Background Document - Danish Institute for Parties and Democracy

DANISH INSTITUTE FOR 

PARTIES AND DEMOCRACY 

A CHRISTIANSBORG SEMINAR 2012 BACKGROUND PAPER 

WOMEN IN POLITICS 

DIVERSITY AND EQUALITY FOR A DEMOCRATIC CULTURE 

WOMEN IN POLITICS DANISH INSTITUTE FOR PARTIES AND DEMOCRACY PAGE 1

The vision of the Danish 

Institute for Parties and 

Democracy is to contribute 

to the development of well 

functioning political parties 

and multiparty systems 

in a democratic culture, in 

support of the aspirations 

for freedom and human 

development of citizens in 

developing countries.

DANISH INSTITUTE FOR PARTIES AND DEMOCRACY 

WOMEN IN POLITICS 

DIVERSITY AND EQUALITY 

FOR A DEMOCRATIC CULTURE 

A CHRISTIANSBORG SEMINAR BACKGROUND PAPER 

ABOUT THE COVER PHOTO 

Women actively participate in a sweep campaign before local elections in Bihar state of India. Organized 

by UN Women’s partner, The Hunger Project, the campaigns motivate other women to fearlessly stand for 

elections despite the risk of violence or oppositions. These campaigns also educate them 

about rules and procedures to file candidatures. 

(Photo: UN Women/Ashutosh Negi) 


DIVERSITY AND 

EQUALITY MATTERS! 

Searching for ideas and practices that can inspire change 

This background document is not about the statistics on women in politics, because 

we already know the situation too well. As stated in the Millennium Development 

Goals Report 2011 from the United Nations: 

“Despite growing numbers of women parliamentarians, the target of equal participation 

of women and men in politics is still far off.” 

Progress is clearly slow, indeed frustratingly slow. Only 26 countries worldwide 

have managed to achieve the 30 per cent target for women in decision-making positions 

set by the Beijing Platform adopted in 1995. Globally we have still not been able 

to climb above 20 per cent. When we dig deeper into the different dimensions like 

top leadership positions in parties and cabinets at national level, ministerial posts, or 

heads of municipal councils, the picture just gets even more depressing. 

So despite some progress, the reality we live in continues to be one of discrimination 

against women, in law as well as in practice, resulting in both equality and diversity 

suffering. 

Denmark is doing better than most countries in this area. As suggested in the last 

article of the background document, maybe the secret is that sustainable equal status 

development has been rooted in a combination of top-down and bottom-up politics. 

The state pushed equality through legislation, but making it a living and vibrant reality 

required the hard and persistent work of various civil society organisations, as well 

as strong individuals. 

In a sense this is not a new recognition, but rather a general recipe for change or 

development. But it is nevertheless important to remember when we search for ideas 

and practices that can inspire change. Both sides are important; each side needs the 

other. 

This is different from stating that every country should now copy what Denmark 

has done. We know that this is not possible. While recognising that principles of diversity 

and equality are important dimensions of a democratic culture, we must accept 

and understand that they have to be managed and practiced in different cultural, religious, 

social and political settings. 

The Christiansborg Seminar is therefore not driven by a search for the ‘one-size-fitsall’ 

magic bullet, but rather for ideas and experiences from our global village, which can 

inspire all of us in our different localities. 


Of course this search will also build on all the wealth of knowledge others have already 

accumulated. The journey we have travelled so far indicates that many different 

areas need to be dealt with in a strategic manner to ensure progress: Equal constitutional 

rights for women and men need to be included; different electoral systems can 

offer different avenues; the use of quotas or reserved seats for women can be considered; 

the role of party rules for recruitment procedures should not be underestimated; 

capacity development to strengthen skills and resources of women is needed; and reform 

of the rules and internal procedures within parliament may also be helpful. 

Changes in institutional structures and regulations are often possible in the shortterm. 

But history tells us – including the successful Danish history – that egalitarian 

attitudes towards women and men, improvements in human development, and societal 

modernisation are long-term undertakings. After all, it took Denmark around 150 

years to reach the present 40 per cent level of women parliamentarians and see the 

first woman become Prime Minister! Maybe other countries can reach this level more 

quickly. 

At the end of the Christiansborg Seminar 2012, we hope to be able to adopt a statement 

on principles, ideas and practices that can inspire our work on support for women 

in politics. 

This will of course not be a legal document, but rather a commitment by the Danish 

Institute for Parties and Democracy to follow these principles when we engage 

with our partners, both in the area of party-to-party partnerships and in the area of 

multi-party partnerships. At the general level this is already codified in our strategy 

for 2011-2013 “Political Parties in a Democratic Culture”, but we hope that the ideas and 

practices presented in the seminar will make it possible for us to deliver more effectively 

than is the case today. 

We believe that this is important and necessary as an end in itself. But it is also important 

and necessary because the empowerment of young women in politics, women 

engaging in politics at the local level, as well as women in politics in countries undergoing 

some form of transition contribute to the overall strengthening of democracy. 

WOMEN IN POLITICS DANISH INSTITUTE FOR PARTIES AND DEMOCRACY PAGE 5 

Bjørn Førde, Director


CONTENTS 

9 Young women in politics 

FROM HOUSEHOLD LEVEL TO NATIONAL POLITICS 

23 Women in local level politics 

SOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY AND PUBLIC PARTICIPATION 

37 Women in transition countries 

STRUGGLING FOR THEIR FAIR SHARE OF OPPORTUNITIES 

45 Gender and democracy 

DANISH DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION IN A GENDER PERSPECTIVE 

57 Networks and toolkits 

SOME RESOURCES THAN CAN INSPIRE YOUR WORK 

ABOUT THE PHOTO 

A woman in traditional dress peaks out from behind a Bolivian flag while listening to Bolivian 

Presidential Candidate Evo Morales speak at a rally December 13, 2005 in the capital La Paz 

(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images).


YOUNG WOMEN 

IN POLITICS 

From household level to national politics 

BY MARYSE HELBERT, AUSTRALIA 

The aim of this background paper is to offer recommendations as to 

how to increase the participation of young women in politics through 

party assistance, based on an analysis of positive and negative experiences 

from around the world. 

They will show how these experiences attempt to answer the triple 

challenge that political parties are facing in engaging more young 

women in politics. 

Indeed, there is an overall decline in political participation and engagement 

among voters and members in political parties generally. 

Additionally, women overall have experienced difficulty in fully participating 

in politics due to structural constraints. And lastly, research 

shows that young people tend to be more interested in informal political 

action rather than formal political participation. 

Getting more young women into politics can only be achieved if action 

is being taken from the household level right through to national 

politics. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Maryse Helbert has been an advocate for, and researcher on, women’s participation in politics 

and decision-making for over a decade. After completing a Master’s thesis on the comparative 

strengths and weaknesses of the French and Finnish political systems in encouraging and increasing 

women’s political participation, she became actively involved in the movement to institute 

the so-called ‘Parity Law’ in France (1999-2000). She has since broadened her research to include 

women’s involvement in decision-making processes related to development, specifically in the 

context of resource exploitation and climate change, where evidence shows that women are 

being sidelined. 


Excited supporters of the Peace, Unity and Development Party (KULMIYE) during an election rally 

in the city of Hargeisa, Somaliland. (Photo by Petterik Wiggers/Panos Pictures). 


INTRODUCTION 

Defining young women is the first task. Typically, being young falls within the ages of 

0 and 30. However, when talking about the right to vote, it is generally at the age of 18 

that young people attain that right. A third pertinent point may be put forward when 

talking about an interest in politics. While it is from 18 years of age that most countries 

allow the right to vote, politics can be a subject of interest for those who have yet to 

reach the legal voting age. 

In the current political scene, political parties play a central role in the governance 

of modern democracies as they are the bridge between civil society and government. 

As such, any decline in their voluntary base can be seen as a source of weakening the 

weight of civil society in the democratic debate. So the recruit of members is in some 

ways a way to promote a healthy democracy. 

Additionally, if political parties are bridges between citizens and the state, the 

more diverse the citizens are within political parties, the more strength the democracy 

has. To be diverse, political parties need to reach out to young women. If political 

parties are the gatekeepers to women’s advancement to power, and as the UN Convention 

of the Rights of the Child recognises the right of children and young people to be 

involved in decision-making (1989), this is a strong case for political parties to reach 

out and promote more young women to be actively involved in politics. 

This paper will first review the triple challenge that political parties have to grasp 

in order to get more young women into politics; positive and negative experiences 

will highlight how political parties answer the triple challenge; and lastly, recommendations 

will be made. 

“We know that the guys have their own 

networks, even in equal societies, there are 

associations that have existed for hundreds of years 

and they still do not let us women in. We need to have 

our own networks supporting each other.” 

AN OVERALL DECLINE OF ELECTORAL PARTICIPATION 

AND PARTY PARTICIPATION 

International literature on political participation shows that there is an overall decline 

in electoral participation and also in the participation in political parties. Overall, 

since the mid-1980s, there is a notable decline in voter turnout except in countries 

that enjoy some form of compulsory voting. Five of the top seven countries with the 

highest voter turnout – Australia, Nauru, Singapore, Belgium, and Liechtenstein – enforce 

compulsory voting laws. 

The voter turnout decline runs parallel with the membership of political parties. 

Whiteley sees in the decline the increasingly closer relationship between political parties 

and the state. This, in turn, has converted active members into ‘unpaid state bureaucrats’ 

due to increased regulation and control. 

The increasingly close relationship between political parties and the state means 

that there is ‘little incentive to recruit or retain members for financial reasons’ as po- 


ASTRID THORS 

MP OF THE PARLIAMENT OF FINLAND AND FORMER MINISTER OF IMMIGRATION AND EUROPEAN AFFAIRS

litical parties ‘rely on the state to fund their activities’. 1 In other words, it could be said 

that while there is an overall decline in political engagement, there is also an overall 

lack of interest in engaging new, active members in political parties. 

THE CHALLENGE OF GETTING MORE WOMEN INTO POLITICS 

The challenge of the overall decline of membership numbers is reinforced by the historical 

challenges women have had in getting a fair share of the political scene. Young 

women may be facing the same daunting challenges. Any move in getting more young 

women into political parties will need to have an understanding of these challenges. 

Only since the beginning of the 20th century did women start to have the right to 

vote. For some countries, such as Saudi Arabia, women will have the right to vote and 

to run for municipal election only in 2015. Switzerland gave women the right to vote 

in the 1990s. 

Explanations justifying not giving women the right to vote include: Women were 

not interested in politics; it is impossible to find women who want to run for elections; 

and women would vote as their priest directed. In some countries active political 

policies had to be put in place in order to promote the greater inclusion of women 

in decision-making positions. 

Nowadays, few countries have reached equality in political representation and 

while quotas have been implemented in political parties or for decision-making positions, 

‘its significant effect in having the inclusion of women on candidate lists ultimately 

depends on the political will of the parties and effective enforcement of the 

law’. 2 

Overall, women still constitute only 19.6 per cent of the members of parliament 

around the world. Men have historically dominated parties despite women making 

great strides in recent decades. For the most part, the structural constraints women 

have to face if they wish for a political career are the same within political parties. And 

while there may be many women at the base, there are very few at the top. As power 

increases, the number of women decreases. 

