Elections and women recommended starting points for research

One of the recent issues raised by the elections in Bahrain was the political participation of women
Ypu can consider how bahrain compares with other nations by looking at the Gender gap report which is prepared by the World Economic Forum The Report examines four critical areas of inequality between men and women:
1. Economic participation and opportunity – outcomes on salaries, participation levels and access to high-skilled employment
2. Educational attainment – outcomes on access to basic and higher level education
3. Political empowerment – outcomes on representation in decision-making structures
4. Health and survival – outcomes on life expectancy and sex ratio

The IPU women in parliaments website has statistical data on gender breakdowns

Other good starting points for information on women and political participation include:
The women in Politics bibliographic database which is compiled by the Interparliamentary union (IPU) This enables you to search for references to journal articles and papers about all aspects of women and politics worldwide. unfortunately the full text is not on line.
The UN Womenwatch gateway draws together the latest statistics, reports and papers from Un agencies on all aspects of female political, social and economic life.
International IDEA is an organisation which works more specifically for women in politics. Its website has publications, details about projects and links to support networks. This includes worldwide statistics on voter turnout by gender and a global database of materials about electoral quotas for women
Iknow Politics - an international Knowledge network of women in Politics which has a wealth of resources including discussion of recent elections and interviews with women.