Malaysian Parliament passes anti-sexual harassment bill, but not without a dose of sexism, and other stories
#WomenLead (Issue 108): Your weekly round-up on women in politics
Hello, and welcome to Issue 108!
As many of you would have read, the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap report for 2022 was released earlier this month. As with previous years, one of the starkest findings of the index is that politics remains the space with the widest gender gap. Here’s what the report noted:
“Across the 146 countries covered by the 2022 index, the Health and Survival gender gap has closed by 95.8%, Educational Attainment by 94.4%, Economic Participation and Opportunity by 60.3% and Political Empowerment by 22%.”
How we wish things were different - or at least not this bad. What do you think? Tell us below in the poll (a new feature from this edition onward!).
And here we are tracking this gap yet another week. In this edition, we bring updates from Estonia, India and Sri Lanka, and the spotlight is on Malaysia. In case you missed last week’s edition, you can read it here.
Quick Updates
✨ WELCOME, MADAM PRESIDENT: India will have a new President from Monday, and it is Draupadi Murmu, only the second woman, and the first person from a tribal community, to get the post. Murmu’s rise to India’s top constitutional post has been admirable and inspirational. The first person from her village to finish college, Murmu started her professional life with a stint in the irrigation department, went on to become a teacher later. In 1997, she entered politics as a grassroots level leader, and ever since, she has risen up the political ladder step-by-step, first as a state level legislator, then as a state minister, and later as the governor of the Indian state of Jharkhand. She will take oath as India’s 15th President on Monday, July 25.