In the seven countries for which data was available, 51 per cent of active party 

members were women, of which generally only 16 per cent of party presidents or 

secretaries were women. Men commonly hold the most senior or powerful positions 

(president, secretary general, economic secretary, programming secretary, etc.). Women 

tend to occupy less influential positions such as minutes secretary, archivist, or 

director of training or culture. 

This lack of political representation within political parties is due to its ‘highly 

gendered institutions that incorporated women on a different basis from men and 

in ways that impeded their access to leadership positions’. 3 So it is a challenging and 

daunting task facing young women indeed. 

THE CHALLENGE OF GETTING MORE YOUNG PEOPLE INTO POLITICS 

As for women in politics, the challenges for young people in politics are just as harsh. 

For example, while 65% of the African population are under 35, the parliament of the 

different countries of the whole continent do not meet the challenges in matters of 

political representation of such a young population. Political parties have historically 

ignored young people and young people’s interests despite being, on a world scale, 

half of the population. And while it is hard for young men to attain real opportunities 

to reach decision-making positions within political organisations, it is even harder for 

young women. 

1 Whiteley, 2011, 22 

2 International IDEA, 2012, 11-12 

3 International IDEA, 2005, 115 


There are two opposite trends regarding young people and political parties. One 

is that the academic world has not considered young people and politics as a key research 

topic, and political parties have not considered young people as an issue of concern 

within their party. On the other hand, it seems that young people have different 

interests in politics than their elders. 

There is an overall understanding that there is a dramatic decline in the political 

involvement of younger generations, and decreasing levels of youth participation in 

elections, political parties and traditional social organisations. Research shows that 

generally, young people conceptualise politics differently, ‘seeing it as an arena for the 

older generation, and not linked directly to their own lives’. 4 

They also have a broad mistrust of political parties. Research also shows that, overall, 

young people who are not involved in politics have the feeling that political parties 

are not addressing their interests and they feel powerless in relation to the political 

system. They simply believe that they can’t have an impact. And even if they are members 

of political parties, they cannot see themselves playing important roles or being 

leaders in these parties. 

“We are not going to be able to solve the 

gender problem in our political parties without the 

support of men within the women’s committee. We 

have been missing that kind of strategy 

as women in Kenya.” 

In some countries, a two-party system seems to deter the political interests of 

young people as they feel they have a lack of alternatives. It is worth noting that one 

of the reasons the Greens party overall attracts more young members than the traditional 

political parties is that the Greens party agenda tends to be much closer to 

young people’s political concerns. 

There are two voices in conceptualising the decline of young people’s political 

interests. Some see the decline in interest in politics as a reflection of the increased 

individualism within the population. Indeed, some argue that the lack of interest in a 

formal model of political engagement is due to the new era of neoliberal discourse to 

which young people have been submitted. 

The neoliberal discourse has in some ways shifted interest from society to the 

individual. Members of the younger generation would be primarily interested only in 

themselves. Ward suggests that the new form of political engagement could be conceptualised 

as political consumerism, whereby citizens would consume politics as 

consumers would consume goods. 

While the pessimistic voices see the increased individualism of society and the 

consumption of politics as a threat to the future of democracy, the optimistic voices 

look rather at the wide variety of political actions, formal and informal, which have 

emerged over the last two decades and point the finger at the political parties not be- 

4 Ann and Shuib, 2011, 175 


MRS PENINAH MWASHEWA 

NATIONAL LABOUR PARTY, KENYA

ing able to keep up with and ‘being disconnected from young people’. 5 

Indeed, the optimistic voices do not see any threat to the future of democracy but 

rather a revival and a renewal of democracy due to the diversity of political action that 

the political parties have to grapple with. These informal political actions create new 

modes of expression and participation that seem to appeal to young people. The new 

modes would be elite challenging forms of participation. They would, for instance, 

focus on single issues or what Norris calls a ‘cause-oriented style of politics’ 6 , or what 

Giddens calls lifestyle politics. Others mention other forms such as the rise of networks, 

issue associations and lifestyle coalitions. 

Overall, the combined optimistic and pessimistic voices would point to an inadequacy 

of traditional democratic arrangements for contemporary youth. 

Beyond the two voices conceptualising young people’s attitudes and behaviours 

towards politics there are factors that determine their engagement. Major research 

in the USA shows that those who get involved in the new/informal forms of political 

engagement are those who are also more likely to get involved in formal forms of political 

engagement. In other words, young people who show political apathy in getting 

involved in formal political actions are also impossible to reach through other means 

of political action. 

Indeed, factors which determine political engagement are linked to education and 

overall social status and social economic background. The higher the education, the 

higher the political involvement of the parents, and the higher the social economic 

background of the parents, the more likely young people will engage in politics, 

whether formal or informal. 

Other factors would be the multiple challenges young people have to face nowadays 

which may have an impact on their political attitudes and behaviour. Young people 

‘have to cope with dynamic social conditions during their transition to adulthood, 

which confront them with increasing demands for flexibility on the labour market, 

with self-reliance concerning welfare security, and with demands for increasing activity 

with respect to participation in the democratic process’. 7 

Although the political engagement of young women is not weaker than that of 

men, it is nonetheless different. Young women tend to be less involved in formal politics 

and more involved in the informal ‘civic form of engagement’, such as socialmovement-oriented 

activities, that are for instance voluntary work, collecting money, 

and collecting signatures, and it seems also that ‘youth participation in politics using 

the new technology continues to be structured by gender’ in the same way. 8 

There are varying factors to explain the difference. Due to the burden of duties 

such as caring commitments, household domestic duties, but also the requirement 

of the full participation in the workplace which involves working long hours, young 

women would lack opportunities and resources to fully engage in formal politics. In 

fact, a parallel could be made between women having a late entrance in professional 

careers due to their other domestic/caring commitments and women entering the 

political scene late for the same reasons. However, they are nonetheless a huge political 

force. 

Another factor that could contribute to explaining the difference of interest in 

politics is women’s socialisation. Women’s political socialisation is ‘understood here 

as the process whereby they internalise the view that politics is a man’s world’. 9 A study 

of junior high school students found a significant gender gap in political interest in 

the United States. Boys had more interest in politics and boys and girls did perceive 

politics as something that held greater interest for boys. Except for Finland where 

5 Carnegie UK Trust, 2008b, 14 

6 in, Odegard and Berglund, 2008, 594 

7 Gaiser and Rijke, 2008, 542 

8 Cicognani et al., 2012, 562 

9 Gidengil et al., 2010, 335 


adolescent girls envisioned themselves as being more politically active as adults and 

more skilled about politics than the boys, research shows that young women tend to 

silence their engagement and knowledge in politics. 

The perception that politics is a man’s world can be mitigated however if there is 

the presence of female role models. Role models outside and inside the family circle 

increase the likelihood of political activity. Additionally, if one parent is involved in a 

political party, it is more likely that the offspring will also be. And, last but not least, 

having a mother actively politically involved has a particular impact on their daughters’ 

political involvement. 

Researchers of young women’s political involvement emphasise the mother role 

model effect and say that it is not confined to the elite level. The internal functioning 

and culture of political parties would also be another constraint to women’s commitment. 

Internal functioning, such as the way meetings are organised, the decision-making 

process, the formality of the decision-making process, the formality of 

speaking in front of other members, deter young women’s full engagement in politics. 

INCREASING YOUNG PEOPLE’S POLITICAL INTERESTS: 

THE CASE OF NEW ZEALAND 10 

In research undertaken on how to reach out to young people, the advice is as follows: 

Keep it simple, keep it positive, keep it relevant, keep it real, leave the script at home, 

hold onto your values and ask young people to participate. 

In the face of an overall decline of young people’s political engagement and interest, 

and the overall perception as being powerless to promote their particular interests, 

the Auckland City Youth Council initiative is very interesting. 

Created in 1984, the Auckland City Youth Council ‘enables young people to learn 

about their community, their city and their local government’. It was made up of 

up to 25 young people, aged between 12 and 24 years, whose role was to advocate 

on behalf of young people. It was an advisory board. Youth council members were 

self-nominating and were accepted provided they attended the induction. As New 

Zealand overall and Auckland in particular are characterised by a young population 

which is diverse in culture, identity and experiences. Despite principles at the heart 

of a youth council promoting youth participation which needed to be meaningful, 

connected to wider decision-making and occurring in ways that young people have 

control over’, the first stage of the youth council showed that having a youth council 

did not guarantee youth participation, voice and power in decision-making processes. 

After 15 years of existence, the youth council achievement was a source of disappointment. 

There was an overall perception that high achieving young people were 

overrepresented on the youth council. Additionally, the formal structure of the committee 

meetings, such as speaking through a microphone, making formal resolutions 

and requesting to speak through the chairperson, seems to deter young people 

from voicing their issues or engaging in robust discussion and debate. 

Following a thorough review and structural changes, in 2010, a new structure 

had achieved a better representation of its local communities. Not only were issues 

debated in a better environment within the council but also with young people outside 

the council. The youth council had also increased its capacity to run effective 

projects, such as implementing a regional youth council. 

The success of the Auckland Youth Council in 2010 is due to the quality of the relationships 

that have been built between the council, the community and the wider 

10 Finlay, 2010, 53-59 


youth population. Overall, it could be concluded that the success of this initiative is 

linked to enabling young people to have a strong voice that leads to action and to 

provide a space for young people to be heard in civic affairs and in informing policy 

development. 

What is critical to its success is that young people have been put ‘at the centre of 

a process created for them that allows flexibility and ownership over their participation’ 

in civic affairs. Following the initiative in Auckland, it can be shown that political 

parties have to find a more fertile strategy to reach young people and one way to do 

that is to build bridges between such youth councils and their own structure. 

ENHANCING YOUNG PEOPLE’S POLITICAL INTEREST: AGORA DEMOCRATICA 11 

Another initiative to try to reach out to young people is happening in Ecuador and 

Columbia. Organised with the cooperation of International IDEA and NIMD, this initiative 

aims at reaching young people in order to enhance their political engagement. 

The first phase of its program is a series of 12 workshops that take place on the 

regional level in Ecuador and that aim to raise the consciousness among young people 

of their rights and of being aware of the barriers that prevent them from participating 

in politics. 

This initiative is associated with an interactive website called ‘activate’, where 

young people can interact and learn about Ecuador’s state institutions and ways to 

participate. The last phase of the initiative is to offer training, especially for young 

talented political representatives in political marketing. Part of this initiative specifically 

targets young women. 

REACHING YOUNG PEOPLE WHERE THEY ARE 

As a move to reach out to young people, and especially young women, in 2012 the 

South Australia government gave a grant to a young women’s group. This grant will 

be used for further developing the group’s website, connecting to other social groups, 

training members to manage and update their website and to instruct others on how 

to set up a website. This initiative, which has not yet been evaluated, is a really good 

attempt to reach young people where they are and through tools which are of interest 

to young people. 

