How to Account for Gender Inequality in the Political Life of the Developing World

Equality between men and women has been globally acknowledged as a vital contributor to the increased development of stable societies in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Target 5.5 in particular aims to ensure “women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic, and public life” (UN, 2015). While the gender gap in public office and engaging in political processes has decreased over the last two decades, there is still an underrepresentation of women. Globally, just 24% of national parliaments are women and in the developing regions of the world, this figure remains smaller (IPU, 2018). As put forward by Basham and Vaughan-Williams (2013), through both legalistic and normative definitions, the narrative has been presented in which the idea of the citizen is scripted as a white, heterosexual man, leading to his powerful hierarchical position and the increased securitisation of others. Throughout bio-political literature, there have been critiques of a “lack of explicit engagement with gender as a significant category of political exclusion, both historically and in our contemporary context” (Masters, 2009). Following a brief analysis of the theories and lens for studying gender in the political sphere and an examination of current political dynamics, this essay aims to address some of the possible explanations for the underrepresentation of women in developing regions. This evaluation will be carried out under the following headings: Types of Systems in Place; Formal Laws and Institutions, Nature of Civil Society and Cultural Obstacles and International Factors.

Theories and Lens of Analysis:

The Study of Gender

When we discuss gender as a concept, we are referring to the “relationship between women and men based on socially or culturally constructed and defined identities, status, roles and responsibilities that are assigned to one sex or another, while sex is a biological determination”. Furthermore, “gender is not static or innate, but acquires socially and culturally constructed meaning over time” (UNCHR, 2002). Gender is, therefore, a package of values and expectations: what we collectively think men and women are and the roles they should play, changing over time and varying between societies. The key focus here is the idea that gender has been “socially and culturally constructed”. Characteristics initially thought to be inherently biological and therefore unchangeable are now understood to be the product of social relations and if they can be constructed, they can also be deconstructed. When we address the question of gender inequality, we automatically think of the woman. However, in doing so, differences are often disregarded in terms of race, class and sexuality and the word becomes a ‘catch-all’ phrase creating one homogenous group to be generalised, missing key varying experiences of different people. Gender involves a “plurality of identities existing in the single subject” (Waylen, 1996). Dominant feminist approaches in the 1970s allowed for the experience of white, middle-class western women to outweigh the experiences of the working class and women in the developing world. There is not always a commonality of how gender inequality is experienced in different parts of the world and importantly within different parts of the world. When women residing in the developing world were acknowledged it was often done so as the non-Western ‘other’, regardless of place in society or desired gender goals (Spivak, 1987). This is a lens of study this paper aims to keep in mind throughout. Secondly, in studying gender with a sole focus on the woman, we risk ‘adding’ women into the mix as a subcategory of politics or as a marginal issue to be explored without any fundamental transformation of the discipline occurring. Approaching this paper with gender at the centre, rather than just the ‘woman’ although this will prove to be a large part, allows to us to examine the power dynamics and interconnectedness between men and women which may otherwise be lost.

The Personal is International:

While conventional politics in the developed world rests largely with the electoral system, this doesn’t hold as much weight in many developing countries where authoritarian and military regimes have been commonplace. Political agendas, policy making, and implementation often vary in both parts of the world which needs to be taken into consideration when studying political dynamics. With the role of men in such dynamics taken as the norm, women’s involvement was often analysed as a deviation with the creation of myths and stereotypes surrounding women’s participation. This includes the framing of women as apolitical, passive subjects, often too emotional to withstand the level of rationality needed for politics. However, is not simply enough to evaluate the role of women as actors in the study of ‘conventional’ politic life. In doing so, the activities that women are typically involved in outside the male-dominated political sphere go unnoticed and are dismissed. Political activity outside conventional categories and the role it plays in the political process must also be investigated. Examples worth exploring include the role of political protests and the takeover of public space. Women protesting the disappearance of their relatives in Argentina by military commanders who planned the systematic murder of thousands during the dictatorship of 1976 and 1983 is one such example. This powerful and subversive political act saw protesters being called ‘Madres’ (Mothers) as they wore white headscarves to symbolise the diapers of their lost children. What is worth noting is the way women often use their socially prescribed roles to act politically (Kaplan, 1982). This political form can be described as the politicisation of the private sphere. The gendered politics of everyday life is argued to be of significant importance in understanding politics internationally (Hanisch, 1970). This theoretical framing enables us to get a more nuanced understanding of the way power and gender operates in a household, nationally and even internationally. The unpaid labour of a stay-at-home mother is an extremely political experience as she remains economically dependent on her partner and limits her opportunities for civic participation. The analysis of the political activities of different women’s movements should not occur separately from an analysis of formal politics, instead, they should be integrated.

