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Key Text 'Politics' in Who Answers to Women?

Author: UNIFEM
Date: 2008
Size: 18 pages (855 KB)

Summary

What progress have states made toward increasing political accountability to women and how can that progress be accelerated? This book chapter from UNIFEM argues that increased political accountability to women comes not only from increasing their numbers amongst decision-makers; it must be linked to improved democratic governance overall. While accountability to women is now very much on the agenda of governments around the world, greater efforts are needed to ensure that women are engaged as equal participants in the inclusive, responsive, and accountable management of public affairs.

Recent years have seen an upsurge in the political mobilisation of women. Using their voices and their votes, women have sought to transform politics and reinvigorate political accountability. While experience varies, political accountability is increasing when women’s engagement in politics results in a positive feedback loop whereby women become drivers of the accountability process. Using the five stages of the political accountability cycle, progress in each area can be assessed:

Mobilisation: While women obviously do not represent a monolithic political entity, a gender gap in voting behaviour has emerged with women demonstrating distinctly different preferences than men. Women have begun to leverage this growing power through women’s organisations and movements, mobilising around issues that matter to women.
Representation: Historically under-represented in politics, women are making use of quotas and other electoral reforms to increase their numbers in legislatures and cabinets around the world. The internal mechanisms of political parties, however, have been slow to adapt to the new demand. As the principal pathway to political participation, this inertia has undercut women’s efforts at improving representation.
Legislation and Policy: While there are more women in government than ever before, their participation has been clustered around social policy-making positions, often inhibiting their influence in other critical decision-making areas. Nevertheless, the increased presence of women in politics is raising the profile of women’s issues, which has positive knock-on effects.
Implementation: This remains the most challenging of the stages, as many governments lack the capacity and the resources to implement gender equality policies even when the political will is present. This has spurred efforts to make bureaucracies more socially representative by bringing more women and more diversity into the civil service. Incorporating gender themes into broader governance reforms will also help to improve implementation success.
Transforming Politics: When implementation is effective, political accountability comes full circle, feeding into more effective and broader mobilisation of women and transforming politics as more interest groups take up women’s concerns. Where this accountability does not exist, it can lead to loss of trust in institutions and political disengagement by citizens, further eroding state legitimacy.

Women have made significant strides in eliciting accountability from the states in many developing countries. Not only are they demanding a voice and representation, they have also succeeded in placing issues traditionally seen as women’s issues into the mainstream political debate. Further reforms to help accelerate the progress already achieved include:

Electoral reforms that afford voters more choice of representatives, increasing the likelihood of women gaining seats
Political party reforms that provide quotas for women in the party leadership and improve women’s chances of competing for public office
Temporary affirmative action measures that remove other constraints on women’s access to office
Building state capacity to respond to women’s needs

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Source: UNIFEM, 2008, 'Politics' in Progress of the World's Women 2008/9: Who Answers to Women? Gender and Accountability, United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), New York, ch 2.
Organisation: United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), http://www.unifem.org