While attempts to reach young women are always welcome, particular attention 

has to be paid to the message and the content. In 1999 the Greens party in the town 

of Fremantle in the state of Western Australia put in place a new initiative particularly 

targeting young women. The local women’s wing put into place a political mandate 

and used its network to reach out to local young women who wanted to run for 

election. Criticism, such as the complexity of the message and the lack of ownership 

regarding the content of the political mandate, was raised in explanation as to the 

failure of the initiative. 

11 Source: Lizzie Beekman, political advisor, NIMD 

“Having a youth council does not 

guarantee youth participation, voice and 

power in decision-making.” 


WOMEN’S ORGANISATION UNITS IN PARTIES 

While many political parties claim to have institutionalised structures for women in 

their party rules and procedures, most of them do not get support from their parties 

and they are merely used as a symbolic function as they do not have a clear mandate 

or resources for action. In these units, women’s political participation is limited 

to support tasks, mobilisation and logistics. A specific mandate of the women’s unit 

must be promoted in order to be used as an active arm of the political party, mobilising 

women voters and providing logistical support – especially during campaigns. 

Two major papers, one by the UN and the other by International IDEA, have set up 

the groundwork on what has to be done within political parties in order to make them 

more women friendly. 

The first one, Empowering Women for Stronger Political Parties, and the second, 

Gender and Political Parties: Far from Parity, develop the basic principles at every 

stage of political party life to meaningfully include young women. It is a good practice 

guide with recommendations. It talks about the internal party organisation and what 

to do before, during and after the electoral period. 

The women’s units’ role should be promoting gender equality and monitoring 

party commitments to gender equality, advising the party on gender policies and educating 

party members on the importance of these issues, and organising women politically 

from the standpoint of equal rights and opportunities that should be extended 

to promote young women and young women’s interests and specific situations. 

“A male political culture created 

barriers to women’s advancement 

towards high positions.” 

POLITICAL PARTY STRUCTURE AND YOUNG PEOPLE 12 

A report conducted by the NIMD shows how the organisation of political parties is 

crucial in integrating young people. In this report Gideon compares the organisation 

of political parties in Ghana and Kenya. 

He finds out that overall, while all political parties had a youth wing, the political 

culture of the Kenyan political parties impedes opportunities for young people as it 

was based to a large extent on network patronage. For young people who are less reliant 

on networks, it means they have to make their way in the political party outside 

the traditional system of party patronage, which makes it very difficult. 

Cooperation between young people in the Netherlands and Mali shows how crucial 

the commitment of the (older) political establishment is to ensure young people 

stand a fair chance in being elected to representative bodies. Sharing experiences, 

ideas and best practices was useful in order to pinpoint common gridlocks in getting 

actively involved in political parties. 

THE JOINT YOUTH AND STUDENTS’ PLATFORM 13 

DemoFinland carried out a small-scale study on women’s role in Nepalese youth 

politics and in the Joint Youth and Students’ Platform. The Joint Youth and Students’ 

Platform aims at enhancing young people’s political empowerment and constructive 

12 http://www.nimd.org/news/1775/gideon-chitanga-on-youth-participation-in-ghana-and-kenya 

13 DemoFinland/Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland, 2007. 


dialogue across party lines. It also brings together nineteen political youth and student 

organisations from different backgrounds. It aims, among other things, to enable 

capacity building of the youth and student wings of political parties. 

The small-scale study on women’s role in Nepalese youth politics and in the work 

of the platform clearly showed that Nepalese society still relies strongly on patriarchal 

values and these were reflected in the political parties overall and in the scheduling of 

youth activities particularly. Political parties were dominated by a male political culture 

and it created barriers to women’s advancement towards high positions. 

In the interviews, young females felt that gender quotas had substantially improved 

their political participation even in the Joint Youth and Students’ Platform. A 

common wish was that the quotas would be extended to the decision-making level so 

that women could be involved on the top level. DemoFinland has also organised a successful 

exchange about experiences between women’s units in Ghana and Tanzania. 

Similarly, NIMD has organised discussions between youth units of different countries, 

regions and political parties in order to share knowledge about difficulties for 

young people in being meaningfully included in political parties. Initiatives such as 

Suriname and The Netherlands youth wing, the Bolivian partner program (FBDN), The 

Youth Commission of the Permanent Forum of Political Parties in Guatemala, were 

implemented to increase knowledge among young people. 

THE AUSTRALIAN ‘NEXT GENERATION’ INITIATIVE 14 

Following a call from its members to increase young women’s political en-gagement 

in decision-making positions, the Labor Party in Australia has put in place the ‘Next 

Generation’ initiative. This initiative aims at giving real-life experiences of political 

action to young women. The program consists of two streams: a residential program 

and placement in a campaign. 

The residential program aims at placing young women with women who hold a 

decision-making position, such as a high position in a political office, a union or a nongovernment 

organisation. The second part of the program is to place young women in 

a political campaign. As such, young women will follow a candidate that is running for 

election and learn first hand the ‘unwritten rules’ of a political campaign. 

These two programs are associated with workshops: one is called ‘Empowering 

Women’s Professional Development Program’ and the other is speed date mentoring. 

The first workshop aims at ‘providing political skills training, including campaign 

planning, government lobbying, affirmative action strategies and social change advocacy’. 

Speed date mentoring is aimed at providing a platform for women to support 

women, such as Networking Events. These events are tailored for young women. The 

women’s wing of the Labor Party is using a wide range of mediums that include Facebook, 

Twitter, the political party base and university political groups to reach out to 

young women via this program. 

After running it for two years, an evaluation of the ‘Next Generation’ initiative has 

shown real enthusiasm as members asked to retain it. 

THE COMMITTEE TO PROMOTE WOMEN IN POLITICS IN CAMBODIA 

A grant was made by the UNIFEM/UNDEF program to promote women in politics in 

Cambodia. This was used to improve public support for women politicians. It included 

strategies to achieve objectives such as training, advocacy, dialogue, civic education 

and the development of a peer support network. This project was put into place in 12 

of the 24 provinces of Cambodia. 

14 A special thanks to Hutch Hussein, EMILY’s List Australia National Co-Convenor who was interviewed 

to share information about this initiative. 


It is believed that the work of this program tripled the number of women commune 

councillors in two provinces in 2007, doubled the number nationally by 2008, 

doubled the number of women in the top ranks of national party lists and raised the 

percentage of women in parliament from 19% to 22%, despite the short timeframe 

to implement it. 

Beyond the numbers, this initiative increased women’s skills as politi-cians and 

reinforced the links between women at the local and national levels. It increased 

awareness and support for women politicians by political leaders and voters. 

Specifically, the program put into place eleven courses for existing women commune 

councillors to strengthen their effectiveness in office and each woman councillor 

was individually helped through monitoring to ‘work through scenarios faced 

in council meetings’. Additionally, within political parties in Cambodia, women were 

provided with some basic items, including clothing appropriate to wear while campaigning 

and a bicycle for moving around. 

AFRICAN REGIONAL PROGRAM TO INCREASE WOMEN’S 

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION 15 

This initiative was aimed at sharing experiences and knowledge about women’s political 

participation in the different countries of the African continent. 

For instance, in the documentary produced around this program, Alice Nzomukunda, 

Member of the Democratic Alliance for Renewal in Burundi, travelled 

with other women members of political parties in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and 

Zambia in order to understand what kind of challenges other women are facing in 

other political parties: ‘What they are going through and how they have been able 

to overcome challenges’, as Peris Tobiko from the Orange Democratic Movement in 

Kenya stated. 

In other words, the aim of this program is for women to share positive experiences 

and knowledge about women’s political participation. While this kind of cooperation 

consisting of cross-party or cross-country exchange is being praised as a 

key tool in understanding the challenges women are facing to get into positions of 

power, the participants of this initiative also emphasised the crucial role of grassroots 

activism as a way to increase political engagement. 

“Participants emphasised the crucial 

role of grassroots activism as a way to 

increase political engagement.” 

THE SWISS MENTORING PROJECT: ‘FROM WOMAN TO WOMAN’ 16 

Started in 2000, the National Youth Council of Switzerland (NYCS) has been running 

a mentoring program in politics for young women called ‘From woman to woman’. 

The NYCS decided to run this program in 2009 when it became aware that there were 

only a few women in the higher positions of organisational bodies of the NYCS as well 

as in the overall political participation of young women in Switzerland in general. 

15 http://nimd.org/document/1916/increasing-womens-participation-in-decision-making 

16 Neruda, 2005 


The program was broadly understood as aiming to promote more women in 

the political sphere, including encompassing political parties. Each year there are 

around 25 mentoring couples participating. Usually, a young woman member of the 

NYCS – the mentee – is associated with a woman occupying a position in politics 

or another high position in the public sphere (NGO, union, political party) as the 

mentor. The idea is for the mentee to exchange ideas and gain experience from the 

mentor. 

This mentoring program is associated with ‘additional training sessions on issues 

such as gender politics, media work, international politics, a visit to the Federal 

Office for Women’s Issues and a meeting with a female minister’. 17 The mentee/mentor 

is expected to fulfil a number of goals set up by the mentee, such as face-to-face 

meetings to talk about personal issues, and discussions on how to organise and manage 

the work-life balance with job, family and politics. 

After three years of evaluation, the results have shown that overall, the mentees 

reported a better career and future planning, broader networks and more self-confidence 

in delivering public speeches. They also mentioned being more interested 

in political issues in general, in political organisations such as parties and in gender 

equality. The program helped them improve their knowledge and practice in project 

management, the planning of their further education in the area of political issues 

and their media performance. 

It is also worth noting that this program resulted in really good media coverage 

in bringing the under-representation of women to the forefront of political issues. 

Another effect was the multiplication of the program at different levels, such as the 

European level in Austria, Estonia, Portugal and Malta. 

More has to be done by setting realistic expectations about the mentoring relationship, 

increasing the range of activities to increase experience, and expanding 

the time to be invested between the mentee and the mentor in order to extend positive 

outcomes. It is worth noting that some mentees were disillusioned about the 

reality of political life. 

THE WOMEN CAN DO IT PROGRAM IN THE BALKANS 18 

Originating in the Norwegian Labour Party Women’s Movement, it was then implemented 

in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Kosovo province, Macedonia, Montenegro 

and Serbia. It aims at ‘raising awareness about gender inequality and creating 

the capacity to change the situation’. It is essential for women and young women 

who are already involved or who could potentially become active in public life. They 

can also be women coming from NGOs and local political parties, from the health 

and social sector, schools and local administration. 

It is sustained by a training program to increase ‘political skills and motivation 

among women to take on responsibilities and decision-making positions in public 

and political life’. It encompasses four steps: The Training-for trainers – two-day local 

seminars where the participants learn about gender equality status in their own 

countries; a training workshop to deliver speeches, cope with domineering techniques, 

solve problems in a creative way, manage stress and defeat, campaign and 

network; then the participants plan a local action to practise the new skills; and 

following that there is an evaluation seminar. Local partners (women’s group) have 

been the main actors within the program, carrying the main responsibility for the 

seminars. 

