From Brazil to India, Turkey to US, how misogyny serves as a tool for authoritarian regimes, and other stories
#WomenLead (Issue 55): Your weekly round-up on women in politics
Hello, and welcome to Issue 55!
A tweet caught our attention last week, and we thought we’d share it with you. Dr. Kelebogile Zvobgo suggests that the word “underrepresented” be replaced by “historically excluded”. The argument is that language matters: our words should actively recognize discrimination instead of underplaying it by being neutral. In this case, underrepresentation is a consequence of historical exclusion, and our words should reflect that.
We read another one a few days ago, where Twitter user Marie Beecham suggested replacing the term “slaves” with “enslaved people”. Useful suggestion, again 💯
At #WomenLead, and also in all our other work, we make a deliberate attempt to choose words judiciously (of course, we could do much better). For example, wherever possible, instead of calling politics “a man’s world”, we write “a world predominantly occupied by men”. And we will be more mindful when we use “underrepresented” next!
If you ever come across a term in this newsletter that you feel could have been phrased better, please don’t hesitate to write in. We are always looking to unlearn, relearn and improve!
On to this week’s edition, we bring you updates from Sri Lanka and the USA. And for the spotlight, we bring you findings of a recent research paper where author Nitasha Kaul shows how misogyny and authoritarian regimes go hand-in-hand. In case you missed last week’s edition, you can read it here.
At #WomenLead, we strongly believe that talking about the gender gap in our politics is critical. If you share that vision, and would like to help make this initiative sustainable, please consider purchasing a paid subscription. Your payments will help us strengthen our work, and of course, you will also get full access to all web archives of this newsletter. Pay if you can (it costs less than 5 USD a month!).
Quick Updates
🧗♀️REFORM PUSH: In Sri Lanka, a caucus of women MPs has decided to approach the Parliamentary panel on election law reforms to make several important proposals to increase women’s political representation. One of the proposed rules is to ensure 30-70 percent representation for women at the Parliamentary and provincial levels, and to mandate political parties to have women occupy 50 percent of their national candidate lists.
We hope the Parliamentary panel considers the proposal: such rules could go a long way in boosting parity.Sri Lanka ranks one of the lowest in the world on women’s representation at the highest levels of governance. Just 5.4 percent of its parliamentarians are women, and the 27-member Cabinet, too, has only one woman member, according to latest data from Inter-Parliamentary Union.