June 15, 2026
Women now hold about 27 percent of parliamentary seats globally, roughly double the 1997 figure. Yet only 25 countries are currently led by a woman, and 113 countries have never had a woman head of state. In the 2024 "super-election year," cabinet representation fell in 64 countries. Women lead portfolios that carry limited institutional weight like the 87% of gender-equality ministries. In contrast, men continue to dominate the institutions that control budgets, security, and diplomacy.
What does it take for women to participate meaningfully in politics? This question framed a series of learning calls convened by the Trust, Accountability and Inclusion (TAI) Collaborative, bringing together funders, women leaders, practitioners, and researchers around the world.
In this blog, we share some of the key insights that emerged from those conversations. Participants emphasized that women’s political participation is not a niche issue but a core measure of democratic health. They highlighted the need for long-term, flexible funding, safer conditions for participation, stronger support systems and allies, and a shift in focus from increasing representation alone to building lasting influence, collective power, and more equitable institutions.
The numbers are moving. Power is not
The conversations were built on two complementary studies. TAI’s Changing the Rules of the Game: A Funders’ Guide to Advancing Women’s Substantive Political Participation (Trimita Chakma, 2025) takes a practitioner- and activist-centered approach, drawing on seven structured dialogues with around 30 practitioners, civil society leaders, and funders across Africa, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific. Beyond Beijing: Rethinking Women's Political Participation (European Democracy Hub / Club de Madrid, 2025) offers a qualitative assessment of 30 years of progress since the 1995 Beijing conference, informed by former heads of state and leading scholars. Both studies reach a similar conclusion: rising representation, measured in seats and parliamentary share, does not automatically translate into substantive influence. Women may gain access to political institutions, but they are often excluded from shaping decisions in the portfolios where power is concentrated, including budget, defense, and foreign affairs. The challenge lies not with the women themselves, but with the systems and institutions they enter. As a result, both studies call for strategies that go beyond increasing the number of women elected, including reforming party structures, strengthening institutional support, building collective power, and investing in women’s leadership throughout their political careers.
Grounded in experiences from Africa, Latin America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, the discussions returned to a common theme: women are already leading, organizing, and driving change in their communities. The question is whether institutions, parties, funders, and societies are willing to catch up.
Real progress will come from reshaping systems so women can lead, govern, and transform them, not from asking women to adapt to systems that were never built for them.
Three barriers that exclude women
The TAI consultations surfaced three barriers that recur across regions.
The first is violence, which works as a deterrent. The TAI report cites figures that 82 percent of women parliamentarians report experiencing psychological violence, and that women of color face around four times more online abuse. Harassment tends to escalate when women declare their candidacy.
The second is economic exclusion. In Kenya, women reportedly need around 40 percent more funding to run than men do, partly because of added security costs and weaker access to sponsors. Three in five women who lose an election never run again, so each generation starts from scratch. Natasha Kimani of Futurelect pressed funders to think about the entire electoral cycle, not just the election. Before a campaign, a woman weighs emotional, financial, and physical costs, and the impact on her family. In a recent survey in Kibra, Nairobi, three candidates reported that their husbands began actively campaigning against them after they declared. Political exclusion can begin at home. After a loss, the costs compound further: grief, burnout, and in some cases bankruptcy. Kimani teaches a class called “How to Lose an Election” specifically to help women re-enter political life rather than disappear from it.
The third is institutional design. Quotas can double representation where they exist, but without reform of how decisions are made, a quota becomes a ceiling parties tick off rather than a floor women can build on. Funding compounds the problem: it tends to be short-term and directed at individuals rather than at the party structures, collective safety infrastructure, and alternative finance networks that would change the conditions women enter.
What is already working
Speakers pointed to models that treat political participation as a journey rather than a single event, and that address conditions rather than individual capacity.