Overall, the evaluation of the seminars is appreciated by the participants, espe- 

17 Neruda, 2005, 2 

18 NORAD, 2005 


cially their down-to-earth and practical skills. Thanks to this program, a substantial 

number of women have been involved and the activities have ‘strengthened women’s 

organisations and underpinned the work done for gender equality in general’. 

RECOMMENDATIONS AT THE GENERAL LEVEL INCLUDE 19 

´ working through grass-roots campaigns, school programs (mock elec-tions), entertainment 

events and other methods of communication to reach out to young 

people and to engage them politically; 

´ participating in the creation of young people’s spaces to meaningfully voice their 

concerns, issues, interests and ideas; 

´ promoting structures in these young people’s spaces which meaningfully facilitate 

young people’s voices to make them feel they can have an impact and to ensure 

diversity of representation; 

´ facilitating cooperation between youth councils (at any level) or youth organisations 

across party, ideology, regions and countries to share ideas, experiences and 

knowledge about how to improve young people’s and especially young women’s 

voices to be better heard and included in political agendas at every level; 

´ participating actively in cause-oriented political action as a way of reaching out to 

young people; 

´ promoting young women’s political action, initiative and method of communica- 

tion by offering support including financial support and web support. 

RECOMMENDATIONS AT THE POLITICAL PARTY LEVEL 

´ modifying the structure of the political party organisation to be more ‘young women 

friendly’; 

´ have a legal framework and governing documents which are gender sensitive; 

´ have a youth and women’s organisation; 

´ have measures taken to promote young women’s participation in governing boards 

and decision-making structures; 

´ establish party consensus to promote young women’s electoral positions and to 

place them in winnable positions on party lists with real financial assistance; 

´ give a real voice to young women by including their interests and agenda in the 

overall political party mandate. 

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ASSISTANCE TO YOUNG WOMEN 

´ mentoring: residential program and placement in campaigns; 

organise workshops to share knowledge and experiences about the party rules and 

unwritten rules, and how to make their way through the political party structure; 

´ offering workshops to increase political skills and motivation among women to 

take on responsibilities and decision-making positions in public and political life; 

´ promote cooperation between youth and women’s units of political parties across 

ideologies, regions and countries to share information and knowledge. 

19 Carnegie UK Trust, 2008b, 14 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Ann, Teo Sue and Shuib, Rashidah (2011), ‘Young People’s Perceptions of Roles and Responsibilities 

as Political Party Members in Malaysia’, International Conference on Social Science and Humanity 

(IPEDR 5; Singapore: IACSIT Press). 

Institute of Politics: John F. Kennedy School of Government, A Guide to Reaching Young Voters, Anonymous, 

Harvard, 2004. 

DemoFinland/Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland, Political Youth Organisations: Strengthening the 

Voice of Yout in Politics: The Finnish Experience, Anonymous, Helsinki, 2007. 

UNIFEM-UNDEF, Democracy with Women, for Women: Seven Grants that Helped Change the Face of 

Governance, Anonymous, New York, 2008a. 

Carnegie UK Trust, Empowering Young People: The Final Report of the Carnegie Young People Initiative, 

Anonymous, London, 2008b. 

UNDP/NDI, Empowering Women for Stronger Political Parties: A Good Practices Guide to Promote 

Women’s Political Participation, Anonymous, New York City, 2011. 

NDI/UNDP, Empowering Women for Stronger Political Parties: A Good Practices Guide to Promote 

Women Political Participation, Ballington, Julie, New York City, 2011. 

International IDEA, Women in Parliament: Beyond Numbers, Ballington, Julie and Karam, Azza, 

Stockholm, 2005. 

Briggs, Jacqueline Ellen, ‘Young Women and Politics: An Oxymoron?’, Journal of Youth Studies, 11, 6, 

579-92, 2008. 

Cicognani, Elvira, et al., ‘Gender Differences in Youths’ Political Engagement and Participation. The 

Role of Parents and of Adolescents’ Social and Civic Participation’, Journal of Adolescence, 35, 561-76, 

2012. 

Finlay, Sarah, ‘Carving out Meaningful Spaces for Youth Participation and Engagement in Decision- 

Making’, Youth Studies Australia, 29, 4, 53-59, 2010. 

Council of Europe, Revisiting Youth Political Participation: Challenges for Research and Democratic 

Practice in Europe, Forbrig, Joerg, Strasbourg, Council of Europe Publishing, 2005. 

Gaiser, Wolfgang and Rijke, Johann de, ‘Political Participation of Youth. Young Germans in the European 

Context’, Asia Europe Journal, 5, 541-55, 2008. 

Gidengil, Elisabeth, O’Neill, Brenda, and Young, Lisa, ‘Her Mother’s Daughter? The Influence of Childhood 

Socialization on Women’s Political Engagement’, Journal of Women, Politics & Policy, 31, 334-55, 

2010. 

National Youth Council of Switzerland, Mentoring as a Means to Empower Young Women in Politics: 

Conclusions of the Swiss Mentoring Project “From Woman to Woman”, Neruda, Veronika, Bern, 2005. 

International IDEA, Gender and Political Parties: Far From Parity, Rosa, Vivian, Beatriz, Llanos, and 

Garzon de la Roza, Gisela, Stockholm, 2012. 

Sloam, James, ‘Rebooting Democracy: Youth Participation in Politics in the UK’, Parliamentary Affairs, 

60, 4, 548-67, 2007. 

Whiteley, Paul F, ‘Is the Party Over? The Decline of Party Activism and Membership Across the Democratic 

World’, Party Politics, 17, 21, 21-44, 2011. 



WOMEN IN LOCAL 

LEVEL POLITICS 

Social accountability and public participation 

BY SUMONA DASGUPTA, INDIA 

Involvement of women in local politics is critical for their political and 

economic empowerment. 

Yet across the world there are several impediments to this process. 

Patriarchies cut through cultures and institutions across the world, 

sometimes in more open forms, at other times in a more subtle hidden 

manner even as it may differ in the degree in which it can affect 

women’s participation in politics. 

This paper will begin with examining the term “local politics” and 

critically discuss the factors that both enable and inhibit women from 

entering this space. 

It will also analyse what difference women can or have made as 

elected representatives at the local level both in rural and urban spaces 

drawing from examples and case studies across the world. 

Finally it will explore some of the best practices of advocacy strategies 

that promote the role of women in local politics. 


Sumona DasGupta is a Political Scientist and independent research consultant based in New 

Delhi. She is currently senior research consultant with Society for Participatory Research in Asia 

(PRIA). Her research and publications focus on issues of governance and democratic dialogue, 

conflict and peace building, and South Asian politics. Gender is a cross cutting issue that informs 

all of her work. Her book ”Citizen Initiatives and Democratic Engagements: Experiences from India” 

from 2012 looks at issues concerning women’s political leadership in local governance as one 

of the issues covered. 


A villager casts her vote in a polling booth in Nungmaikhong village, Manipur, India. About 62 percent 

of the 802,000 registered voters voted in an incident-free second phase of Lok Sabha (Lower 

House of Parliament) elections for the Inner Manipur parliamentary constituency on April 22nd 

2009. (Photo by Sanjit Das/Panos Pictures). 


INTRODUCTION 

The growing discourse on deepening democracy around the world is increasingly being 

anchored around democratic decentralisation and meaningful local governance 

which is also being linked to greater social accountability and public participation. Governance 

is not just about government, but is now seen as a much wider process that 

involves how the idea of “public good” is both framed and contested – a process that 

involves both private sector and civil society actors. 1 

The idea of local politics rather than local government provides space to examine 

how multiple actors – among them political parties – connect and contest for power 

in the formal and informal local spaces in a scenario where local governments have to 

increasingly live up to the expectation that they can indeed be responsive, accountable 

and participatory. 

If being participatory is one of the principles informing the call to decentralize it 

follows that inclusion of women in local politics has to be ensured and actively encouraged 

– through political parties, organisations, social movements, etc. Involvement of 

women in local politics is critical for their political and economic empowerment. 

LOCAL POLITICS 

Local politics is intrinsically linked to the idea of the local community 2 whether in rural 

or urban areas, which is increasingly being invested with some degree of local autonomy 

across the world through a process of local self government. The local community 

so empowered with the right of self government is then in a position to perform a series 

of functions related to planning, development, service delivery, maintenance of local 

assets such as schools, houses and streets et al. 

In performing these functions it engages in decision making and governance for 

promoting public good in the local area. Since what constitutes ‘public good’ is itself a 

matter of contestation, the business of local government also becomes an arena where 

local politics is played out, under the overarching principle of democracy. Like at the 

national level, various aspects of a political process are in evidence at the level of local 

politics such as local elections with or without direct party activity, and rise of and 

changes in political participation by the local population. 

There are different political phenomena around local autonomy and it can be noted 

that local politics within local communities, the relationship between national politics 

and local politics and the conflict and cooperation between central governments and 

local governments are all significant points of departure for the study of local politics. 3 

Though the question of autonomy is lined with local politics and it may be analytically 

possible to study this as an isolated political space it is still necessary to pay attention 

to the manner and extent to which local politics and government is guided by 

the interventions of national politics and governments. The central-local relationship 

theory or the inter-governmental relationship theory is the theoretical frameworks 

that have developed these viewpoints systematically. 4 

1 Tandon and Mohanty (2002). 

2 Encyclopaedia of Life Support Systems. 

3 Ibid. 

4 Ibid. 

“The importance of women’s informal 

community work also amounts to their 

involvement in local politics.” 


While contesting the post of an elected representative (as urban councillors and 

mayors in towns and cities or as representatives in countries and villages) is the most 

visible form of participation in local politics this is not the only means of involvement. 

There is a considerable amount of literature that indicates the importance of 

women’s informal community work that also amounts to their involvement in local 

politics. 

Drawing on experiences from Africa, Chabal (1999) has indicated the porous borders 

between the personal and the political and the importance of unravelling this 

in order to understand the political process. If this is so then informal dynamics at 

the community level possibly work in conjunction with formal democratic processes 

to enable women to access leadership positions. The by now well-known feminist 

articulation that the personal is in fact the political logically led to such a distinction 

between formal and informal spaces of politics and the importance of the latter for 

women’s political agency. 

For instance drawing on case studies from South Asia and West Africa, Purkayastha 

and Subramanium (2004) point to a large number of informal networks that foreground 

women’s agency – and this would clearly also include political agency – in the 

developing world. They point to how local networks from the state of Karnataka in 

India have formed informal groups at the periphery and become recipients of development 

assistance preventing such resources from being captured completely by 

local elites. The participation of women in new social movements across the world, 

most of them centred on local issues related to life and livelihoods, has also become 

an important instrument of political transformation. 

However taking a slightly different line of argument, some scholars have rejected 

what they see as the artificial dichotomy between the formal and informal spaces 

and modes of local politics pointing instead to the commonality of the underlying 

political processes of both. For instance Brownhill and Halford (2004) draw on examples 

of women’s community action in London’s docklands and local government’s 

women’s committees to indicate there are theoretical and empirical interconnections 

rather than disconnects between these two forms of action rendering this dichotomy 

between formal and informal politics meaningless in any substantive way. 

