Gender equality and democracy (original) (raw)
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Thinking about Gender and Democracy
2010
What does putting the words ‘gender’ and ‘democracy’ together imply? It first of all highlights one of the fundamental principles on which democracy is based, that of political equality. This equality is not confined to voting rights. It is more substantive than that. Indeed, putting the word ‘gender’ alongside the word ‘democracy’ casts a light on democracy in action. It draws attention to the extent to which women, and women’s representatives, are included in policy-making. It highlights the occasions when women’s and men’s life patterns, perspectives, and interests diverge. And it draws attention to the manner in which a political system chooses to tackle gender inequalities.
After World War II, democratization came into fashion as panacea for countries in transition. This trend continues to be an issue in the 21st century too. The implications of the transformation for public as well as private life are considerably different for women than for men. Studies have shown that even in democratic states gender inequality has been reinforced than effectively attenuated. Feminist theories take up the issue of female discrimination on a theoretical level and provide explanations and measures in order to erase these inequalities. Gender mainstreaming is an approach to address gender inequalities in practice. The European Union, as a community of values, promotes gender mainstreaming not only among its member states, but also for its candidate states in the context of external democracy promotion. This paper examines the current gender initiatives in Serbia which is currently an EU candidate country. In fact, there are many gender activities form different civil society actors and NGOs around Serbia. The positivist feminist theories are more apt to explain the current gender activities. The post-structuralist theories mainly deal with micro situations. Therefore, it is difficult to apply these perspectives in a study on the overall gender situation in a specific country. By contrast, these theories could be applied for studying micro situations within a particular country. Accordingly, the theory has implications on the research design for such a study. A study based on post-structuralist theory would be based on ethnography rather than statistical data and a literature review.
WOMEN, DEMOCRACY, AND GENDERED POLITICS
Gender studies get us to examine how to distinct men and women based on social views constructing them as they are not supposed to be, unlike if we see them as they are. It articulates some analogical perspectives towards individual and states within international system on level of analyses. Connell (2002) argued that "gender is the structure of social relations that centres on the reproductivearena, and the set of practices (governed by this structure) that bringreproductive distinctions between bodies into social processes. 2 This leads to senses that gender still moves on the track of reproductive domain attached to every single person but it does not ignore the practices of each as these could be out of the track (bodies).
The crisis of democracy and the backlash against gender
UN Expert Group Meeting Beijing+25, 2019
The weakening of democracy is connected to a crisis in its capacity and legitimacy, the erosion of constitutional guarantees and rights, and the hollowing out of democratic values. My hypothesis is that gender backlash finds an opportunity in this crisis as well as contributes to the erosion of rights and the hollowing out of democratic values. The campaigns against gender also raise support for authoritarian leaders and legitimacy for anti-democratic politics.
Democratizing democracy: Feminist perspectives
Democratization, 2005
Increasing numbers of women have gained entry into the arena of representative politics in recent times. Yet the extent to which shifts in the sex ratio within formal democratic spaces translates into political influence, and into gains in policies that redress gendered inequities and inequalities remains uncertain. At the same time, a plethora of new democratic spaces have been created – whether through the promotion of ‘civil society organizations’ or the institutionalization of participatory governance mechanisms – which hold the prospect of democratizing other political spaces beyond those of formal politics. This study examines factors that constrain and enable women's political effectiveness in these different democratic arenas. We suggest that ‘engendering democracy’ by adding women or multiplying democratic spaces is necessary but not sufficient to address historically and culturally embedded forms of disadvantage that have been the focus for feminist politics. We suggest that an important, but neglected, determinant of political effectiveness is women's political apprenticeship –their experiences in political parties, civil society associations and the informal arenas in which political skills are learned and constituencies built. Enhancing the democratizing potential of women's political participation calls, we argue, for democratizing democracy itself: building new pathways into politics, fostering political learning and creating new forms of articulation across and beyond existing democratic spaces.
Democracy, Like Revolution, is Unattainable Without Women
United States Institute for Peace, 2013
Contrary to popular media coverage, the Arab Spring was not the first time Arab women took on leadership roles in populist uprisings. As far back as the 1919 Egyptian revolution against the British occupation, women in the Middle East have played pivotal roles in both political movements and mass protests. Indeed, women constituted a significant proportion of street protesters during the 1960s Algerian revolution, the Iranian revolution of 1979, and in Palestine during the First Intifada. This article posits that the biggest challenge facing women in Arab Spring countries is transforming their leadership and attendant influence during the revolutions into high level governance positions, both elected and appointed, after the revolutions. Despite their involvement in past revolutions, whether against native dictators or foreign occupiers, women in the Middle East have yet to attain the degree of political representation that reflects the scope of their contributions in deposing regimes. As soon as the conflicts end and the revolutionary fervor is over, society reverts back to traditional gender roles wherein women are expected to stay out of the political process beyond exercising any voting rights they may have. Their social and political positions remain largely unaffected notwithstanding their sacrifices. Without women’s participation in social and political institutions, nations are unable to develop healthy and sustainable democracies. And as a result, democracy repeatedly eludes the nations of the Middle East. What will differentiate the Arab Spring revolutions from past ones is the degree to which the political revolution triggers a social revolution wherein women have meaningful access to and representation in political institutions. Notwithstanding their increased participation in the public sphere as workers, women’s interests have been woefully underrepresented in the political process. Thus, women’s participation in the formal workforce, albeit at disproportionately lower rates than men, should not be mistaken for political representation and equal treatment before the law. Accordingly, those concerned with achieving substantive equality, as opposed to mere formal equality on paper, should focus on the following three key objectives: 1) amend election laws to increase the proportion of women represented in local, state, and national politics; 2) increase access to high level employment opportunities for women; and 3) reform public education curriculums to highlight the role of women in the revolutions and the various professions to counter perceptions of women’s inability or disinterest in roles outside of the home and to communicate to the youth how sustainable democracies depend on equal participation by women. In combination, these objectives increase the likelihood of a more equitable society wherein women are sufficiently empowered to minimize gender disparities and meaningfully contribute towards the nation’s progress.