Monica Tapia described AUNA Mexico’s approach: support before candidacy, during campaigns, and after, regardless of whether a woman wins or loses. Women who lose can take up roles in the networks of women who win, breaking the cycle in which each generation begins from scratch. AUNA works across the full party spectrum, including carefully chosen women in right-wing parties, on the logic that lasting reform on issues like care policy needs the whole political spectrum at the table.
Amina Salihu of the MacArthur Foundation made the case for a life-cycle approach. Women’s political engagement does not begin when they decide to run. It is shaped from the start by family dynamics, education, livelihoods, and access to resources. Philanthropy, she argued, should connect the informal leadership women already exercise in their communities to formal political pathways, and fund the longer-term cost of that work. She was direct about care: if women do not have enough time, they cannot even aspire, and men normalizing housework and care is part of the equation.
From Indonesia, Armayanti Sanusi of Solidaritas Perempuan described a system where women’s representation often fails to reach even the legal quota, and where winning seats has not reliably produced policy change. She pointed to the more than 20-year struggle to pass domestic worker protections as an illustration of how slow substantive change can be. Grassroots women are engaged in political struggle through fishing and farming communities and local organizing, yet that work is rarely recognized as political. Her call was for funders to resource political education, grassroots organizing, and solidarity-building so that movements can build durable power.
Suki Capobianco of the Better Politics Foundation, argued that political parties are failing women in most contexts and are often a source of the violence others described. A layer of civil society organizations has stepped in to do the work parties should be doing, and she pointed to a network of around 155 organizations across 60 countries helping leaders not just enter politics but survive it.
Building power that lasts
A consistent theme across all three calls was that change comes from reshaping systems, not from preparing women to endure broken ones.
Saskia Brechenmacher urged funders toward strategic differentiation. The same playbook cannot work everywhere. The first question is whether a given system is male dominated but still democratic, or actively sliding toward autocracy, because that shapes what makes sense. Where democratic erosion is advanced, the number of women in formal institutions may no longer be a meaningful measure of women's power. The priority shifts toward collective mobilization, coalition-building, local organizing, and movements, especially among working-class and lower-income women too often left out of formal politics.
Suyen Barahona Cuan of Colmena Fund pushed back on the artificial divide funders draw between civic and political space, arguing that substantive leadership depends on the links between strong movements and women inside decision-making rooms. Capobianco pointed to the Solidarity Alliance for Women in Politics, launched in South Africa, as a model built around the lived experience of being a politician rather than around policy platforms alone. She also argued, for depolarization and cross-party coalitions, citing the cross-party, intergenerational coalition behind Argentina's legal abortion win as the kind of approach she sees as capable of shifting systems.
Anaid Alcazar of Fundación Avina added a warning on technology. Public debate about AI focuses on jobs while overlooking surveillance and propaganda. Under-resourced democratic actors face a resource of asymmetry against large tech corporations that is, ultimately, an asymmetry of power.
On men as allies: the funders-and-practitioners call was direct. Men can advocate for parent-friendly policies, speak out against political violence, endorse and fundraise for women candidates, and help mobilize constituencies that respond to their voices. But involvement must not displace women's leadership or shift the agenda. As Salihu put it, simply asking about the shape of power in a room, and refusing to sit at all-male tables, is itself a small act of change.
What funders heard:
Women’s political participation is a measure of democratic health, not as a side issue.
Funding should be long-term, flexible, grounded in trust, accompanying women across the full electoral cycle and not stopping when an election ends.
Safety, security, and protection are core conditions for participation, not optional extras.
Men have a role to play as allies, especially by sharing care responsibilities, backing women publicly, and helping shift power in everyday spaces, without displacing women’s control of the agenda.
The goal is not just more women in office, but stronger collective power, recognized grassroots leadership, and more just institutions.
Resources from the calls
Slides: Changing the Rules of the Game by Trimita Chakma (TAI, 2025)
Slides: Opportunities and Challenges of Women’s Political Participation in Indonesia by Armayanti Sanusi, Solidaritas Perempuan (available in English and Bahasa Indonesia)