Having identified the spaces for local politics we now turn our attention to the 

reasons that are advanced for women’s inclusion in local politics. 

WHY WOMEN IN LOCAL POLITICS 

There is a substantive body of literature on why it is necessary and desirable to have 

women involved in local politics. The economic conditions of men and women differ 

and women must have the opportunity to allocate scarce resources to also benefit 

women and bring their perspective to the decision making table. The democratic 

component of the system will be strengthened by inclusion of women, and the legitimacy 

of decisions taken will increase as women gain equal access to a system largely 

dominated by men. 

It is also possible to argue as Siddiq and Allen (2011) have done that women councillors 

can make a difference for the women they represent, and could introduce a 

feminized view to local governance more broadly, something that has the potential 

to aid all constituents. That is not to say that women should have to help women in 

order to ‘earn’ their place on the council, but that the presence of higher numbers 

of women in local politics will make this feminization process more likely to occur.” 

Acknowledging this, the role of women in decision making at the local level was 

specifically addressed by landmark international agreements and conventions notably 

CEDAW and Beijing Platform for Action (1995). The International Union of Local 

Authorities Worldwide Declaration on Women in Local Government 1998; Item 9 

says: 


“The problem and challenges facing humanity are global but occur and have 

to be dealt with at the local level. Women have the equal right to freedom from 

poverty, discrimination, environmental degradation and insecurity. To fight these 

problems and to meet the challenges of sustainable human development, it is crucial 

that women be empowered and involved in local government as decision makers, 

planners and managers.” 

While the participation of women in local politics has been poorly documented 

till specific studies were commissioned such as the UNESCO study of 2000 to document 

and increase awareness of the issue in Asia Pacific and the study conducted by 

the Council of European municipalities and regions of 2008, it appears that despite 

being under represented in positions of power worldwide, women across the world are 

better represented in local politics and government as compared to the national one. 

We now examine why this is so more closely. 

ENABLING FACTORS 

The basic factor that has enabled women to access local politics more felicitously as 

compared to national politics is because participation in local government is probably 

easier for women to accommodate in their daily lives along with their multiple roles 

in the family, household and employment. Local government is also seen as more accessible 

in terms of the number of positions available and perceived to be less threatening 

as it is an extension of the work they already do in the community. 

“Women councillors can make a difference 

for the women they represent, and could introduce 

a feminized view to local governance more broadly, 

something that has the potential to 

aid all constituents.” 

Once the process of women being elected at the local level gained momentum 

the environment became more open for them, and to women’s issues being on the 

agenda. Of course much of this culture of acceptance in the last two decades has been 

prompted by an active women’s movement and by statutory requirements for quotas 

of women. 5 

The report ‘Comparative study Women in Local Government in Asia and the Pacific’ 

has identified some key factors that create an enabling environment for women 

to enter local politics. These are: 

Positive laws, practices and initiatives that ensure participation including statutory 

provisions guaranteeing women the right to participate, signing of CEDAW; national 

policies and programme such as specific women’s departments and plans; participatory 

local government structures even if these are not specifically gender specific; 

participation of NGOs in encouraging women to participate; training to participate; 

regional and international conferences that provide support, training and initiatives 

that increase the number of women; encouragement by women within local government 

to other women to participate and support them and collection of data that enhances 

the visibility of women. 

5 Comparative study of Women in Local Government in Asia and the Pacific. 


In fact training and capacity building are seen as crucial interventions that would 

provide an enabling environment for women to enter and assume leadership in local 

politics. 

In the e-discussion conducted by iKNOWPolitics in 2009 on women in local politics, 

women from Burkina and Ivory Coast including an aspirant from the latter wrote 

in about the importance of support and capacity building for women to enter local 

politics. The aspirant from Ivory Coast wrote: 

“Women are not enough confident they are not prepared for the job. Many of 

them refuse to run for election. In order to increase women number in election at 

the local level the following measure are required: Strengthen women ability to do 

politics; promote best practices in local governance; promote women candidacy 

thanks to coaching and experience sharing; and the reinforcement of women’s 

leadership.” 

Women are also more likely to participate in devolved systems of local governments 

which have more autonomy, financial freedom, hold regular elections and are 

generally more open to change rather than ones strictly controlled by the central government. 

In fact decentralisation is seen as a key to women’s participation in local 

level politics. 

Contributors from Senegal and Mali made this point in the e-discussions on women 

in local governance in August 2009. 

For instance Fatou Diop from Senegal made the case for decentralization as a key 

tenet in improving local governance mechanisms by making them accessible to women. 

“The decentralization process is one of the main measures undertaken for improving 

local governance. In order to have solid local institutions, more women involvement 

is required. In villages and small towns, women are doing all the work 

and they are also the first victims. In order to increase the number of women in 

local governance quota is required in the case of Senegal.” 

Mariam Diallo makes the point that decentralization can also result in enhancing 

the capacity of local communities through knowledge transfer: 

“In Mali we have 8 regions, 40 circles, and 287 administrative districts. There is 

three level of decentralized authority: Regions are divided into circles, circles into 

commune and communes into quarters. The main goal of the decentralization process 

is to share the central power with the local entities. Not only will the power be 

conveying but also the skills and knowledge for an effective decentralization.” 

A proportional representation system can result in more women being elected 

and there also appears to be some evidence that local elections based on the ward system 

create more visibility for women, and give them a better chance to win elections 

as well as keeping campaign costs low. 

Introduction of quota systems for women in local government in some parts of 

the world such including South Asia has resulted in significant increases in the number 

of women being elected and employed. However the discussion around the quota 

system may need to be qualified a little further. 

The summary of the e-discussions on women in local governments in 2009 cites 

the example of Jordan as a case in point where the use of quotas in 2007 led to over 

300 women being elected as municipal council members. At the time of the discussion 

in 2009, some 35 countries had quotas at the constitutional level or legislative 

quotas at the subnational level, quotas at the party level for electoral candidates (pro- 


portional representation in party lists such as in South Africa), and other forms of 

electoral reforms that support women’s participation at the local level. 

At the same time many discussants pointed out the need for a deeper understanding 

of the existing quota models and their impacts. It was pointed out that in 

some countries including Pakistan for instance there appeared to be a bias against 

those who were elected through quotas – a fact that would be true for other South 

Asian countries as well. 

A revealing study from Tanzania titled “Why women succeed in local politics” 

conducted by Anne Francis (undated) reinforces that in this case the informal factors 

that enable women to succeed to political positions cannot be discussed in isolation 

from the formal processes. 

In Tanzania the local elections are fought on a party basis and in fact the entire 

sample of councillors interviewed entered the political arena through the ruling party. 

From the research sample it was evident that all the women were long term party 

members including the women’s wings. Special seats were considered as a stepping 

stone to being a ward councillor, but the study indicated an ambivalence about how 

women themselves perceived this affirmative action and whether the special seat 

provision in this case was in fact more divisive and disempowering. 

Informal factors were also at play with the study indicating that it helped to have 

a family member active in a party –however further investigation was needed to reveal 

the extent to which women mobilise these contacts for advice, funds or campaign 

strategies or simply use them to smoothen the route to power. The study further 

hypothesizes that a number of informal factors could be at play in explaining 

why women do succeed in local politics – among them activism/leadership in formal 

community groups such as church, women’s groups school board, village committees 

or economic and self help groups, supportive family and positive role models. 

Interestingly in a very different setting in Norway where women entered the 

political process in a big way since World War II including at the local level, there 

was at least till 1971 a urban-rural divide with lower participation by women in the 

countryside where traditional sex role patterns were more firmly entrenched than 

in urban areas. Here too at least in the first three decades after World War II family 

engagement in politics and role models were factors that contributed to the women’s 

success in local politics. 6 

As a comparison between women in local politics in South Asia, East Asia and 

Pacific regions with that of the south east Asian region indicates women are more 

likely to succeed if they have had a longer history of enjoying the right to vote and 

participate, enabling political and electoral arrangements including affirmative action. 

Participation at the local level would also be related to the social and economic 

circumstances under which women live. 

While it may be easier for women to enter local politics as compared to national 

politics there are also formidable structural and institutional factors that hinder 

their participation. This largely emanates from patriarchy being the organisational 

principle at home and in the workplace across the world though in different degrees. 

Highly patriarchal societies enforce rules, responsibilities and behaviour for women, 

6 Means 1973. 

“Decentralisation is seen as a key to women’s 

participation in local level politics.” 


enforcing these norms in ways that affect their self-confidence, limiting their access 

to information and skills and reinforcing their lower status. The following section 

deals with this. 

BARRIERS TO PARTICIPATION OF WOMEN IN LOCAL POLITICS 

Some of the institutional and structural barriers to women’s participation in local 

politics can be identified as follows: 

´ Entrenched sexual division of labour within the households and outside: While in many 

parts of the world such as South Asia women do enjoy constitutional rights their actual 

roles are still closely tied to their reproductive and household functions. This makes 

it difficult for them to find time for politics. Closely tied to these sexual divisions of 

labour are associated cultural and traditional norms that entrench these even further. 

´ Low indices on the human development index for women: Demographic statistics in 

South Asia and Africa for instance indicate low literacy rates, poor health and poverty 

particularly for women that points to a lack of basic rights to education, health care, 

safety and employment opportunities. 

´ Discrimination: Women often face discrimination in practice when standing for office 

to local government positions even if laws are in their favour. Attitudes that put policies 

and decision making into the male preserve see women as incapable of management 

and governance roles. 

´ Institutional cultures within political institutions at all levels including local ones are 

not favourable to women as they often have styles and modes of working that are 

unacceptable to them. The male dominated environment within the institution can 

limit the extent to which women can bring forward issues relevant for women and ones 

related to social justice. Some also find that society and colleagues have unrealistic 

standards and expectations for them. 

´ The culture: Women are not prepared to be involved in political environments which 

support an aggressive culture, combative debate and personality conflicts as well as 

male; colleagues who have difficulty coping with women and so belittle and personally 

attack them. The increasing corruption in politics is another disincentive. 

´ Campaign expenses can be prohibitive for women who are also active in the unpaid 

care economy and earn less than men in the labour market. Once elected they have to 

superimpose their new duties on their already existing ones in the home – the lack of 

child care support and timings of the meetings have also been a problem. 

´ The provision of quotas for women in local government has not necessarily created a 

culture open to facilitating the participation of women though it may have facilitated 

their initial entry into the system. In some cases reserved seats are decided through 

indirect elections and women have little autonomy. Sometimes women are nominated 

rather than elected from reserved seats – this creates a system of patronage that can 

prevent them assuming independent positions of leadership. Even when they are elected 

from reserved seats and not nominated the reserved seats are seen as having an 

inferior status. Considerable training and support is needed to assist women to learn 

the way the political environment works and fulfil their roles. 

´ Dependence on support through kinship and family: For women without family connections 

barriers to participation remain and even when they enter the system the pres- 


ence of a supportive family has often been cited as the reason for their active participation. 

