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So, the US has again failed to elect a woman to the highest political office in the country. Was Kamala Harris defeated because she is a woman or was it because of her personality or her policies and campaign? Before getting into that debate, let us look at women in politics today, particularly when there is so much focus on female leadership and efforts to increase the number of women in leadership positions.
There has been some progress in several countries in recent years, including ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ, which has seen an increase in the number of female ambassadors, members of the Shoura Council and appointments to leadership positions in the Foreign Ministry. However, women remain largely underrepresented in politics, especially in foreign policy, and there has been some regression in their representation during the last few years.
In 2020, only 60 out of 190 countries (31 percent) surveyed by the Inter-Parliamentary Union had a woman as foreign minister. That dropped to 25 percent in 2023. As for women ambassadors, 20.7 percent worldwide were women in 2021 and that remained almost the same at 20.5 percent in 2023, according to the Women in Diplomacy Index. Europe has the highest proportion of women ambassadors and permanent representatives at 28 percent, while Africa, Asia and the Middle East and North Africa fall below the global average at 18 percent, 12 percent and 10 percent, respectively.
During the General Debate of the 79th UN General Assembly in September, less than 10 percent of the speakers were women. Nineteen female speakers addressed the assembly, compared to 175 male speakers.
In the latest World Economic Forum report on the Global Gender Gap 2024, of the four key dimensions benchmarked — economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment — the average global score for gender parity was lowest in the political empowerment subindex at 22.5 percent, a drop from 25.2 percent in 2019.
Nonetheless, there was some improvement in all three indicators in the political empowerment subindex — women in parliament, women in ministerial positions and number of years with female/male head of state in the last 50 years — particularly in the share of women in parliamentary positions.
However, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s Women in Parliament 2023 report, while more women than ever are being elected to parliaments around the world, equality is still a long way off and current progress is far too slow. Most parliaments are still heavily male-dominated and some have no women MPs at all.
The global proportion of MPs who are women has inched up to 26.9 percent, based on the elections and appointments that took place in 2023. This represents an increase of 0.4 percentage points year on year, which is slower than in the preceding years — elections in 2020 and 2021 saw an increase of women MPs of 0.6 percentage points. The highest-ranking country in terms of the percentage of women in its national parliament is Rwanda with 53.9 percent. The region with the highest average is the Americas at 35.3 percent, while the lowest is MENA at 18.1 percent.

While more women than ever are being elected to parliaments around the world, equality is still a long way off.

Maha Akeel

Globally, the share of women speakers of parliament increased to 23.8 percent (up 1.1 percentage points). Also, more women than ever hold political decision-making posts worldwide. As of Jan. 1, 2023, 11.3 percent of countries had women heads of state and 9.8 percent had women heads of government, an increase from a decade ago, when the figures stood at 5.3 percent and 7.3 percent, respectively. However, while recent elections have seen more women voted into power — such as in Mexico and Iceland — we have also seen several prominent women leave politics, blaming burnout and threats, or being ousted.
Women made up 22.8 percent of Cabinet ministers as of the beginning of last year. Europe and North America (31.6 percent) and Latin America and the Caribbean (30.1 percent) were the regions with the highest share. However, in most other regions, women are severely underrepresented, dropping as low as 10.1 percent in Central and Southern Asia and 8.1 percent in the Pacific Islands.
Women continue to face gender discrimination in politics. They encounter many constraints, including violence, harassment and bias during elections and campaigns, including in fundraising and in media coverage, which might focus on things such as their looks or age. There are also persistent cultural barriers and beliefs about women’s role in society, the balancing of their private and public lives and gender stereotypes about their skills and capacity. Because of all these constraints, biases and political structures, far fewer women run for office than men.
However, change is possible if there is political will and a commitment to adopt and implement policies that provide a level playing field for both women and men and address the obstacles and barriers. But it is a slow process and it takes more than just decisions from the top to appoint women and implement a quota. Women might even experience imposter syndrome and encounter a backlash or resistance from the community, especially from male politicians.
Going back to the defeat of Harris, according to various analysts and commentators, it was spurred by many factors, including gender bias. In the US, there is still a struggle with female representation in politics more than a century after a constitutional amendment granted them the right to vote. There has been one woman vice president, Harris, and three secretaries of state: Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. Seventeen of the 50 states have never had a female senator, according to the Pew Research Center, and only 60 women have ever been a US senator. Today, just 29 percent of the US House of Representatives and a quarter of US Senate seats are held by women and only 12 states have female governors.
Nevertheless, we must not ignore the other factors that led to Harris’ — and the Democratic Party’s — defeat, including concerns over the economy and immigration, as well as her ties to an unpopular administration and support of Israel’s war on Gaza. Also, the party’s insistence on continuing with the same ultra-left liberal agenda on social issues has alienated many people, leading to an obvious shift to the right across the country.
In politics, gender and personality do matter, but it is mainly agendas and policies that convince people to vote for a candidate.

• Maha Akeel is a Saudi expert in communications, social development and international relations. She is a member of the UN’s Senior Women Talent Pipeline. X: @MahaAkeel1