This week in my Women and Politics course at USF (in St. Petersburg, Florida) we considered why women are underrepresented in American politics -- and why so many other countries outperform the US in terms of the number of women in elective office. One of the structural factors we considered was whether there were gender quotas. (Half of the countries in the world today have some form of an electoral gender quota.)
We were so fortunate to have join us live from Skopje, North Macedonia TANJA TOMIC
Ms. Tomic is a gender expert with experience working on gender issues over 15 years. She has held elective office at the local and national level, as member of municipal Council, member of City council, member of Parliament. She has also served as trainer on different projects, such as Political Academy and School on gender activism and different IRI, NDI and ODIHR workshops.
She has a wealth of experience and knowledge about women and politics in North Macedonia and beyond. As we were considering women in politics from a comparative perspective, it was so helpful to have a former parliamentarian and party leader to explain how things like the gender quotas work in practice.
First, she explained the structure of the government in North Macedonia.
You can learn more about North Macedonia by checking the CIA's World Factbook:
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/north-macedonia/
And then she talked about the development of women's organizations that led to reforms such as the introduction of gender quotas. And explained how these quotas work in the Macedonian parliamentary system.
While the quotas have increased the number of women in politics in Macedonia (currently MK ranks 29 and the USA ranks 67, in terms of % of women in the lower house of the national legislature), Ms. Tomic reflected on the challenges faced by women in politics - and issues that still need to be addressed as it relates to women's empowerment.
For global rankings of women in national legislatures that is updated monthly, see this site compiled by the Inter-Parliamentary Union:
https://data.ipu.org/women-ranking?month=1&year=2021
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Women elected officials still have to strive to be taken seriously and often are harassed on social media.
Here is a children's textbook portrayal of different careers, with women and men depicted in traditional gender roles.