This dependence syndrome often means that those who do not have this support 

system may not be able to enter local politics even if they have the qualities and inclination 

to do so. 

´ Absence of support from political parties: Political parties have historically acted as gatekeepers 

to political participation and there is considerable evidence from South Asia 

that when it comes to giving tickets to women at any level a clear bias exists in favour of 

male candidates. Due to the rhetoric around gender equality political parties field some 

women candidates but often these are more signs of tokenisms. It does not necessarily 

come out of a change in gender ideology that regards equal participation as a norm. 

“The informal factors that enable women to 

succeed to political positions cannot be discussed in 

isolation from the formal processes.” 

WHAT DIFFERENCE DO WOMEN MAKE IN LOCAL POLITICS 

Research appears to indicate that women in local government believe they can make a 

difference as women leaders by bringing a different style to local government and approaching 

the job in a different way. Drage (2001) indicates that increasing the number 

of women in local government will “accelerate the pace of change, promote collaborative 

styles of leadership and decision-making, broaden perspectives and move 

communities forward.” 

The report on Comparative study of Women in Local Government in Asia and the 

Pacific make the following points about the changes that women can bring to local 

politics. According to the report women have a greater sense of the social issues and 

the well being and welfare of their communities and factor these into the decisionmaking 

process; promote policies and activities which strengthen communities; encourage 

participation; emphasise the importance and the practice of good communication 

with the community; have a different approach to the way their local authority 

is governed; develop a team approach; set different priorities; bring the mediation 

skills that they have developed as mothers, the ability to have clear goals, to juggle 

many tasks at once, and to be practical; are dedicated, responsible, practice what they 

preach and show a great deal of spirit and stimulate and encourage other women to be 

part of development. The study further elaborates: 

“Women’s concerns and priorities are more likely than are those of men to 

center on people’s needs for safety and clean water supplies and for community 

facilities rather than just the traditional roads, rates and rubbish. Women also have 

a strong focus on women’s issues and a human rights flavor in their goals for local 

government, suggesting that changes in local politics will lead to changes in society, 

less discrimination against women and greater flexibility in work and childcare. 

By bringing a grassroots perspective to local government, women make it more 

people orientated and closer to the community it serves.” 


WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP POSITIONS AT THE LOCAL LEVEL 

For women to make a real difference at the local level not only must they enter the 

system but must also be prepared to take on the mantle of political leadership. As 

Pant and Farrell (2009) point out “the pedagogy for empowering women politically 

for leadership roles aims to enhance the capacity of women leaders to understand, 

organise and act upon their needs, priorities, and makes demands upon the system 

for better service delivery.” 

Drawing on the experience of women being elected through three terms of local 

rural and urban elections in India they point out that in the first term women got 

elected with no precedence or role models and since governance was new to them 

women stepped back, allowing the men to provide guidance including male members 

of the family. 7 

In the second term however the community was more accepting of women in 

leadership roles with women now using the legitimacy of their elected position to address 

several critical issues such as children’s education, drinking water facilities, family 

planning facilities, hygiene and health, quality of healthcare, roads and electricity 

in the village areas. They also took the initiative to bring alcohol abuse and domestic 

violence on to the agenda of political campaigns. 8 

The third term of women’s participation in rural and urban local bodies in India 

saw women leaders become more visible as they became more familiar with the processes 

of governance. Despite this change in leadership roles however, women continued 

to lack an effective participation base due to gendered identity practices and 

institutional inadequacies. 

“Provision of quotas for women in local 

government has not necessarily created a culture 

open to facilitating the participation of women.” 

The Indian experience of local elections over the last three decades showed that 

while numbers may indicate presence it does not necessarily translate into meaningful 

inclusion in the political process as women can be deliberately excluded from the 

political process through force or covert strategies. 

In this connection a recent study indicates that an increase in female representation 

in local government in India appears to have induced a significant rise in documented 

crimes against them, but argue that this is driven by greater reporting of the 

crimes rather than an increase in the crimes per se. 9 In another significant finding 

they point to the fact that large scale membership of women in local councils also affects 

crimes against them more than their presence in leadership positions. 

However there is little doubt that violence against women in politics particularly 

at the level of local politics has been endemic in not just India but other parts of South 

Asia as well. In fact within the community and political parties as well there have been 

backlashes for women who exercise their decision making power and the resistance 

often from upper caste males can range from threats to attempts of bribery, charges of 

7 Pant and Farrell (2009). 

8 Nambiar and Bandyopadhyay (2004). 

9 Iyer et al. (2011). 


incompetence, spreading false rumors designed at character assassination, and willful 

use of the power of no confidence. 10 

Taking into account the violence against women in politics particularly at the local 

level, which is one of the most important barriers to their participation, a South 

Asian initiative was launched by South Asia Partnership International that specifically 

called for an end to violence against women in politics. 

A resolution passed by South Asian citizens in 2008 says: 

“There are inherent structural impediments that prevent and dis-courage 

women from participating in decision-making processes which consequently perpetuates 

violence, both visible and invisible against women….Violence is not just 

limited to overt, visible and manifest ac-tions but can also be congealed and invisible 

and is deeply embedded in the system of the state mechanisms. Such violence is 

unacceptable to the men and women of South Asia.” 

It goes on to express concern that “women in politics are subject to a range of 

violence and intimidation and practices that adversely affect their active participation 

in decision-making processes. Such forms of violence include but are not limited 

to (honor) killings, actual violence and threat of violence, psycho-social torture, humiliation, 

degrading treatment, intimidation, character assassination and sexual harassment, 

targeting women, their relatives and supporters. Abuse of religion, culture, 

traditions and patriarchal practices subvert and undermine the interest of women 

and inhibit and not only prevent the scope of their political participation in decisionmaking 

processes but also negate the overall development of South Asia.” 11 

“By bringing a grassroots perspective to local 

government, women make it more people orientated 

and closer to the community it serves.” 

CIVIL SOCIETY INITIATIVES TO PROMOTE WOMEN IN LOCAL POLITICS 

In recent years a number of civil society initiatives working in conjunction with the 

state have been undertaken in different parts of the world to promote the role of 

women in local politics. Two examples – from Turkey and India – are instructive in 

understanding how such multi stakeholder initiatives can play an important role in 

this regard since this is a job that a government cannot do on its own. 

On September 9, 2008, a project on women in local politics was launched in Ankara 

with broad participation from political parties, women parliamentarians, civil society 

organisations, academics, media representatives and well known international 

experts and activists aimed at increasing the number of women elected for the 2009 

elections. It involved capacity building activities for present and potential women 

candidates and significantly both male and female representatives of local institutions 

that play a role in increased women participation in local politics and decision 

making processes. 

At the roundtable and workshops different stakeholders discuss chal-lenges and 

lessons learnt on how women can be supported to participate in local level politics 

10 Nussbaum et al. (2003); Sisodia (2005); Kalpagam and Arunachalam (2006). 

11 http://www.sapint.org/uploads/DECLARATION2.pdf 


amidst a scenario where only 0.6% were mayors, 1.81% members of provincial councils, 

and 2.42% are members of municipal councils. The role of the media as a key opinion 

maker and its role in increasing awareness on this issue were reiterated. 12 

In India in the year 1995 a civil society organisation called Society for Participatory 

research in Asia launched an ambitious and massive civil society campaign ahead 

of the elections to institutions of local self government in the rural areas elections 

(popularly known as panchayat polls in India). Called Pre Election Voters Awareness 

Campaign it involved three important players, namely civil society coalitions, state 

election commissions and the media and one of its primary purposes was to launch a 

special drive to ensure participation of women both as voters and candidates. 

Thus began a process of politicization of women for local elections regardless of 

whether they actually contested the local elections or not. Through this campaign 

some of them emerged as animators, others as engaged voters. Women candidates 

who chose to contest the local elections were supported not only in the constituencies 

reserved for women but also from unreserved constituencies to drive home the 

fact that women need not restrict their political aspirations to reserved constituencies 

only. 

STRATEGIES FOR CHANGES AND RECOMMENDATIONS 

While specific strategies to increase meaningful participation by women in politics 

can be context specific, drawing up some broad generalizations and guidelines are 

possible. 13 

´ The first of these operate at the systemic level. A quota of reserved seats for women in 

countries where few women have been elected filled with direct open elections with the 

same status as general seats work better than any form of nomination with its associated 

culture of patronage. A proportional system of representation and ward system 

appear to work better for women. It is also important that local elected representatives 

should be paid at a level that will allow women to participate. Funding for gender and 

development that emphasizes capacity building, networking and advocacy and finally 

recruitment by political parties of women are important steps that can be taken in this 

direction. 

´ Systemic changes need to be backed by attitudinal changes – the culture of local government 

needs to change to ensure that women are treated fairly and for this gender 

awareness programmes for both men and women need to be developed. Local government 

needs to be more women friendly and consensus style politics and meetings at 

times that fit into other responsibilities that women have will create a more enabling 

environment for women in local politics. Most importantly opportunities need to be 

made for women to understand their roles and functions as soon as they are elected. 

´ The third set of strategies is meant to increase the number of women in politics and change 

their subordinate status. Policies on economic and social empowerment are needed to 

enable women to participate on an equal footing with men. Local government needs to 

work closely with NGOs civil society and women’s groups to develop communities and 

services that take care of women’s needs. Women will be able to enter local politics only 

if they find financial support, childcare support and training opportunities and women’s 

associations for women councilors need to provide a voice for women’s views and networking. 

Funds need to be established to assist women to stand for election and gender 

disaggregated data needs to be built to increase visibility of women. 

12 http://www.undp.org.tr/Gozlem2.aspx?WebSayfaNo=1571 

13 Comparative Study of Women in Local Government in Asia and the Pacific, p. 8-19. 


Trainings by NGOs, political parties, educational and political institutions are imperative 

in order to secure greater participation of women in local politics to develop 

their skills self confidence, gender awareness rights and also for political leadership. 

CONCLUSION 

We began by emphasizing the importance of local politics at a time when the discourses 

on deepening democracy are gaining importance including that of deliberative democracy 

that celebrates debate and discussion on matters of policy rather than this 

being taken up exclusively by elected legislators. If such practices are indeed gaining 

ground, the role of women in local politics cannot be overstated. 

Since their experiences are different from that of men they bring in new perspectives 

and new ideas, and to ignore this or bypass it would defeat the very purpose of 

such a decentralisation process associated with deepening democracy. 

Whether it is in the countries that are held out as exemplars of women’s political 

participation such as the Scandinavian countries or states in Africa and South Asia 

where the hold of patriarchy is palpably more, the phenomena still exists across the 

world. This mindset produces a certain sexual division of labor in the household and 

corresponding gendered institutions and ideologies that militate against women participating 

in local politics. 

These are the barriers that need to be identified and removed. This is why the 

South Asian resolution around the issue of violence against women in politics concludes: 

“We, the people of South Asia, both women and men, collectively challenge patriarchy 

and seek to replace it with a culture that actively supports equal participation 

of all. We encourage a South Asian forum that promotes such culture and 

values through mass communication.” 

