Gender equality and women’s leadership in the year of elections

According to UN Women, as of June 2024, there are only 27 countries where women serve as Heads of State and/or Government. The 100-day countdown to the US election also starts today, as Kamala Harris becomes the Democratic presidential frontrunner replacing Joe Biden. Just 55 days ago, Mexico elected Claudia Sheinbaum as the country’s first female president. But gender parity in leadership and government clearly has far to go.

Halfway through 2024, we stand at a historical turning point as almost half the world’s population will be affected by elections taking place in 70 countries this year. How do we understand and unpack these interconnected trajectories of emerging women leaders that have long-lasting implications for women and girls around the world? Now, more than ever, there is a need to undertake legal reforms that will reverberate for generations to come, with the potential to lay strong foundations for gender equality.

A podcast for gender and legal experts

Last year, Equality Now launched our podcast, ‘We Change the Rules’, hosted by award-winning journalist and broadcaster Samira Ahmed. We invited women’s rights leaders, legal experts, activists, and academics from across the international gender equality and human rights movements to share unique insights and bold new ideas on policies that governments should consider to achieve legal, political, and systemic gender equality.

With each episode, we explored global issues and their impact on women and girls, be it legal inequality, lack of representation in leadership, racial discrimination, patriarchy, religious traditions, and cultural intricacies.

Equal leadership and representation: the key to gender equality

Leadership and equality of opportunity are crucial to women’s empowerment. We Change the Rules explores the history of gender inequality in the law through the decades, giving audiences a holistic view of how discrimination in the law was identified and challenged in different parts of the world.

Our guest speakers shared their experiences from the world of politics and leadership.

• In Episode 1, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka discusses how her time as Deputy President for South Africa and as Executive Director for UN Women shaped her views on global gender equality, and where tackling gender inequality sits on the international agenda today. She shares how there is no substitute for having representation in government where women can make laws and policies that positively impact everybody.
• Episode 2 features Jamaican Commissioner and former President of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Margarette May Macaulay, who spent over 40 years as a leading human rights advocate. Margarette reflects on the impact that colonial legal systems have had on women and girls in Latin American and Caribbean countries, and other legacies of colonialism that have driven gender inequality. She explores how gender-based violence, repressive religious and cultural attitudes, and the violation of women’s economic rights prevent them from realizing their full potential and contributing to society.

• Episode 4 dives into the systemic bias and discrimination women leaders face. We learn about the ‘glass cliff’, a term coined by Professor Michelle Ryan, Inaugural Director of the Global Institute of Women’s Leadership at The Australian National University, and her colleague. Michelle explains how women who have cracked the glass ceiling ultimately go on to assume leadership positions in times of crisis and high risk, in other words, a glass cliff, where they find themselves set up for failure. Her research shows that any real change needed to foster women’s leadership needs to begin with fixing gender-discriminatory systems and structures from scratch.

• Episode 6 unpacks former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s experiences, including the extent and impact of the misogyny she faced throughout her parliamentary career, as she reflects on the changes she has witnessed in the ten years since leaving office. Julia revisits her daring response to opposition leader Tony Abbott in Parliament on the hostility nurtured by misogyny and sexism towards women in leadership, which is exacerbated by unregulated social media channels.

Women are starting to take the lead, but where do we go from here?

Our world is steering in a new direction as we vote an increasing number of women into positions of power. But this begs the question: what ecosystems are these newly elected women leaders stepping into? Are they still as hostile as they have been throughout the past centuries, plagued by sex discrimination?

We Change the Rules offers new perspectives on gender equality, to guide research and policies targeted at legal reform.

Listen to the podcast now on Apple, Spotify and YouTube.