Women’s political engagement- comparative perspective

IRJMST

Vol 5 Issue 8 [Year 2014]

ISSN 2250 – 1959 (0nline) 2348 – 9367 (Print)

Women’s political engagement- comparative perspective JAYA KERAL BHARATI COLLEGE A good way to understand the importance of gender in politics is to examine the position of women in political Institutions and processes and link the differences and similarities in the way state operates in relation to the representation of women in politics. In public life, gender is normally a hierarchy in which men have more presence and power than woman, a syndrome especially apparent in politics. Thus it is necessary to map the power differentials between women and men to understand how gender affects politics. Ever since the advent of women‟s suffrage, women activists has been concerned with increasing the participation of women in political life. Women all over the world now vote in near equal proportion to men, but nowhere do they serve in equal numbers in political office. A threshold was set by the United Nations in 1995 i.e. 30% of the legislature as the necessary minimum of women representatives needed for women to be fairly represented.The right to political participation is a human right- inherent, in alienable and indivisible. As a right, states have the duty and obligation to fulfill and implement the right of women to participate in politics equally with men. This and other human rights of women are guaranteed in articles 4, 7 and 8 of the convention on the elimination of discrimination against women (CEDAW) As we link democracy and representation of women there are certain questions which can be raised, how well and if representative institutions are working for women in democracies depends on one‟s understanding of what counts as the adequate representation of women in a democracy. Does the adequate representation of women require female representatives? if so how many? Do the opinions, interests, and perspectives of these female representatives matter? does the adequate representation of women depend simply on the passing and implementation of policies that most women consider to be women friendly or on the passing and implementation of policies sensitive to gender oppression? As we look into the representation of women in politics in different parts of the world, when we study the role of women in politics in United Sates Of America, certain difficulties are encountered because there is no commonly agreed upon criteria for identifying “women‟s interest”. In attending to the differences among U.S women, it becomes clear that benefits from democratic institutions can be distributed unfairly among different groups of women. Recent empirical and theoretical research holds at least three important insights into how we should approach the question of whether U.S. women are being adequately represented. The first insight is that the adequate representation of U.S. women will not occur exclusively in legislative bodies. In particular, Laurel Weldon (2002) argues persuasively that political scientists should not International Research Journal of Management Science & Technology http://www.irjmst.com

Page 160

IRJMST

Vol 5 Issue 8 [Year 2014]

ISSN 2250 – 1959 (0nline) 2348 – 9367 (Print)

simply “count bodies” in legislatures—that is, count the number of women in legislatures—to determine how well women are being represented. The representation of women depends on nongovernmental actors, such as women‟s movements. Building on Weldon‟s insight suggests that the activities within civil society, for example, the kinds of outside pressure placed on public officials, can be crucial to the adequate representation of women. Moreover, other features of a political society, such as the right to association and the availability of political resources, can influence the quality of the representation of U.S. women. Adolph Reed‟s(1996) work implies that the inclusion of U.S. women in representative institutions could function to preserve the status quo and thereby the inequalities within the U.S. political system. His work suggests that an increase of female representatives will only be likely to improve democracies if those representatives (and the people who support them) value certain things—such as democratic representative institutions that proactively address gender inequalities and reconcile political conflicts fairly. To view democratic institutions—especially representative institutions—from feminist perspectives is to enter a much richer and more complicated vision of politics than the one typically held by political scientists (Childs 2006). Anne Phillips (1991, 159) captured this insight, writing: “Feminism multiplies the places within which democracy appears relevant, and then it alters the dimensions as well. „Details matter‟. Feminists noted that conceptions of “women‟s interests” often assume some essential understanding of women; that is, they assume that all women possess a common identity or shared set of interests. Feminists argue that we should not assume that all women view political issues from the same perspective. We should not evaluate representatives by whether they enact a laundry list of feminist or even “women-friendly” public policies. In fact, the easier it is to identify a list of policies that all women should or do support, the less important it is to have female representatives. After all, according to Phillips (1998), male representatives could also advance such a laundry list. Phillips would reject attempts to evaluate the adequate representation of U.S. women by appealing to a particular list of policies. Another way that feminists have refined our understanding of what needs to be represented can be found in the work of IrisMarion Young (1986, 2000).For Young, women are represented when their interests, opinions, and perspectives are being advanced. For her, interests determine the life prospects of individuals, for example, material resources. Opinions are the values, principles, and priorities of individuals. Perspectives are understood as particular kinds of social meanings, apparent in the types of questions being asked during public deliberations. Women‟s perspectives are present when participants in public deliberations inquire about the specific impact that public policies have on different women. As can be seen, identifying how issues are being framed and whose values are being appealed to are vital for assessing the adequate representation of U.S. women—which requires more than satisfying U.S. women‟s policy preferences. It cannot be determined whether U.S. women are adequately represented simply by examining the substantive representation of women. This is true not only because attempts to define “women‟s interests” are likely to be deeply ideological and controversial, but also because the opinions and perspectives of women are vital to their adequate representation. There is a International Research Journal of Management Science & Technology http://www.irjmst.com