Postcolonial Feminism:

The term ‘developing countries’ has been used to describe a group of states which are seen to share a similar position within the international economic and political system. Encompassing those with a less developed industrial base and a low Human Development Index relative to other countries, the term generally refers to many of the countries of Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia. As a huge number of these countries are ex-colonies, an examination of colonialism forms an important part of the study of gender in developing nation’s politics. Nadje Al-Ali et al. (2000), a feminist scholar, defines postcolonial as being “characterised by a series of transitions, a multiplicity of processes and developments towards decolonisation and de-centring of the ‘West’”. Postcolonial feminism, therefore, poses a challenge to Western feminist politics. In its theory, it criticises European and North American feminism for ‘universalising’ the conditions of women. In particular, second-wave American feminism argued an idea of “universal sisterhood” while neglecting distinctions of class, race and nationality. Under such thought, women of developing nations were perceived to be victims of ‘backward’ religious and patriarchal structures. Euro-American values were to be imperialistically imposed on other cultures who were unenlightened about the gravity of their plight. This ‘white saviour complex’ aligns with the historical rationale for colonisation in the first place. Through the study of postcolonial feminism, we are reminded that gender equality is viewed differently by women around the world and moves beyond the idea of universal oppressions. For example, the extreme obsession by people in the Western world with the veiling of one’s head through the use of the hijab in Muslim countries does little to advance actual gender inequalities as experienced by women in such nations. Islamic feminists often view the discussion around the patriarchal implications of veiling as a problematic discourse, rather than it being viewed as an often cultural, religious or traditional choice. Postcolonial feminism goes beyond Western ideals about what gender equality should look like depending on differing social, political and historical contexts.

The Facts and Figures:

In the traditional political sphere, there is a large gender imbalance with the proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments at 24% worldwide (IPU, 2018). At the end of 2017, there were 11 women serving as Head of State and 12 serving as Head of Government (UN Women, 2017). Additionally, there were 38 States in 2016 in which women accounted for less than 10% of parliamentarians in the single or lower house and 4 chambers with no women elected at all (IPU, 2017). However, as this paper deals with the developing regions of the world, it is worth disaggregating this data. Despite inequality existing both North and South, there is a difference between levels of women participating in the political life of states between developed and developing regions. Although this disparity may not be as wide as one would expect. The most recent data as of the 1st of October 2018 finds the following regional averages in descending order of women in the lower or single House:

Nordic countries42.3%Americas29.5%Europe – OSCE member countriesincluding Nordic countries27.8%Europe – OSCE member countriesexcluding Nordic countries26.4%Sub-Saharan Africa23.7%Asia19.8%Arab States18.6% Pacific 15.6%

(IPU, 2018)