This will be as true in different degrees for the rest of the world as it is for South 

Asia. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

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Chabal, Patrick and Jean-Pascal Daloz. Africa Works. Disorder as political instrument. Oxford and 

Bloomington: James Currey and Indiana University Press, 1999. 

“Comparative study Women in Local Government in Asia and the Pacific.” http://www.unescap.org/ 

huset/women/reports/comparative_report.pdf 

DasGupta, Sumona. Citizen Initiatives and Democratic Engagement: Experiences from India. New Delhi 

and Abingdon : Routledge, 2010. 

Drage, Jean. Women in local Government in Asia and the Pacific, Paper presented to the Asia-Pacific 

Summit of Women Mayors and Councillors, 2001 

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Encyclopaedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS). Niikawa, Tatsuro. “Decentralization and Local Politics.” 

http://www.eolss.net/Sample-Chapters/C04/E6-32-03-05.pdf 

Farrell, Martha and Mandakini Pant. “Women’s Political Empowerment and Leadership: Pedagogical 

Challenges.” Participation and Governance. vol 2 (July 2009): 42-56. 

Francis, Anne. (not dated) “Why women Succeed in local politics.” http://www.snvworld.org/sites/www. 

snvworld.org/files/publications/snv_series_03_tanzania_women_politics_leadership.pdf 

Kalpagam, U. and Jaya Arunachalam. (ed.) Development and Empowerment: Rural Women in India. 


Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 2006. 

Means, Ingunn Norderval. “Women in Local Politics: The Norwegian Experience,” Canadian Journal of 

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Nambiar, Malini and Kaustuv Kanti Bandyopadhyay. “Self-Help Groups: Engagement with Governance 

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(working paper) 2001, http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/11-092.pdf 

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Purkayastha, Bandana and Mangala Subramaniam. The Power of Women’s informal Networks: Lessons 

in Social change from South Asia and West Africa. MD: Lexington, 2004. 

Siddiq Tulip and Peter Allen. “We need more female councilors for everyone’s benefit” http://www.leftfootforward.org/2011/10/we-need-more-female-councillors-for-everyones-benefit/ 

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Tandon, Rajesh & Ranjita Mohanty. Civil Society and Governance. Samskriti: New Delhi, 2002. 



WOMEN IN TRANSITION 

COUNTRIES 

Struggling for their fair share of opportunities 

BY RUMBIDZAI KANDAWASVIKA, ZIMBABWE 

One major issue that persists throughout the world is that women’s 

physical presence and voices in the decision making during political 

transitions to democracy remain weak and almost non-existent. 

Though women participate visibly and actively in revolutionary transitions, 

their participation does not always guarantee women’s inclusion 

in the decision making in transitional processes and structures. 

Consequently, securing any meaningful participation and representation 

of women in countries in transition is an on-going democratic 

challenge. 

It can be argued that the unfinished business of political transitions 

is the inclusion and representation of women in transitional decision 

making processes and the transitions are largely “unfinished transitions”. 


Rumbidzai Kandawasvika-Nhundu is the Senior Programme Manager responsible for the Global 

Programme on Democracy and Gender at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral 

Assistance (International IDEA) in Stockholm, Sweden. She is a gender equality advocate and 

practitioner, with more than twenty years of hands-on professional experience on gender equality 

and women’s empowerment initiatives at national, regional and international levels. She has 

worked with capacity building and gender mainstreaming in parliaments, intra-party democracy 

processes, management of electoral processes from a gender perspective and transformative leadership 

strategies for women in politics. 


Maliha Ahmadzia, a 25 year-old law and political science student at Mawlana University in Balkh 

province, who was running for parliament poses for a photo a day before the parliamentary election 

September 17, 2010 in Mazar-e-sharif, Afghanistan. About 2,500 candidates contested the 

249 seats in Afghanistan’s lower house of parliament. (Photo by Majid Saeedi/Getty Images). 


INTRODUCTION 

The issue is not whether women are able to and/or can perform an active role in transitional 

politics, because they can and are able to contribute at many levels. The issue 

is how women’s participation and voices can be translated into critical influences and 

decisions in political and transition processes and why is it that women perform visible 

and instrumental roles in certain contexts and stages of transitions, yet their participation 

is not matched with their presence and involvement in transitional decision making 

processes. 

There is global evidence that attest to the existence of various factors that are the 

drivers for the continued exclusion of women from the critical decisions that shape 

the outcomes of political transitions and subsequently their participation beyond the 

transitional uprisings. Ultimately, the critical area of concern is how to ensure that the 

”gains” women make through their involvement and partcipation in the demands for 

political transformation is institutionalized and translates into changes of women’s 

status and position in society as well as into gender-sensitive changes in political systems 

and institutions. 

This paper highlights that women’s involvement and participation in political 

transition processes is not a guarantee for their inclusion and representation in the 

critical positions of power and decision making at the peak of transitions and in the 

established nation building institutions. 

The paper focuses on some of the prominent factors and dominant trends that perpetuate 

the marginalisation of women in many parts of the world including countries 

in political transitions. Four striking issues or factors across the different regions of the 

world, which are intricately connected and have significant impact on women in different 

countries and transitional processes and political contexts are presented. 

Being cognisant of the fact that there is no “one size fits all” approach as the magnitude 

of the issues varies within different country and regional contexts, the paper will 

also outline possible strategies that can be adapted to support women in transitions 

as well as address some of the obstacles encountered by women in these political processes 

leading to the formation of democratic governments. 

Before discussing the prominent issues, there is need to underscore the lessons 

learnt from the most recent political transitions that occurred in 2011 and are still underway 

in the Arab Spring. The most recent experiences from the Arab Spring attest to 

the deep-seated hurdles that women encounter in order to attain their fair share of participation 

and representation in positions of power and decision making at all levels, 

despite women’s contributions. 

LESSONS FROM THE ARAB SPRING 

In 2011 women in the Arab world demonstrated that women can often play important 

roles in revolutionary processes and events as women have done before in Africa, Latin 

America and Europe. For instance in Egypt and Tunisia they participated in the popular 

uprisings for democracy and changes in their societies. As elsewhere in the world, 

women in the Arab Spring countries in transition are struggling for their fair share of 

opportunities to access political power at the onset of transition processes, in view of 

the rules of the game that are clearly based on patriarchal values and still in flux. 

When participating in the revolutions across the transiting countries, women’s demands 

were not only calling for the change of the oppressive regimes, but also sought 

justice and greater empowerment of women in all spheres of life. Many women still 

have reason to hope that the “Arab Spring” will bring changes to the Middle East and 

help them realize their dreams and secure a better life for the next generation of women 

through the democratic transitions away from legacies of autocratic rule, social, 

economic and political marginalisation of women to collaboration between men and 

women, Muslims and non-Muslims, government and civilians. 


A year later, women in the Arab Spring countries in transition are beginning to ask 

why the benefits from the revolutions do not seem to be shared equally between men 

and women. Why are few women represented in key decision making positions and institutions 

across the countries in spite of women’s active participation alongside their 

male counterparts during the revolutions and uprisings to end the reign of dictatorships? 

Recently, the President of the Egyptian Feminist Union, Hoda Badran, stated that, 

“Now that the dust of revolution has begun to settle as the Arab spring countries 

begin their transition process towards democracy, women are finding themselves 

marginalised and excluded from decision-making. The many disturbing incidents 

that have occurred illustrate the extent to which, in spite of the new freedoms championed 

by revolution, women are still considered as subordinate to men. In Tunisia 

a mass protest called for all women to be veiled, which led to unveiled female professors 

of religion being hounded off campuses. Mobs shouted at Tunisian women 

demonstrators to go back to the kitchen “where they belong”. In Egypt, too, conservative 

thinking is on the rise and voices are growing louder in support of policies that 

would represent a backward step for women. A good example of this are the reforms 

being made to family legislation.” 1 

The words of Tawakkol Karman, a Yemeni journalist and first Arab woman to receive 

the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 aptly capture the reason for hope and expectations 

for change for women in Arab Spring countries, namely Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen 

and Syria and in other Arab countries such as Algeria, Morocco, Bahrain, Sudan, Saudi 

Arabia. In her speech at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, she stated that, 

“Millions of Yemeni women and men, children, young and old took to the streets 

in eighteen provinces demanding their right to freedom, justice and dignity, using 

non-violent but effective means to achieve their demands. I see the great number of 

Arab women, without whose hard struggles and quest to win their rights in a society 

dominated by the supremacy of men I wouldn’t be here. This supremacy has caused 

a lot of injustice to both men and women. To all those women, whom history and the 

severity of ruling systems have made unseen, to all women who made sacrifices for 

the sake of a healthy society with just relationships between women and men, to all 

those women who are still stumbling on the path of freedom in countries with no social 

justice or equal opportunities, to all of them I say: thank you ... this day wouldn’t 

have come true without you.” 2 

BATTLES FOR RECOGNITION AND PARTICIPATION 

Most transitions towards democratic changes are motivated by expectations for greater 

social equity, improved political participation and representation in making decisions 

that impact on societies and the lives of many women and men. Yet around the 

world, women have found that, “participation is one thing and recognition and voice 

is another”. 

In past and present transitional processes, women’s meaningful participation can 

be illustrated by an analogy of a journey, which is best captured by expressions such 

as, “still have a long way to go”. As women’s participation in revolutionary transitions 

is evident, their demands for inclusion continue to rise. For example in Egypt, Dr. 

Omaima Kamel, a member of the Constituent Assembly tasked with drafting Egypt’s 

1 Article by Hoda Badran, The Arab Spring is looking like a great leap backwards for women, 

Summer 2012 

2 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2011/karman-lecture_en.html 


new Constitution, affirmed that, “we are working hard to write a Constitution that will 

protect the dignity of all citizens, especially in the chapter on women’s rights. We are 

also working to ensure the right of women to work and representation in important 

positions in the state” 3 . 

Political transitions to democracy are strengthened when genuine participation 

and representation of women is included on the list of priorities for countries in transition. 

Too often, this is generally seen as a luxury to be left aside until the other important 

democratic values and objectives have been achieved. All kinds of women’s 

participation and representation in transitional politics contain battles over rights, 

recognition, participation and redistribution of power. The intensity of each battle is 

determined by the extent to which consider themselves excluded and are conscious of 

the degree to which the critical decisions are made by men only. 

These battles are a manifestation of the many deeply entrenched obstacles (both 

formal and informal/traditional) to women’s political, socio-cultural and economic 

advancement of women across the world. In many parts of the world, these battles and 

issues are varied and complex and the challenges for women are enormous. While the 

participation of women in revolutionary uprisings in the Arab Spring provided opportunities 

for the active presence of women, women are still battling for equality on 

all fronts and an uphill climb still looms. 

UNEQUAL POWER RELATIONS 

Evidence abounds to attest that the continued marginalisation of women in decision 

making processes in transition countries is in fact part of the broader gender discrimination 

and the resulting inequalities that span the world from developed countries 

such as the Gulf States to low income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. 

The unequal power relations that impede the effective inclusion of women in transition 

countries operate at many levels of society, from the most personal to the highly 

public. In some countries the inequalities are clearly blatant in the legal frameworks, 

such as constitutions, laws and policies. 