Page 161

IRJMST

Vol 5 Issue 8 [Year 2014]

ISSN 2250 – 1959 (0nline) 2348 – 9367 (Print)

need to attend to how U.S.policies are framed, which values are expressed and which questions are asked within representative institutions, and how these can potentially work against certain women. It is not enough for just some women‟s interests, opinions, and perspectives to be present: The adequate representation of women requires the presence of women‟s multiple interests, opinions, and perspectives. Second, to determine if U.S. women are being adequately represented attention must be paid to context. The institutional legacy of representative institutions is relevant, for example, the historical prohibitions against women voting. So are the institutional norms and practices that continue to constrain women‟s choices about their representatives and their capacities to sanction their representatives. The political inclusion of more women is not necessarily seen as a sign of democratic progress. Furthermore, to pay attention to the relevant political context means examining political behavior outside formal governmental institutions Historically women in Britain have not been well represented in leadership positions. The UK has had only one woman Prime Minister, and two women have acted as Labour Party leaders for short periods. One woman, Betty Boothroyd, has been Speaker of the House of Commons. Until the early 1990s women were not routinely appointed to the cabinet. Between 1997 and 2010 there were from 4 to 6 women in the cabinet and by the end of that period women had held the powerful and prestigious positions of Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary. Moreover there were women junior ministers in most of the departments of state, as pool of eligibles for high office. However no woman has yet been appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer. The 2010 government saw a reduction in the number of women MPs who were appointed to the cabinet and of women junior ministers but Prime Minister David Cameron promised he would appoint „more‟ women to key positions. Party differences are embedded in histories and culture that impact differently on their attitudes to equality strategies. Whilst no party denies that equality is a desirable goal, they differ in their hospitality to equality strategies. Thus all parties first adopted equality rhetoric and later equality promotion, but only the Labour party embraced equality guarantees. Labour‟s strategy stems not only from mobilisations by party women but also from its historic commitments to political equality. Its discourses and practices are, albeit after struggle, amenable to claims for equality of representation. The Conservative Party on the other hand has historically been pragmatic, adopting equality discourses late and largely for electoral reasons. Finally the Liberal Democrats balance both positions making it almost impossible to sustain a coherent strategy to promote the descriptive representation of women. The Principle of representation has been one of the key characteristics of liberal democracy, and in recent years there has been considerable attention paid in many countries to the level of representation of women, at both national and local government levels. Much of this debate has drawn upon the notion of „characteristic representation‟, which goes beyond the traditional view of representative democracy where those elected are deemed to represent the interest of all of their community, towards a view that the make-up of a representative government should to a significant extent, reflect the characterstics and groups of the society that it seeks to represent, and the notion of group representation which recognizes the perspective of the various social groups in society. International Research Journal of Management Science & Technology http://www.irjmst.com

Page 162

IRJMST

Vol 5 Issue 8 [Year 2014]

ISSN 2250 – 1959 (0nline) 2348 – 9367 (Print)

There are a variety of arguments over the extent to which women have common interests and whether the election of more women means that women‟s issues receive greater attention from decision maker, there has been a growing belief in recent years that representative bodies that are most exclusively male in constitution cannot adequately represent women, and at the same time that low levels of women representatives may mean that issues and policies that are of interest to women may be excluded from consideration by decision makers. There are a number of associated arguments ,Including whether women can bring not only different issues but also different approaches to the decision making process, and that a lack of women representatives means that such strength s may be lost, that higher levels of women representatives can reduce corruption. Particularly in Western Europe and the United States a number of theories or explanations have been developed to explain low level of women‟s representation. These can be roughly charactererised as “individual” or “structural” explanations. Where invidual circumstances and personal characteristics are concerned, these approaches are often related to supply and usually refer to family responsibilities, life style, availability of and control over financial resources, socio economic factors such as educational qualification, political ambition and psychological factors such as self esteem and confidence. Structural explanations can be similarly varied, but often related to “demand” ranging from voter attitudes, patriarchal attitudes and the exclusion of women from male networks, the organization and the operation of government, party influences and the relative „desirability‟ of different tiers of government. In addition, political culture is also frequently viewed as a significant influence in either discouraging or in fewer instances, encouraging women to stand for election. Multiple factors have been found to determine the structure of opportunities for women‟s representation in elected office, including the institutional context like the electoral system and the use of affirmative action strategies within party lists, in addition to these factors, the trend toward gender equality is intimately linked with the broader process of cultural change and democratization.According to United Nations Report, even after being admitted to the electorate, women continued to be excluded from most political leadership roles until the last few decades, and they are still heavily underrepresented in parliaments and cabinets. Traditional cultural attitudes have long been suspected to function as a major barrier to women‟s representation in elected office, Cultural explanations hypothesize that in traditional societies, women will be reluctant to run and, if they seek the office, they will fail to attract sufficient support to win. Culture also seems like a major reason why many nations with a strict Islamic background have often ranked at the bottom of the list worldwide in terms of women in parliament, even the more affluent Arab societies like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, as well as Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon. A worldwide comparison of 180 nation states by Reynolds (1999) found that the greatest contrasts were between dominant Christian countries (whether Protestant or Catholic) and all other religions including Islamic, Buddhist, Judaic, Confucian and Hindu, all of which had lower proportions of women in legislative and Cabinet office. Political culture has therefore commonly long been suspected to be an important determinant of women‟s entry into elected office. International Research Journal of Management Science & Technology http://www.irjmst.com