It is extremely interesting to note that the two countries in the world who have 50% or more women in parliament in a single or lower house are: Rwanda with 61.3 per cent and Bolivia with 53.1 per cent (UN Women, 2017). As both these countries are developing nations, their success as outliners will be examined in the following section. Participation percentages overall have been steadily increasing since the 1990s with the adoption of gender quotas and international pressures. However, the underrepresentation gap remains a problem, often overlapping with other dimensions of discrimination in the developing world such as indigenous women facing a “triple challenge”: being women, poor and indigenous” (IPU, 2014). In Latin America, for example, despite the steady growth of women elected to office positions, Afro-descendants and indigenous people have a weak representation limiting their possibility of taking action in relation to social issues of racism and exclusion (Htun and Piscopo, 2014). It is also found that when women are elected to political office, influence also remains an issue. In Africa, Krook and O’Brien (2012) find that the fraction of women elected often find themselves appointed to policy areas considered more ‘feminine’ and less strategic roles including areas of defence, finance, foreign affairs and so forth. In examining the political repression of women in politics it is useful, to begin with, the recruitment model, a model of how citizens become politicians. A model developed by Matland (2002), women need to pass three barriers in order to reach office. Firstly, they must harbour a desire to run for elections. Secondly, they must be selected as a candidate by a party. Finally, they must be chosen by the voters. Explanations attempting to understand why each of these three steps may be blocked are examined below.

Explaining the Political Repression of Women:

Types of Systems in Place

The political recruitment process, as well as facing obstacles in regards to culture and formal laws, can also be affected by the types of political institutions in place. The gatekeepers who ultimately decide who is able to run as a candidate is ultimately political parties (Paxton and Hughes, 2017). As explained by Pesonen (1968), “the nomination stage eliminates 99.96% of all eligible people; the voters choose from only 0.04%.” It is likely for a party to re-nominate an incumbent rather than a challenger to run for election, which threatens to continue a ‘business as usual’ of disproportionate men in office. Electoral systems also demonstrate to a degree how political parties make their decisions. Electoral systems determine how votes cast in an election get transferred into seats and as the aim of political parties is to obtain power, they are substantially influenced by it. It is generally accepted that women fair better at gaining political office under proportional representation (PR) systems due to the higher district magnitudes. Norris (2006) finds that “as a simple rule, women proved almost twice as likely to be elected under proportional than under majoritarian electoral systems”. Paxton et al. (2010) found an increase of 2.5% of women in politics under PR systems, while Salmond (2006) estimated a 1.5% – 7% increase. However, there is an argument that such electoral laws may work better in increasing women’s numbers in Western countries. Countries such as Tanzania and Uganda, who use a plurality-majority system, have around 35% women in parliament (World Bank, 2017). Research on party ideology promotes the idea that those that are further left in their political leanings are more likely to put forward women candidates (Caul, 1999). For a right-wing party to put forward more women candidates, it is suggested that women’s party activism play an important role. Htun (2005) found that between 1999 and 2003, the women’s wing of Mexico’s National Action Party (PAN) continuously lobbied party leaders, ultimately resulting in higher levels of representation.

A basic way to determine a country’s political system is whether it is considered democratic, semi-democratic or authoritarian. As gender equality in politics is often argued under democratic justice, it is logical that women should be more adequately represented in a democratic process. However, this is not always the case. Statistical studies show that often democratic societies do not have increased gender equality in their parliaments than non-democratic societies (Kenworthy and Malami, 1999; Tripp and Kang, 2008; Stockemer, 2009). Communist countries, such as Cuba and China, utilise affirmative action strategies by Communist Party elites to place women in politics (Norris and Inglehart, 2001). Rwanda, with the highest number of women in parliament in the world, is considered an Authoritarian state. The immediate aftermath of democratisation, as was witnessed in 31 sub-Saharan African countries in the 1990s, experienced an initial decline in women’s political representation (Yoon, 2001). Yet, this can be temporary and has increased in these states over the last two decades (Fallon, 2008). Despite mixed findings, gender representation in non-democratic societies can have limited actual influence as authoritarian leaders may simply dispose of parliamentary reforms. With a lack of executive controls, the legislature in such states cannot as easily dispute such interventions. Goetz and Hassim (2003) found that in Uganda women’s ability to propose and change legislation depended deeply on what type of democratic system they were in.

