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Women in contemporary democratisation

Why are women hugely under-represented in parliaments across the world? What strategies can bring women’s interests into the policy-making process? What are the pros and cons of quotas reserving parliamentary places for women? How can participants in women’s movements avoid being co-opted?

A paper from the UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) takes a look at a subject largely ignored in the mainstream literature on democratisation. It notes the contrast between the lively debates on the reform of governments in ethnically segmented societies with the deafening silence on women’s absence from the world of institutional politics.

Globally, the average percentage of female parliamentarians is 12 percent. In 1999, only six countries (the Nordic states and the Netherlands) had more than a third of parliamentary seats taken by women. In the Arab World, it is a mere 3.3 percent. Women’s invisibility in the world of institutional politics is also particularly striking in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, regions in which women’s political mobilisation did much to contribute to the demise of authoritarianism.

In India the reservation of 30 percent of all seats in local government institutions for women has brought a million women into elected office. Elsewhere, however, the paper questions whether the current fashion for affirmative action may not be dealing with symptoms rather than tackling the underlying causes. While adoption of quotas in such states as Uganda and South Africa has increased women’s political profile, they have not increased their leverage in relation to the hierarchy of dominant ruling parties. Female parliamentarians may have introduced such issues as violence against women and reproductive health but have failed to get states (particularly the police and judiciary) to guarantee civil rights for women.

The paper also discusses several risks:

Mainstreaming gender can become a purely technocratic exercise of tinkering with institutions in a political vacuum.
The women’s movement’s emphasis on community level activism can create an ambivalence towards the central state and obscure the need to democratise it.
The NGO-isation of the women’s movement – the shift of women from neighbourhood associations to increasingly formalised NGOs working with state poverty alleviation programmes – may have removed the scope for negotiation and advocacy they once had, even under authoritarian regimes.
Insulated technocracies, staffed by gender bureaucrats well-versed in economic analytical skills, may contribute to what goes on inside the corridors of power but can in no way substitute for open public debate which enables women’s groups and networks to scrutinise economic decisions and policies.
The assumption is that women can, more effectively than men, contribute to the formulation of woman-friendly policies: how can such a diverse group as ‘women’ find meaningful representation in the absence of procedures for establishing what the group wants or mechanisms for keeping ‘representatives’ accountable to their constituents?

The paper argues that women’s groups and movements must engage with the political mainstream while remaining ever conscious of the risks of co-option by the state or party in power. Women have to:

simultaneously work at different levels both inside and outside the mainstream
forge strategic insider-outsider alliances
remember that the success of Nordic electoral engineering initiatives was made possible by the social democratic tradition.

Source(s):
‘Women in contemporary democratization’ by Shahra Razavi, Occasional Paper No. 4, UNRISD, February 2000 Full document.

id21 Research Highlight: 22 May 2003

Further Information:
Shahra Razavi
Research Co-ordinator
UNRISD
Palais des Nations
1211 Geneva 10
Switzerland

Tel: +41 (0)22 91 72885
Fax: +41 (0)22 91 70650
Contact the contributor: razavi@unrisd.org

UNRISD

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