Page 163

IRJMST

Vol 5 Issue 8 [Year 2014]

ISSN 2250 – 1959 (0nline) 2348 – 9367 (Print)

Evidence from the World Values Surveys demonstrates that in less-prosperous countries such as India, China, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria or Egypt, from 50 to 90 percent of the public still believes that men make better political leaders than women but in advanced industrial societies, an overwhelming majority of the public rejects this idea. Furthermore, we find large generational differences in advanced industrial societies, where older citizens are relatively likely to believe that men make better political leaders than women, but younger citizens ,especially younger women overwhelmingly disagree. The long-standing belief that “men make better political leaders than women” is changing, as younger generations replace older ones. Ronald Inglehart, Pippa Norris and Christian Welzel(2002) hypothesize that the process of modernization leads to both democratization and an increase in the proportion of women in public life .However they also recognize that some states, such as Japan, Ireland, France and the United States have high levels of democracy, but still have relatively few women in parliament.

India has much to celebrate with over one million elected women representatives in local selfgovernments, but the number of women in parliament is lower than the global average .India ranks 129 out of 147 countries on UNDP's Gender Equality Index, lower than all South Asian countries except Afghanistan at 141. One of the key factors pulling down India's rank on this index is the low level of women's representation in Parliament at just under 11 percent. As early as 1917 women in India raised the issue of representation in politics which at that time meant a demand for universal adult franchise. By for all women, 1930 women had gained the right to vote, even if initially it was women form elite families who benefitted in this regard. However even after the right to vote became a reality, their representation in political and decision making bodies has remained low in all these years after independence. The quest for greater political participation of women is therefore, still relevant. In india pervasive gender discrimination has resulted in sidelining even veteran women politicians. It is difficult for women to establish a foothold without patronage from powerful men in the party or through close personal relations as wives, daughters, and sisters. This is indeed a matter for serious concern because the level of political participation among women in any society acts as a reliable barometer of the health of its democracy. Women‟s representation in the parliament , while important on the grounds of social justice and legitimacy of the political system, does not easily translate into improved representation of women‟s interests. While we cannot assume that more women in public office, articulating interests and seen to be wielding power, the more the gender hierarchy in public life could be disrupted. Without sufficiently visible, if not proportionate, presence in the political system-“threshold representation”- a group‟s ability to influence either policy making or indeed the political culture framing the representative system, is limited.

International Research Journal of Management Science & Technology http://www.irjmst.com

Page 164

IRJMST

Vol 5 Issue 8 [Year 2014]

ISSN 2250 – 1959 (0nline) 2348 – 9367 (Print)

The elected women have been successful in subverting the boundaries of gender and in operating in a very aggressive male dominated sphere, the problem is that the class these women are from is largely elite . Power rather than representation Increasingly the compulsions of the political parties due to narrow majorities, precarious coalitions and hung parliaments have made the question of power rather than that of representation the motivating factor. Women issues, participation and representation are encouraged only within certain parameters and are constrained by the basic objectives and interest of the parties. Inspite of low representation of women , they have carved a place in Indian politics today. Some of them head parties, which may look relatively small in the national context but they cannot be ignored. Sonia Gandhi, Jayalalitha, Mamata bannerjee and Mayawati are prominent examples. Even though the rise of some of these women leaders could be linked to their proximity to male stalwarts, now they hold position of authority within the party in their own right and influence party decisions. Feminism has not yet become the voice of anger that it has become in other parts of the world. Indian women‟s reaction to the patriarchal forces in the society is complex. While acknowledging the existence of these forces, most do not view men as their oppressors. They have not yet asserted their right to complete independence from traditional Indian understanding of women‟s role. To attain long lasting structural change, feminist activists need to develop political visibility including media exposure and political clout. The ideologies of female subordination , dependence on political parties and corruption limits this approach. The strength of forces hostile to women, such as Islamic and Hindu fundamentalism diverts attention from basic development issues. The women‟s movement cannot cut a furrow on its own, but must become a part of wider efforts. It cannot be isolated from the diversity of India, but it needs to establish itself as an important part of the diversity.

International Research Journal of Management Science & Technology http://www.irjmst.com

Page 165