Formal Law and Institutions

As quoted by Adriana Munoz, a Chilean parliamentary:

“Being a candidate is difficult for a woman because you need to have a lot of money. We have little help economically. Men have access to circles or networks where money is lent – they are friends with bank managers. But we are not supported this way. For us, its pretty complicated, this arena of power and money” (Franceschet, 2001)

The embedment of gender discrimination can be found to exist in many laws and regulations, including discouraging women’s economic opportunities. A study by Arriola and Johnson (2014) followed the allocation of all cabinet ministers in 38 African countries between 1980 and 2005. They found that cross-country variation in the appointment of women correlated to the degree to which women’s economic rights were protected under formal law such as the right to act as the legal head of household and property rights. The association of economic opportunities leading to the level of involvement in political life must not be an area overlooked. Htun and Weldon (2012) find that such practices are more common in nations with a pronounced political institutionalisation of religious authority. Although not a measure of the secularity of states, The Telegraph using WIN/Gallop data find that the most religious region in the world is Africa, followed by the Middle East, South-East Asia and Latin America (Smith, 2018). Htun and Weldon (2012) argue that in such societies patriarchal values are more entrenched and as a result, formal laws are more difficult to change.

In the most recent Women, Business and the Law project it was found that “104 economies still have laws preventing women from working in specific jobs, 59 economies have no laws on sexual harassment in the workplace, and in 18 economies, husbands can legally prevent their wives from working” (Iqbal, 2018). These restrictions were most commonly found in Sub-Saharan African countries and countries in the MENA region. Yemen, where less than 10% of the country’s female inhabitants are in the workforce, requires a husband’s permission to work outside the home and a male guardian’s permission to apply for a passport (Krishnan, 2014). In examining Swaziland, a woman must avail of the consent of a male relative in order to be part of a contract such as opening a bank account (Bardasi et al. 2007). In Iran, the financial support a woman receives from her husband can be threatened if she works outside the home without his permission. Formal restrictions on inheritance matters also prove widespread inequality for female surviving spouses in comparison to males and for daughters inheriting from parents in comparison to sons (World Bank, 2015). Dahan and Hanmer (2015) also found that in developing regions women are generally less likely to be in possession of identification documents which constrains their ability to operate in the economic sphere, including opening businesses, exerting voting rights or applying for credit. Although these examples may seem extreme, it was only in relatively recent years that such practices were removed in certain developing countries such as the obligation for a man to give permission for his wife to work in Spain in 1978 and Switzerland in 1984. In the developing countries, constituents are often paid or bribed to vote for a particular campaigner and as a result “power is literally purchased by those who can afford it” (Noftsinger, 2010).

Nature of Civil Society and Cultural Obstacles

Economic outcomes are also broadly determined by cultural variables (Alesina and Giuliano, 2015). In an attempt to isolate the effects of culture from that of the institutional environment, studies such as Jayachandran (2015) follow the behaviour of migrants once arriving in a destination country. In this particular analysis, cultural factors relating to women’s participation in the labour force still existed with concerns relating to women’s physical mobility and how that may affect her ‘safety’ and ‘purity’. Other concerns explored by the Milazzo and Goldstein (2017) found cultural beliefs surrounding a woman earning more money than her husband. Interestingly, attitudes among those in developing countries did not largely differ between men and women with 40% of those interviewed in Sub-Saharan Africa, MENA and South Asia agreeing that such a case would lead to marital problems. In examining constraints to women’s political participations, in particular, discriminatory attitudes also exist. Public surveys show that a number of countries believe that men make better political leaders than women and that men are reluctant to be led by women (World Values Survey, 2014). Cultural attitudes surrounding women’s political participation can be grouped into two basic sets: assumptions about a women’s inherent capabilities and beliefs regarding a women’s place in society.

