Women's Voices in Politics (original) (raw)
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Factors impeding women’s political participation - A literature review
International journal of applied research, 2017
Gender equality in political participation is a fundamental aspect of modern democratic governance. Under international standards, both men and women should have equal rights and opportunities to participate fully in all aspects and at all levels of political processes. Although, women have made great strides forward in obtaining a vote and right to be elected to political offices in many countries, they comprise less than 11 per cent of the Members of Parliament. Though the various legislative enactment and different commissions established for promoting gender equality, gender disparity still exists particularly in political arena too. Promoting women’s participation in politics is one of the core areas of women empowerment. The presence of women in the decision-making levels not only enhances their social, political and economic status, but also strengthens democratic institutions by making them more inclusive and meaningful. Though women have achieved greater strides still they ...
Women's Political participation and democracy
Naema Ali Abdullah , 2018
One of democracy's major principles are the basic human rights, which includes the political rights of both women and men. Equitable participation of women in politics and all decision making positions is essential to building and sustaining a democracy. A requirement of a fair democracy is that citizens' interests is to be heard, deliberated and legislated on. Women are half of the world's population, and as such their voice should be heard and considered in the democratic process for a better representation of the public. Democracy is determined not only by the form of institutions, but also by the extent of a degree in different social groups participation, which gives a better involvement to the purpose of democracy. Democratic governance need women participation in order to be a true representative of the public and build a viable and sustainable democratic system in society. However, without women participation, democratic governance is neither achievable nor sustainable as a great number of the society's voices are unheard. The participation of women in democratic governance is an important element of building a democracy and ensuring open, transparent and accountable decision–making processes are taken into an account to achieve gender equality society. In previous periods of history women were and are still facing obstacles in their political participation worldwide. The socioeconomic factors emerge as an obstacle to the advancement of women and inhibit their ability to make significant changes in politics. Women involved in politics for most cases have not got sufficient funds to run a successful campaign and have a lack of support from their political parties. Furthermore, the lack of access to good education for women, the complex nature of electoral system, huge burden of domestic tasks and general perception of women (that politics is always dirty and pure masculine sphere) are some of the many obstacles described to the advancement of women in being heard or being involved in politics. For the equal participation of women in policy-making, effort must be put into promoting gender fair government policies to increase participation of women such as legislative measures. Many countries have adopted some kind of quota system, during the elections to the parliament there are some seats that are reserved for women only, in order to level the playing field and enable women to enter this male-dominated field. The quota system was one of the biggest contributors towards increased political representation, which operates in more than 120 countries. The basic purpose of the quota system is to promote participation in women's government, in order to involve women in politics. The quota is applied temporarily to battle the barriers to women's political participation and to remove them.
Women’s political engagement- comparative perspective
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
A comparative Study: ROLE OF WOMEN IN POLITICS
Women play a twin role in election politics-as voters and political representatives. The full and equitable participation of women in public life is essential to building and sustaining strong, vibrant democracies. Women's political participation results in tangible gains for democracy, including greater responsiveness to citizen needs, increased cooperation across party and ethnic lines, and a more sustainable future.
Participation of Women in Politics: Worldwide experience
IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science (IOSR-JHSS), 2017
The presence of women in Parliament across the globe is a positive effort, whereby women are coming to Parliament. Now, if this study is seen now, at some socio-political level, some women from all over the world have themselves been presenting in Parliament and able to make themselves decisions. As mentioned in this letter, in 2017, there is only 23.3 percent of the female parliamentary seats in the world, which is very limited. The question arises that why women are not the leaders in politics? When women participate in politics, what problems do they face in front of them? In this letter, problems in women's politics have been faced. In political empowerment, women have to face the challenges of many difficulties. Women are not given the responsibility of creating their own nations. The representation of women in the parliament is weak. Due to the conviction of a woman, the elected women did not get much power in Parliament. This letter tells about enforcement measures which prevent a positive change in women's political participation. This paper has found that there are still many countries in which women's representation is non-existent such as women's participation in the Arab countries such as Yemen, Kuwait etc. is the lowest in the world and on the other hand, women's participation in the parliament of Nordic countries is better such as Sweden, Iceland and Denmark. It has been observed that differences in low political representation of women can be some difficulty, which has been evaluated in this paper. Interpretation has been given in the women's participation in Parliament has been done to reduce or improve barriers and to analyze the political empowerment of women and in the end, the suggestions have been given in this paper
Women and Politics: Strengthen Women’s Political Participation and Decision-Making Power
Journal of emerging technologies and innovative research, 2021
This paper attempts to study how in India, women's engagement in governance empowers them via active political participation. The term 'political participation' has a very wide meaning. According to the WEF Global Gender Gap Report 2020, India ranks 18th in terms of political empowerment, far better than its rank in the other dimensions of the index: 149th in economic participation and opportunity, 112th in educational attainment, 150th in health and survival, and 108th in the overall index. The political empowerment ranking sits above the UK's ranking of 20th and significantly above the US rank of 68th. The sub-index for political empowerment measures the gap between women and men at the highest level of political decision-making through the ratio of women to men in ministerial positions, the ratio of women to men in parliamentary positions, and the ratio of female to male heads of state in the past 50 years. India's positioning is strongly driven by the tenure of Indira Gandhi as Prime Minister from 1966 to 1977 and then again from 1980 until her assassination in 1984. While Gandhi's role as a prominent female leader should not be overlooked, it does somewhat skew our interpretation of India's positioning in the index. The other two measures that constitute the index see India ranked 69th with 30% of women in ministerial positions, and 122nd with 17% of women in parliament. The sub-index also fails to factor in state-level leadership, where significant powers sits. Of India's 28 states, currently only West Bengal has a female Chief Minister. Besides, the political empowerment sub-index focusses entirely on leadership. In this post, we explore the evidence around a range of areas linked to women's political participation in India, including political representation at different levels of India's political system, women as political leaders, and women as active citizens. Women around the globe, but particularly in many developing contexts, remain absent and invisible in political institutions and dialogue. As of 2015, women's suffrage in democracies was nearly universal and more than 130 countries had gone so far as to implement political quotas for women (Hughes et al. 2019). Gender quotas, for example, have been shown to increase women's representation, shift policy towards women's interests, and improve gender equality
Annual Review of Sociology, 2007
Women's political participation and representation vary dramatically within and between countries. We selectively review the literature on gender in politics, focusing on women's formal political participation. We discuss both traditional explanations for women's political participation and representation, such as the supply of women and the demand for women, and newer explanations such as the role of international actors and gender quotas. We also ask whether women are distinctive-does having more women in office make a difference to public policy? Throughout the review we demonstrate that a full understanding of women's political representation requires both deep knowledge of individual cases such as the United States and broad knowledge comparing women's participation across countries. We end with four recommended directions for future research: (a) globalizing theory and research, (b) expanding data collection,