city council. It also increased the number of city council seats in each municipality. The result has been more women than ever winning races for mayor and city council.

One of them was Antonia Rizo, a city councilor in San Sebastian de Yal. “When I arrived at my position, I was afraid to speak,” she said, because of lack of familiarity with the city’s legal system.

And she was not alone.

Women’s Discussion Club of Kyrgyzstan Uses Albright Award to Bring Women Together Across Party Lines

Even though Kyrgyzstan has had a female president and women hold 23 percent of the seats in its 120-member parliament, women are still struggling to carve out leadership roles in the legislature and political parties.

New Training Resources Address Challenges Women Face in Politics

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Building on its work over 30 years to give women an equal voice in politics, NDI is now offering in one place comprehensive women’s program training materials and other resources organized by topic and available for download at www.ndi.org.

Democracy and the Challenge of Change

"Success without democracy is improbable, democracy without women is impossible."

~Madeleine K. Albright

Training Modules to Increase Women's Political Participation

These new training materials take best practices and approaches from NDI's work around the world and make them into a set of tools to increase the quality of training programs for women as voters, advocates, elections officials, political party members, candidates and office holders. The training materials build on the 2011 guide, Democracy and the Challenge of Change: A Guide to Increasing Women's Political Participation, a resource for democracy practitioners to help them develop and carry out effective programs to bring more women in government and politics.

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The training materials cover the following topics:

Start here»

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‘6x60’ Initiative Works to Enhance Women’s Political Leadership in Mexico

This year marks Mexico’s 60th anniversary of women’s suffrage, and though the country has made progress in passing reforms to increase women’s political participation, women are still not well-represented in decision-making bodies.

Read more about Women Make Better Senators

Journalists Seek to Avoid Gender Stereotypes in Burkina Faso

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.

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.