✨🎈Stepping into the biggest election year in history with hope
A special reading list to get your year started on an inspiring note
Dear All,
A very happy new year to you all! 🎊
We hope you had a restful end to 2023, and are beginning 2024 on a healthy and cheerful note.
2024 is set to be a MEGA year for election and politics junkies. More than seventy countries (!) are set to elect their next leaders (including seven among the ten most populated countries), according to a count by The Economist, which is calling 2024 the biggest election year in history.
At #WomenLead our eyes will be glued to the participation of women across them all. While 2023 had its moments, it wasn’t the best year when it comes to women’s representation. We hope 2024 will be different – and better. 🤞🏽🤞🏽
In the spirit of the holiday season, we took a few days off, and so we will send you all the important updates from December along with the updates from January in our (bumper) monthly wrap at the end of this month. But we do have a special reading list for you to get your 2024 started on an inspiring note.
Last year, we launched a new series of interviews with the aim to understand the work being done by different initiatives working to close the gender gaps in politics in different parts of the world. (If you have recommendations on whom we should be interviewing next, we are only an email away!)
In the first set of interviews, we got the opportunity to go #BTS to learn about a programme designed to speak politics to young girls, what it takes to prepare a gender scorecard for different states in the USA, and the importance of taking a norms approach to understand women’s experience in politics.
Here are the links to all of them. We hope these serve as an inspiring and hopeful start to 2024!
How a new initiative aims to introduce young girls to the world of politics in India
Earlier this year, Kuviraa, an initiative that works to improve political awareness among young girls, launched the first edition of the Kuviraa Ambassadors Program, a short program aimed at introducing young girls to the landscape of Indian politics and policy-making through an intersectional lens. It ran virtually for ten days with the aim of introduc…
A decade of using data to advocate for parity in USA’s politics: Lessons from RepresentWomen’s experience
In August, RepresentWomen, a USA-based organisation working on improving women’s political representation, released the tenth edition of its flagship annual publication, the Gender Parity Index (GPI). The index assesses and tracks women’s representation in elected office at the national, state, and local levels of government in the USA.
How gender norms shape women’s engagement and experiences in political institutions and decision-making processes
ALIGN (short for Advancing Learning and Innovation on Gender Norms) is a digital platform that conducts research that can improve our understanding of discriminatory gender norms. A key thematic focus of their work includes understanding the role of gender norms in shaping political representation, voice and mobilisation.
Wishing you the best for the year ahead!
Warmly,
Akshi