Without more women, Republicans are going to continue to lose elections they could otherwise win. In the 2018 midterms, Democrats gained 41 seats in Congress; 13 female Democrats unseated male Republicans. That is a third of the seats Democrats won. Nearly one-fourth of the new Congress is female. Out of 127 female members, 106 are Democrats.
In the age of Donald Trump’s populism, Republicans already have a big barrier to overcome with many women. (At an event I spoke at recently, nearly every right-of-center participant worked to distance herself from the current administration.) But these women – and many more – are still committed to sensible, limited-government policies in which Americans of all races and creeds will have more freedom and opportunity.
More than a few national political observers hailed 2018 as another "Year of the Woman" following a previous declaration about the 1992 elections. While it may be simple to make such generalizations in national terms, determining how women fare in state-level elections is a different story.
Over the past three decades in Wisconsin, the number of women in each legislative class has been on average about one-quarter overall. The sessions with the most women were 1989-1990 and 2003-2004, each reaching 28 percent. The state's incoming 2019-2020 class fell just short of reaching that mark, with 27 percent women, according to an analysis by the Wisconsin Women's Council. A state agency aimed to promote and enhance the well-being of women, the 15-member council is appointed by the governor and the Legislature's leadership, and consists of both public and legislative members.
An important point to be noted is that there are quite a few Muslim countries, which although have gender quotas, but continue to boost more male members in parliament. Countries falling under the categories include Kyrgyz (19.2 percent), Uzbekistan (16 percent), Indonesia (17.1 percent) and Jordan (15.4 percent).
The growth of women’s parliamentary representation is based on a combination of various socio-political variables, including Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, electoral system types, gender quotas, the share of Muslims in the population, the female-male ratio in the workforce, the degree of democracy, and perceptions of corruption...
Muslim societies with a significant number of female MPs have a reserved seat policy as a form of gender quota: Afghanistan has 27 percent seats reserved for women, Saudi Arabia has 20 percent, Iraq reserves 25 percent, Pakistan 17 percent, and Bangladesh has 14.3 percent.
While an article on Ghana Web reports on the momentum building in Ghana for a 30% gender quota for women candidates and the need to 'gather courage' to advance women's representation:
A gender advocate, Comfort Darbo, has backed an appeal made by Ghana's Speaker of Parliament for government to consider increasing women participation in local governance in the country.
Professor Michael Oquaye, had called for more efforts on affirmative action to maximize the political influence of women in terms of decision making in the country.
He advocated that all the major political parties in Ghana currently controlling political affairs must gather courage and reserve quotas for women in their strong areas.