According to the first perspective, women lack the temperament and capabilities necessary for involvement in political life. Biological differences between men and women, following this perspective, extend to areas such as “moral, intellectual and emotional dimensions” (Paxton and Hughes, 2017). Such ideas about women’s inferiority transmit an image of women as “lacking judgement and reason; as vain, duplicitous, capricious, seductive, weak-minded, generally inferior and, often, as downright evil” (Coole, 1988). As noted with a woman’s access to economic opportunities under formal laws religious values have a large role to play in the cultural beliefs of the role of women. Religious teachings which contradict the role of women’s political participation exist across all major religious and thus, a country’s level of religiosity affects gender equality in political life. In Afghanistan under the Taliban rule, women were prevented from learning how to read or write and were expected to maintain the status quo of patriarchal interpretations of religious texts (Sorush, 2005). Cultural attitudes can directly affect political ambition between both genders. Lawless and Fox (2010) posited the question: Are equally qualified men and women equally interested in and willing to run for political office? Although their study focused on those in the United States, they found that despite qualifications women were much less likely to aspire for office or to run. Traditional gender-role socialisations were observed, which when applying to the developing world hold much more weight. Whereas girls are encouraged to focus on private, intrafamilial affairs, boys are encouraged to focus on public, extrafamilial affairs (Conover and Grey, 1983). Research by Paxton and Kunovich (2003) found that culture had a greater effect than any other explanation, such as labour force participation, on political representation. New laws which are in great conflict with existing norms and culture are likely to lead to backlash and risk failure (Acemoglu and Jackson, 2017). In India, for example, laws banning abortions for sex determination have not proved successful in acquiring the desired outcome as it did not address underlying cultural preferences for sons over daughters and sex ratios in the country have worsened over time (Arnold et al. 2002). Complementary interventions prior to the introduction of such laws are therefore important to deviate from discriminatory norms.

International Factors

Development theorists have seen the incorporation of the developing world into the international system as exploitive, with colonisation as an important mechanism in which underdevelopment and dependency have occurred and been sustained. Profoundly impacting the social, political and economic creation of the developing world, this examination should also be extended to gender relations. It is true that is difficult to generalise assumptions about colonialism due to the huge diversity of experience. However, often at the heart of the stereotype of ‘vulnerable’ women in developing countries is a gendered and racialised subtext that remains at the core of public discourse. Women in such regions of the world, as reasons for imperialism, have been reduced to victims suffering under an ‘alien’ culture and are helpless to traditions which mark women’s bodies as submissive to men’s. Razack (2007) places the ‘imperilment’ of the female body in a history of western encounters with the ‘other’. This, she argues, is an example of ‘race thinking’, or “a structure of thought that divides up the world between the deserving and the undeserving according to descent.” Waylen (1996) finds that in many pre-colonial African societies, although not characterised by equality, often entailed greater ‘interdependence’ between both genders. In such societies, O’Barr (1984) claims that in agricultural communities,

“women usually (1) had political control over some area of activity, be it farming, marketing, trading or household and family affairs; (2) had political institutions (usually councils) to decide how to rule their own affairs or to influence the affairs of men; and (3) were not subject to general control by men as much as they were autonomous in their own areas of responsibility.”

Women belonging to the Igbo people in southern Nigeria had their own structures of power headed by a female omu, who had a council of female elders paralleling that of the males (Van Allen, 1972). Meetings were held when issues arose in relation to roles and women would often take sanctions against men to resolve grievances. Okonjo (1976) has described this as a ‘dual-sex system’. Colonisers brought to such nations a different idea of gender constructions, and to different extents, imposed these nineteenth-century European ideals onto the societies they came into contact with. Colonial administration was “bureaucratic, hierarchical and authoritarian” with officials almost always men (Waylen, 1996). Among the Igbo people, the female omu was ignored while her male counterpart had his role turned into a salaried position (Van Allen, 1972). The development of ‘export-oriented’ colonial economies led to a reduction in the status of women with a decrease in their access to land and labour resources and efforts to encourage ‘cash crop production’ was channelled through men (Henn, 1984). Customary legal systems installed were the product of men seeking to maximise their power though exaggerating their authority in traditional arrangements. Such laws which seen the subordination of women are emphasised by different scholars to reflect colonial imposition, rather than precolonial practices (Channock, 1982; Oyewumi, 1997).

