Women Around the World

Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post covers May 25 to May 31. 

Annual reports on the health of democracy this year reaffirmed an ongoing trend of decline, which has occurred alongside a less heralded but related stalling of women’s political participation. Given that women make up half of the world’s population, a greater focus on promoting women’s political empowerment can help rescue the world’s ailing democracies. While the proportion of women in parliament has quadrupled over the past fifty years, women only represent 26.9 percent of the world’s parliamentarians, far below their proportion in the population and well below the critical mass deemed necessary to influence legislative outcomes. Even fewer women are in leadership positions in both legislatures and national executive office. Measures that make democratic systems more democratic can arrest regression and make the systems more inclusive of women and other underrepresented citizens.  For many, the linkage between democracy and women’s rights and representation appears obvious. A government “by the people, for the people” naturally should include women’s full representation, just as the concept of equal rights for all includes women’s rights. Ample research has documented the societal benefits, including peace, stability, and increased GDP, that come with increasing equality. However, these basic concepts have come under assault in today’s culture war environment where advocacy for gender equality is deemed “gender ideology.” A 2023 study [PDF] by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security added to the existing body of research by documenting that women’s representation is strongly correlated with the health of democracy [PDF], as measured by the indicators of free elections, free association, and checks on government power. The study’s authors argue that investments in women should therefore be viewed as investments in strong democratic systems.  Democracy promotion programs aimed at women have traditionally focused primarily on support for gender quotas in parliaments and legislatures, and training and supporting women candidates for office. Aiding Empowerment: Democracy Promotion and Gender Equality in Politics, a new book by Saskia Brechenmacher and Katherine Mann, examines the track record of gender equality programs and argues for a much broader approach to women’s empowerment, essentially by making democracies more democratic. These prescriptions dovetail with other democracy promotion proposals put forward by groups like the Partners in Democracy project led by Harvard’s Danielle Allen, the FairVote organization cofounded by Rob Ritchie and his wife, Cynthia Terrell, who is also CEO of RepresentWomen. The premise is that both democracy and women would benefit from reforms that make voting systems more representative, such as ranked choice voting, which has begun to be adopted in several U.S. states and localities. Proportional representation or mixed electoral systems consistently result in much higher levels of women’s representation compared to single-member winner-take-all voting schemes (28.7 percent versus 11.7 percent in the past year’s elections).  Other reforms to make democracies more democratic include measures to make political parties more democratic. The male gatekeepers who dominate the world’s political parties are often a key obstacle to women achieving real influence in the critical decisions of what legislation is brought forward and its content, not to mention candidate selection, party support for candidacies, and positions on party lists. Also, the legislatures themselves are often run in undemocratic ways, and parliamentary reform is needed to permit more voices to be heard. Such measures could decrease the perception that politics is a rigged game. Disillusion with democracy has been on the rise, as reflected in polls that show younger generations’ lower appreciation for this form of government and greater willingness to embrace authoritarianism.  Democratic reforms may be necessary but insufficient to level the playing field for women in politics. Brechenmacher and Mann recognize that additional measures are likely needed to address hurdles particular to women politicians, which include a disproportionate level of gendered violence, the burden of family care responsibilities that still fall heavily on women, the pay gap and lack of fundraising networks or personal funds, and sticky social norms that continue to regard certain jobs, behaviors, and roles as traditionally male. The good news is that, according to a Pew Research Center survey, a majority of Americans believe there should be more women in politics and in leadership roles. The bad news is the majority is smaller than the last time the question was asked in 2018. A majority think women must do more to prove themselves, while large pluralities say gender discrimination and other hurdles play a role. Many believe equality will be reached eventually without policy interventions, but the slow increase and the recent alarming data on stalling progress suggest otherwise.  