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struggling to enjoy equal participation and representation in politics. I will now turn to provide a brief account of women’s political status and representation.
STATE OF WOMEN’S POLITICAL STATUS
It is generally known that a society is built and sustained by varied roles performed by men and women under different situations. However, this reality is usually overshadowed when the roles and positions of one gender are undermined by the other, thus resulting in domination and inequality which hinder progress as effects are usually seen in the political life of such countries.
Numerous studies have been conducted on the phenomenon of gender disparity in living patterns. Several scholars such as Cammisa and Reingold (2004), Bauer and Britton (2006), Steady (2011), Osborn (2012), and Markham (2013) have written on the impact of women’s political participation and representation.
Women’s political participation and representation have an impact in changing socio–cultural norms and stereotypes that perceived women as inferior to men, thus unable to hold high public office. According to Bauer and Britton (2006) the election of women in national parliaments changed the long standing societal perception of women as subordinates to men. This societal change has been reflected in some African countries with high women representation in parliament as gender-friendly laws prohibiting discrimination and stereotypes against women were enacted. As argued by Yoon (2011), increased women representation in the Tanzanian parliament led to the existence of women causes, increase women’s participation in parliamentary affairs and debates, better articulation of women’s issues, enactment of gender friendly laws and changes in societal perception about women in politics.
Scholars such as Bauer and Britton (2006) argued that for gender equality to be achieved
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women’s political participation is necessary as women’s issues and interest will be addressed if women represent themselves. They indicated that examples have shown women in parliaments representing women’s interest and needs such as the case of Sweden. However, for such to take place Bauer and Britton (2006) argued that a critical mass is needed and elimination of factors causing imbalances and societal inequality is crucial. Scholars such as Cammisa and Reingold (2004), Steady (2011), Osborn (2012), and Markham (2013) have shown that women’s access to political office have significant impact on a country’s socio-economic progress and consolidation of democracy.
Nonetheless, the global women’s political representation continues to be at low pace. Bauer and Britton (2006) support this argument as they stated that the political under-representation of women makes society to lose the valuable contribution of 50% of the population and having non-representative policies since women have different needs and priorities from those of men.
In addition, the principles of democratic governance include responsiveness to citizens’ needs and popular participation. However, Cammisa and Reingold (2004) argued that enhanced women’s political participation results in tangible gains for democratic governance such as greater responsiveness to citizens’ needs.
As reiterated by representatives of various governments at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, “women’s equal participation in decision-making is not only a demand for justice or democracy, but can also be seen as a necessary condition for women’s interests to be taken into account. Without the perspective of women at all levels of decision-making, the goals of equality, development and peace cannot be achieved,” (UNDAW, 2007, p.7). Bauer and Britton (2006) argued that women’s political representation can lead to institutional changes as gender ministries, commissions and departments were created to promote
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women’s rights and monitoring of government women’s rights commitments in South Africa, Rwanda and Namibia.
Moreover, women’s strategic needs were also addressed through the enacting of gender-friendly legislations, such as land rights, gender-based violence, child care, education, equal pay, health and family acts. These legislations were adopted due to the high women representation in parliament in those countries (Bauer and Britton, 2006).
In spite of the existence of global, regional and sub-regional conventions and policies promoting and guaranteeing equal political participation and representation for both genders discussed earlier, women’s representation in political institutions still remains low. According to the Inter - Parliamentary Union, the overall women representation in the world’s parliaments is 22.1% for both upper and lower houses combined (IPU, 2015). Thus, women are under-represented palpably in the political sphere as this figure is below the United Nations recommended benchmark of 30% of parliamentary seats to be given to women in all national parliaments in the world. However, the difference varied across geographical locations, religious affiliations, political systems, and even economic groupings, thus affecting the global indicator of women’s full participation and representation in politics.
However, some countries in the Nordic have been progressing over the years as women constitute 41.5% in their parliaments (IPU, 2015). The Americas and Africa have also seen some improvements over the years in the representation of the critical mass of their population as women constitute 26.5% and 22.6% in single or lower house parliaments respectively (IPU, 2015). According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union dataset, women representation in Europe (excluding Nordic countries) stood at 23.6% in lower houses.
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Despite the steady progress on women’s parliamentary representation in some regions, Asia has a stunted progress as women only constitute 19.0% of parliamentarian in the region (IPU, 2015).
On the other hand, regions such as Arab States and the Pacific are still struggling to improve women’s political status as only 18.1% women are represented in parliaments in the Arab states, while the Pacific occupies the bottom in regional ranking with 13.1% women parliamentary representation (IPU, 2015).
According to Bauer and Britton (2006), in spite of socio-cultural issues affecting African countries such as patriarchy and pervasive gender inequality, countries such as Rwanda, South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia and Uganda have made strides in women’s political participation.
Although there is some regional progress in Africa on women’s parliamentary representation, however there are only eleven countries in Africa where a woman is Presiding Officer of parliament or head of one of its houses (IPU, 2015). These are Botswana (National Assembly), Equatorial Guinea (Senado), Gabon (Senate), Mauritius (National Assembly), Mozambique (Assembleia da Republica), Rwanda (Chamber of Deputies), South Africa (National Assembly and National Council of Provinces), Swaziland (Senate), Uganda (Parliament), United Republic of Tanzania (Bunge) and Zimbabwe (Senate) (IPU, 2015). While regionally, there is progress on women’s political engagement, at national level countries like The Gambia still lagged behind in attaining this gender commitment of equal political participation and representation by all citizens. However, one could argue that the women’s political under-representation cannot be attributed to single cause. Thus, as a point of departure it is imperative to analyze the theoretical framework explaining the reasons for poor women’s political representation.
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