Women In Politics

In the WomenRepresentation’s most recent release report on women’s representation in Latin America, they explained how many Latin American countries are nearing gender equality. Of the five countries in the world to achieve gender parity, 3 of them are in Latin America: Cuba, Nicaragua, Mexico. But why is that? The article states, “There is great diversity in performance on women’s representation in Latin America, which hints that gender quotas, though helpful, may not be the only solution needed to achieve gender parity. While ‘mixed’ systems usually refer to systems where one form of PR is mixed with a plurality vote in single-member districts, countries like Brazil deviate from this and combine PR for lower house elections with multi-member districts for upper house elections.” It appears that while there is much success in women in government in Latin America, it is largely due to different legislature and political systems within each country.

In countries like China, there has been little research on gender parity. In a recent article regarding China limiting women representation in the political system, it states, “according to UN data from 2021, Chinas population comprises approximately 703.8 million females and 740.4 males. Although they represent 48.7 precent of the population, women occupy less than 8 percent if senior leadership positions.” Less than 8 percent. How come? Is it just largely due to cultural beliefs, or different political systems? Whatever the case, it can be conclude that in contrast to women gaining political power in Latin America, women’s representation in China is aggressively low.

In South Korea, gender discrimination has yet to be recognized by candidate of the People Power Party, Yoon Suk-yeol, who “made abolishing the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family a central pledge of his campaign, saying that there is no systematic gender discrimination in South Korea,” according to an article released by Human Rights Watch. He firmly believes that women are not facing any gender discrimination in society or politics. However, “The South Korean government, as the chair of the Asia-Pacific Group of the UN Commission on the Status of Women and a member of the UN Human Rights Council, is currently playing a leading role in gender equality and women’s rights, which will have a detrimental impact not only on South Korea, but also on the Asia-Pacific region and the international community.” If Yoon was to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, the impact it would have globally would put a worldwide halt to feminist movements on a global scale, partly because of South Koreans huge role in the Status of Women.

In the U.S., California is the most progressive state in terms of propelling and advancing women’s presence in politics. In 2018, they passed a law requiring all corporate boards to have at least one woman, placing fines as a consequence, and since, the number of women on boards have doubled. Governor Newsom’s wife founded a nonprofit for gender equity called California Partners Project. Other states, like Maryland and New York, required companies to disclose board diversity statistics, but none have enacted mandatory quotas. To conclude, while it is important to acknowledge that there are countries across the globe making a really big impact in encouraging women’s presence in political careers, there are also those who remain neglectful to the fact that there should be just as many women in politics as men.