Around the world, signs of the decline in both democracy and women’s rights abound. The Varieties of Democracy, or V-Dem project, the most in-depth analysis of global trends, reported that the decline in democracy continued in 2023 for the fifteenth year. Approximately 71 percent of the world’s population lives under autocratic rule (either closed autocracies or electoral autocracies). Simultaneously, the trajectory for women’s representation shows clear signs of stalling. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the number of women winning seats in parliament fell or stayed the same in thirty-four countries that held elections in 2023. The rate of women’s gains in 2023 was flat compared to 2022 rate and lower than in 2020 and 2021.  Given how pronounced these twin trends are, passivity could result in further democratic erosion and increased autocracy. Moreover, the outlook for 2024 is not promising. Of sixty national-level elections occurring this year, thirty-one are occurring in conditions of declining democracy and only three in conditions of improving democracy, by V-Dem’s count.   The trend of decline for both democracy and women’s representation and rights is a global one, with regional variations. Eastern Europe shows the greatest degradation in V-Dem’s assessment, with the consolidation of autocracy in Belarus and Russia and continued democratic regression projected in Croatia, Hungary, Romania, and Serbia. Similarly, South and Central Asia’s decline is likely to continue, heavily weighted by the expected victory of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, who would consolidate his brand of Hindu nationalism in a government that V-Dem labels as increasingly autocratic. Women’s rights and representation score low in these countries, with outright regression in many. India’s parliament passed a bill last year that would reserve one-third of the seats in India’s lower house for women, but it not due to take effect until 2029. In Africa, coups and military takeovers marked a continued record of democratic decline, and South Africa’s elections may still be dominated by the discredited long-ruling African National Congress.  In Latin America, fewer citizens are seeing democracy as the preferred form of government, according to Latinobarometro, down to 48 percent in 2023 compared to 60 percent the year before. Women, who remain underrepresented in most Latin American countries, are the most dissatisfied, at 70 percent. Latin America’s strong gains in women’s representation after years of activism are also under attack by populist authoritarians who seek to roll back women’s rights, as recently elected Argentinian president Javier Milei has pledged to do. The bright spot of the region was Brazil, which reversed its democratic decline when President Lula da Silva took over from Jair Bolsonaro, who had restricted rights and attempted to stay in office after he lost elections in 2022.  In the Middle East, the region deemed the most autocratic in the world as well as the most unfavorable to women, the lone democratizing country continues to degrade. After the Arab Spring, Tunisia adopted a new constitution that enshrined gender equality, a “zebra” electoral system where lists alternate men and women candidates, and government-provided campaign financing. The result was a high-water mark of 31 percent women in the parliament in 2014. Democracy has declined precipitously since President Kais Saied conducted a “self-coup” [PDF] in 2021, followed by repression, jailing of opponents, and electoral changes to single-member majority voting that shrank women’s representation to 16.2 percent in 2023. The lone liberal democracy in the region, Israel, was downgraded to the category of electoral democracy for the first time.  Election results in 2024 may not provide good news, judging from the outcomes to date. But if nothing else, they may serve as a wake-up call for democracy activists to rally around systemic reforms to rescue this form of government and ensure greater representation for half the world’s population.  This publication is part of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Project on the Future of Democracy.

Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post covers May 18 to May 24.  

The European Union (EU) began implementing the Digital Services Act (DSA) this year, just in time to combat online disinformation and other electoral interference in the dozens of elections taking place in Europe’s twenty-seven member countries and the European Parliament elections taking place June 6 through June 9. To prepare, the EU conducted a stress test of the DSA mechanisms to address elections targeted by false and manipulated information, incitement, and attempts to suppress voices. The DSA has also opened investigations against Meta, TikTok, and X out of concern they are not doing enough to prevent these scenarios.  The DSA is a landmark piece of legislation not only because it is the most comprehensive regulatory effort to address digital threats to date and impacts the 740 million people living in the EU; its implementation will also inform other countries’ efforts to provide a secure and safe internet space. Even without additional legislation, the European law may induce the largest technology companies to voluntarily apply the same standards globally, as was the case with the EU’s Global Digital Privacy Regulation, which caused many platforms to routinely seek user permission for data collection and retention.   Tech companies’ responses to the DSA during the EU elections will be watched closely in the United States, where disinformation and electoral interference could roil the already contentious November elections. Despite years of debate, no U.S. guardrails have been implemented. Concerns over government censorship and free speech have stalled dozens of legislative proposals to require tech companies to address various threats in the digital space and risks arising from powerful new artificial intelligence (AI). The free speech argument overlooks the speech of those who are being doxed, threatened, attacked, and driven out of the public arena by vicious online actors—including women, who are far and away the most frequent targets of these attacks. Legislative action has also been impeded by concerns that overly burdensome regulation will inhibit tech companies amid a worldwide race to gain competitive edge through generative artificial intelligence and other innovations.  The DSA is a useful model constructed around three principles: due diligence requirements for tech companies, mandated transparency via public reporting of their compliance with those requirements, and the threat of hefty fines to ensure compliance and accountability. The size of the EU market is large enough that, as with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), some tech companies may be incentivized to comply with the law’s provisions even without sanctions. The DSA’s strictest provisions apply to the world’s largest online platforms and search engines (those with more than 45 million users). These companies are required to routinely assess activity on their platforms and services for “systemic risks” involving elections, illegal content, human rights, gender-based violence, protection of minors, and public health and safety.  Companies have delivered initial assessments, which are publicly available, as well as information about the actions they have taken to comply. The EU website hosts a massive and growing online archive of hundreds of thousands of content moderation decisions made by the companies. In early enforcement actions, the EU has requested that Meta and other companies take down false ads and sought more information about their safety practices. For example, the EU queried X about its decision to cut its content moderation team by 20 percent since last October. Reduced content moderation on one of the world’s largest platforms is obviously a great concern given the number of elections and aggressive disinformation and interference campaigns by Russia and its proxies as it seeks to boost the fortunes of rising rightwing populists, Euroskeptic parties, and pro-Russian and anti-Ukraine candidates, as recently occurred in Slovakia and other Central and Eastern European countries.   Thus far, the DSA has not yet levied fines, but the threat alone of stiff penalties of up to 6 percent of gross revenues has led most companies to provide the required information. This treasure trove of information about how these tech companies are policing their own platforms is itself valuable; it enables governments and researchers to understand the effectiveness of measures being employed by trust and safety divisions of companies, some of which embrace the goal of a safe internet. The EU law explicitly seeks to guard free speech as well as innovation by companies, but the experience of implementation will inform lingering concerns about free speech, direct government decision-making, and censorship of content, including whether an authoritarian government could exercise control over their populations through digital policing and firewalls. Those concerns color the current negotiations at the United Nations over a Global Digital Compact, which is to be announced as part of the Summit of the Future in September.  The essence of the DSA is not to make content decisions directly but to set standards for due diligence and require companies to demonstrate that they are monitoring and mitigating risks via their own codes of conduct. Voluntary standards may vary, but the sharpest debates revolve around defining what constitutes illegal content. The EU has taken additional measures to harmonize laws regarding what is illegal content across the EU member states, which has been a difficult and contentious matter. The United Kingdom (UK) went through a similar multiyear debate over concerns about curtailing free speech before passing its Online Safety Act late last year. The UK law adopted some features in the DSA, including the due diligence reporting requirement and fines of up to ten percent of gross revenue. It defines the scope of risks more narrowly than the DSA, although the UK law does criminalize “extreme” pornography and may criminalize the creation of deepfake porn. Enforcement of the UK law awaits finalization of codes of conduct by year’s end. The EU also has moved to harmonize what constitutes illegal content as the laws of the twenty-seven member states currently vary greatly in defining what is illegal. Germany’s Network Enforcement Act, which was passed in 2018, is one of the world’s stiffest hate speech laws, which aims to stem rising neo-Nazi hate speech. The far-right Alternative fur Deutschland party has surged in state elections and exceeded the popularity of the leading Social Democrats in national polls.  The process of making the internet safer is iterative; several countries have revised their laws based on the experience of implementing them as well as evolving circumstances. For example, Germany amended its law in 2021 to stiffen its requirement that companies take down “clearly illegal” content within twenty-four hours. Australia has revised its online safety law twice since its initial passage in 2015, to require faster takedown of material deemed illegal and to greatly expand the law’s original focus on stopping child sexual abuse and exploitation and terrorist material. Speed of response is a critical factor in countering mis- and disinformation. Delayed action by tech companies has allowed viral propagation of material to proceed unhindered—as occurred in early January when deepfake porn of pop star Taylor Swift spread to 47 million viewers shortly after it was uploaded from the notorious 4chan message board.  That highly publicized episode drew attention to the disproportionate targeting of women and girls by internet violence, especially women in public life like politicians, journalists, and human rights activists, and minorities. The chilling effect on political participation has also been documented. The UK parliament rushed to act on deepfake porn after a number of women candidates were targeted this spring. Growing attention to the magnitude of the effects on women spurred the Biden administration to form a fourteen-country global partnership for action on online harassment and abuse. And last month, the EU concluded years-long negotiations to issue a directive on online gender-based violence and threats, including nonconsensual sharing of intimate images, deepfake porn, and other forms of attack. Member states are required to pass laws to implement the directive within two years.  The 2024 elections will serve as an initial test case for the DSA’s ability to rein in this wide variety of election interference, threats, and disinformation. Given the nascent regulatory architecture and companies’ varied compliance records, it is certain that further scrutiny and modification will be needed. Big tech will be required to provide public after-action reviews of the effectiveness of their measures to label AI-generated content, moderate discourse, identify foreign interference, and meet other guidelines for each country’s elections. These much-needed first steps will help light the way for others.  This publication is part of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Project on the Future of Democracy.

Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post covers May 11 to May 17.  

Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post covers May 4 to May 10.  

A discussion with Ambassador Rao Gupta on women’s political representation, violence against women, and new U.S. policy initiatives to advance gender equality and UN Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security.