The Role of Women in Global Politics - Essay Example

There are many agencies which would promote equality in politics including IDEA or the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, the United Nations, and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. This is an exploration of women's political participation in the world today. Along with that will be an exploration of individual regions in regard to women's political participation and strategies and recommendations including quotas toward engaging women in the political processes worldwide.

According to the United Nations, the first country to grant women the right to vote was New Zealand in 1893. The UN continues to state that only twenty-eight women worldwide have been elected as heads of state or government in this century. Women currently would only hold 11.7 percent of the seats in the world's parliaments. The first and currently only equally distributed male and female diplomatic cabinet belonged to Sweden in 1995. The United Nations is not immune to the distortions of men and women within its ranks having only seven women serving amidst a total of 185 of the highest-ranking diplomats.

Between the years 1987 and 1996, the percentage of female cabinet ministers worldwide rose from 3.4 to 6.8 percent. Women have been facing many obstacles to their participation in . This figure has increased over the year, but it has only increased a very minimal percent so even now, women in politics still remains distant.In order to manage increasing the level of female representation and participation in decision-making, the various governing and decision-making bodies require well-developed strategies and information on which measures have worked successfully in different countries with different political systems.

IDEA remains committed to the provision of comparative information on how to advance gender and democratic issues in general, and how then to promote participation and representation of women in political life specifically.In a performance, 27 women had won political seats in the second legislative chamber known as the DPD. These 27 women would constitute more than one fifth of total membership of what media outlets have termed the "senate". The fact that more than twenty percent of the DPD seats were won by women was unexpected as a whole under the consideration that Indonesia's first democratic elections are so very recent, having occurred in 1999.

A slight percentage, only nine percent, of women had captured seats in the House of Representatives. Factors affecting this would include that the electoral system used for the DPD is known to be disadvantageous for women candidates.The Pakistani political system of reservations for women would be 17 percent of seats in the national and provincial assemblies and 30 percent of seats in district and council assemblies. Dr. Reyes noted that it would be especially important to provide support and training for women in Pakistan who would be elected for these reserved seats. "Ms. Norden explained how in Sweden the system