ISLAMABAD: Calling women in politics agents of change, PPP Vice President Senator Sherry Rehman in her address at the House of Lords at the UK Forum on Cultural Diplomacy has urged global political systems to move beyond celebration ‘to real structural change’.

While delivering a keynote address on ‘Women in Politics’, the senator said, women in politics represent three intertwined imperatives: to assess where we stand, to understand what women need from politics, and to shape collective agendas that transform societies.

Senator Sherry, who is also chairperson of the Senate Standing Committee on Climate Change, noted that women held only 27.2pc of parliamentary seats worldwide, and just 29 countries have women as heads of state or government. At current trends, she warned, gender parity in political leadership is over 130 years away, (UN, 2025), describing this gap as “a stark indictment of the systems that shape public life.”

She warned that as conflicts multiply and multilateralism weakens, rights protections were eroding across continents. “Rights and SDGs are no longer the global priority the world imagined for the 21st century.”

Published in Dawn, January 13th, 2026