Colonialism may continue to have effects on women’s empowerment today. A study of school textbooks finds women are represented by the British colonial education system who “cook, clean and nag their children and husbands” whereas “the father is the provider and makes all the decisions” (Brickhill et. al, 1996). Today, with the rise of visual representations of woman in developing regions as helpless and inferior, her voice is also defunct. Spivak (1988) argues that the subordinate female cannot be heard or read, as they are refused the space in which to speak and ultimately ignored when they do. Beliefs in the superiority of the West produce images of women in the South as being frozen in time, space and history with practitioners and academics speaking on behalf of the apolitical victims instead. Representations of such women can make “poverty, misery, lack of recognition, imprisonment… seem natural for bodies of colour” and lead to a lack of engagement with gender equality (Fernando, 2016). In examining the political participation of women in the developing world, it is therefore important that Western nations do not act as an obstacle by denying agency.

Disrupting Politics as Usual:

The Quota System

Although it is difficult to establish a counterfactual, several studies have pointed to the adoption of quotas for increased representation. Over the last two decades, over half of the world’s states have introduced varying types of quotas as a means to advance women’s representation in governments (Franceschet et al., 2012). Such policies have been awarded for helping to increase female representation in both houses combined from 12.7% in 1998 to 24% in 2018 (IPU, 1998 and 2018). The Nordic countries, which remain the top region for women in parliaments, have done so with the adoption of political quotas over the last 60 years and such choices are more commonly being seen in developing regions (Milazzo and Goldstein, 2017). International influence is cited as having more importance for the adoption of gender quotas in a country, in comparison to domestic activism (Norris and Dahlerup 2015; Hughes et al., 2015). This influence has been seen in relation to aid conditionalities and support during peace operations. Rwanda is one such example, who since the adoption of a 30% quota in 2003, has seen female representation dramatically rise until reaching 61.3% in 2017 (UN Women, 2017). With countries still facing a gap since the adoption of quotas, different factors are offered to explain the lack of success including the wording of the law, low political will and a lack of mechanisms to sanction for non-compliance (Franceschet et al., 2012). The adoption of gender quotas in village-level councils in India has seen many positive outcomes. Evidence suggests that female leadership has affected parents aspirations for daughters to achieve higher levels of education and increased women’s entrepreneurship in manufacturing sectors (Beaman et al., 2012; Ghani et al., 2014). Views towards the ability of women to be effective leaders and their probability of being elected increased after two terms with the quota instated (Beaman et al., 2009). Such temporary affirmative actions can, therefore, be extremely important for the long-term success of gender equality in the political realm and have been connected to other further positive social changes. These include a reduced occurrence of corruption and a greater inclination to report crimes against women with a further positive judicial outcome (Beaman et al., 2010; Iyer et al., 2012).

Conclusion:

Formal constraints and social norms are important factors that are continuing to negatively affect gender gaps in political participation. The evidence discussed demonstrates that deeply entrenched social norms about the role of women in society are pervasive in not only the developing world but also in many western countries. Furthermore, the legacy of colonialism and Western perceptions of women in the Third World also have a role to play in the subordination of women in such states. Affirmative action, such as the adoption of gender quotas, has seen the probability of women competing and acquiring power in elections increase dramatically and has aided breaking down perceptions about the ability of women to be effective leaders. Research also indicates the strong relationship between political and economic representation. A low female labour force can strengthen adverse traditional attitudes held about the ability of women, ultimately leading to the underrepresentation of women in public office. An increase in women’s education and economic participation by removing both formal and informal barriers discussed above paves the way for an increase of women participating in national legislatures. On the other hand, a higher presence of women in parliament has seen a correlation with greater equality of employment laws and a higher probability of women reporting gender-based crimes. Behavioural change requires time and gradual enforcement and continued exposure to equal representation of gender is necessary in order to induce real social change.

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