Across the world, the attitudes about the superiority of men and inferiority of 

women at the household and family level are still very common. Within each region 

and within countries the magnitude of the attitudes differ reflecting factors such as 

culture and religion, the rural-urban divide, the political and legal system. Due to patriarchal 

notions of power, traditional practices and religious interpretations, men are 

still widely considered the ‘head of the household’ with superior status and decisionmaking 

authority and often greater rights and freedoms. 

“ Participation 

and representation of 

women is too often seen as a luxury.” 

The implications of family and household hierarchies and stereotyped roles for 

men and women are many, including diminished access of women to economic and 

political participation and violence against women. Transformed relations between 

men and women’s at the household and family level is critical to their full participation 

in and contribution in transition processes and outcomes in all spheres of society 

and it will benefit men as well as women. Periods of transition provide opportunities 

to create democratic societies by establishing principles of non-discrimination and 

gender equality if the different needs and priorities for women and men are taken 

into account during the transitional phases. 

3 http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=30211 


INSTITUTIONALISED MALE DOMINANCE AND PRIVILEGE 

Everywhere in the world, it is evident that political transitions are gendered and their 

outcomes ultimately reflect the different social meanings attributed to men and women. 

Hence, the unequal participation and representation of women and men is evident 

in the predominance of men among the leaders of political parties or movements, parliamentarians, 

cabinet ministers and heads of governments and states. 

In most countries, although not in all, women and men have equal rights to vote 

and to stand for elective positions. After at least 40 years of struggle, Kuwaiti women 

gained comprehensive political rights in 2005. In 2003 in Oman and Qatar, women were 

granted the right to vote and to stand for parliamentary office for the first time. 

Currently women make up only 19% of the parliaments of the world. 4 Why, then are 

there so few women in elective positions of power and decision making at all levels? Why 

is that political transitions keep producing and reproducing men as leaders in higher 

proportions to women? 

To illustrate the point, despite the promising start to the year, according to the Inter 

Parliamentary Union by the end of 2011, women represented only 10.7% of parliamentarians 

in the Arab region. The Arab region remains the only one in the world without 

any parliament that has at least 30% representation of women. 

However, it is worthy to note that a number of countries in the Arab region have 

introduced quotas to improve the political participation and representation of women, 

in the face of political, cultural, religious, economic and institutional factors that pose 

particular challenges to women in this region. For example, in Morocco, following the 

2011 elections and in accordance with a bill passed by the Council of Ministers on 9 September 

2011, women now constitute 16.7% of Morocco’s Lower House and this is largely 

due to the reservation of 60 seats for women and 30 for candidates under the age of 40. 

In Tunisia, the political parties participating in the October 2011 elections were required 

to include women in their electoral lists in strict alternation. In theory, this was 

a strong affirmative measure, but in practice, most of the more than 80 parties contesting 

the elections (with more than 1,500 lists registered) won only one seat in any one 

constituency, which went to the male candidate invariably heading the list. In Libya, the 

adopted Election Law stipulates that the General National Congress (constituent assembly) 

would be composed of 200 members elected freely and directly, and requires parity 

on party lists for 80 of these seats. 

In Egypt, however, the new law on the Exercise of Political Rights amended the previous 

quota for women, which used to allocate 64 seats (or 12%) in the parliament to 

women. The amended law required each political party to include one woman on their 

candidate list, but did not require the positioning of women in “winnable” slots – each 

party has the freedom to decide where to allocate the name of the woman candidate, 

even at the bottom of the list. This has ultimately resulted in a decrease in the number 

of seats held by women before the revolution and democratic uprising, with only 10 

women out of 508 members (2%). 

MOBILISATION OF WOMEN AS WOMEN 

In any political transition process, a key question is why women choose to organise or 

not to organise in the different contexts. It is important to pose this question because it 

points to the reality of the diversity among women and the absence of a homogenous 

“category” of women who are not differentiated by class, religion or ethnicity. 

Equally important is the fact that not all women may have women’s strategic interests 

on the top of their agenda during transformative transitional processes. It can be 

argued that women’s exclusion is due in part to the significant social and ideological differences 

among women as well as to the dynamics of social mobilisation in transitional 

processes. 

4 http://www.quotaproject.org/aboutQuotas.cfm 

See Women in Parliament in 2011-The Year in Perspective, Inter-Parliamentary Union. 


Another key factor that prompts women to mobilise as women is the pre-transitional 

politics in each country. Though the circumstances of transition varied from country 

to country, in much of Latin America women mobilised both as several groups primarily 

made up of women and women organising specifically as women to press for the guarantees 

on women’s rights and democratisation of everyday life. 

In some countries as diverse as Argentina, Spain and South Africa women maximised 

the opportunities presented during revolutionary transitions to democracy by mobilising 

as women along women’s issues. In countries such as Brazil and Chile women 

mobilised across class and party lines to ensure that women’s equal participation and 

representation in politics and decision making is guaranteed during and post the political 

transitional processes. 

In all transitional processes the capacity for women to mobilise as women consolidates 

women’s political clout and attracts the attention of predominately male political 

actors who tend to then harness women’s support for their own political gains. 

On the other hand, this can lead to the incorporation of women’s de-mands on the 

political agenda if political actors begin to see women as a constituency worth co-opting. 

The exclusion of women from the agenda setting and women’s concerns from the 

agendas articulated by predominately male leaders heightens the political salience of 

gender equality relative to other values. Too often, women’s concerns are considered but 

not followed through in the actual decisions and in practice as women’s concerns seem 

to have an imposed duty to “give way” or yield to other important values. 

RECOMMENDATIONS 

How women’s roles in transitional politics translate into critical actions and decisions 

is highly controversial politics because those without voice are often ignored by those 

with voice. In the face of such on-going challenges, the following multi-dimensional 

recommendations if adequately implemented hold enormous potential to increase 

women’s participation and representation in politics and transition countries in the 

long term. In defining these recommendations, it is important to ask, how much are the 

national, regional and international stakeholders willing to invest in women’s empowerment 

and gender equality? 

WOMEN AS AGENTS FOR CHANGE 

´ Support for women to mobilise as women: Supporting women’s mobilisation as a constituency 

is a key investment to increase women’s effective participation in transitions. The 

support for women has to reinforce women’s capacity as agents for change and cultivate 

robust initiatives to mobilise women as women. In order to ensure that the political spaces 

opened by revolutionary transitions do not get closed by supporting women to seize the 

opportunity offered by transitions to negotiate the changes to their condition and status. 

´ Additional empowerment: Cultivating and reinforcing transformative leadership skills 

among women through additional empowerment strategies that translate women’s presence 

into critical influence and actions to engage from an understanding of women’s rights 

as human rights and the broader democratic issues. 

´ Agenda setting: One way to support women in transitions is to strengthen the defining 

of women’s strategic interests in the agenda setting of transitional processes and institutions 

especially constitution drafting bodies and electoral reforms proposals. The agenda 

setting support should buttress the need for the implementation of principles and values 

on gender equality and women’s empowerment that are written in international covenants 

such as the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against 

Women(CEDAW), which is among the most ratified of United Nations treaties. 


OPENING SPACES AND INCREASING ACCESS 

´ Adoption and implementation of positive measures: Legislated quotas to get women into 

the spaces for decision making is an urgent priority to reduce the representation gap of 

women in politics. As it is not only men who are always unconvinced of women’s right and 

capacity to participate in public life, the measures that are advocated for and put in place 

have to be reinforced with public awareness campaigns on women’s participation and representation. 

This is because obstacles to women’s participation in all political processes 

including transitional processes stems from a range of political and electoral structures 

and processes and cultural patterns opposing women’s participation in public life. 

´ Political parties, movements, groups: Developing political parties’ capacity to analyse their 

intra-party processes, rules and regulations on the identification, nomination and selection 

of candidates for elective positions within the political parties and into public positions 

of power and decision making. This will involve providing examples to political parties 

on how they can be conduits women’s empowerment. 

´ Male advocates: Working with men and designing initiatives that sys-tematically engage 

men and boys in women’s empowerment and gender equality promotion and making men 

equally responsible as women for the achievement of women’s empowerment. This is involves 

encouraging men to relinquish some of their power in order for women to have a 

fair share in political participation and representation. 

POWER OF THE MEDIA 

´ Mobilisation of media support: The way women are portrayed in the media has enormous 

impact on women’s participation and representation in processes and positions of transitional 

decision making. Working with the media to provide balanced coverage of women 

and men and equality issues is an essential strategy for supporting women in politics and 

in transitions. 

´ Advocacy to end gender based violence: The media is an effective tool to fight violence 

against women and girls as this remains a global pandemic. Women’s particular vulnerability 

to gender based violence is one of the most obvious deterrent for women’s participation 

in political transitions. Media advocacy to address the underlying gender inequalities 

that are the key drivers of gender based violence is a vital strategy. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The Arab Spring is looking like a great leap backwards for women, Article by Hoda Badran, Summer 2012. 

Progress of the World’s Women 2008-2009: Who Answers to Women, UN Women (2008). 

Women’s Movements and Democratic Transition in Chile, Brazil, East Germany and Po-land, Lisa Baldez, 

Comparative Analysis, 2003. 

Unfinished Transitions: Women and the Gendered Development of Democracy in Venezuela 1936-1996, 

Elizabeth J Friedman (2000). 

No shortcuts to Power: African Women in Politics and Policy Making, Anne Marie Goetz and Shireen Hassim 

(Editors), 2003. 

The Role of Women in Rwanda’s Transition, Elizabeth Powley, 2003. 

Women and Democratization: Conceptualising Gender Relations in Transition Politics, Georgina Waylen, 

World Politics, Vol 46, No. 3(April 1994), pp 327-354. 

Women in Transitions, Fast Facts UNDP Tunisia, July 2011. 

Women’s Political Participation in the Great Lakes Countries Emerging from Conflict, International Alert 

Report(2007). 



GENDER AND 

DEMOCRACY 

Danish democratic transition in a gender perspective 

BY JYTTE LARSEN, DENMARK 

Women’s political history in Denmark is a success story. Danish women 

were among the first in the world to be granted full political rights, 

in 1915. 

Today, almost forty per cent of the Members of Parliament are women, 

and sixty per cent are men – a gender distribution matching international 

standards for equality of status. Furthermore, four of the 

eight parties represented in Parliament are headed by a woman. 

In 1924, Denmark made political world history with the appointment 

of the first female cabinet minister. Today, the cabinet has a similar 

gender distribution to Parliament. 

When Helle Thorning Schmidt became the first female Prime Minister 

following the 2011 elections, the last male stronghold in Danish 

politics fell. 


Jytte Larsen is a senior research consultant at KVINFO, the Danish Centre for Information on Gender, 

Equality and Ethnicity. She is a historian and her research and publications focus on gender history, 

feminism and equality. Over the last twenty years, Jytte Larsen has contributed extensively 

with scientific articles and lectures on Danish women’s history, gender equality, feminism etc., 

especially for the Danish Labour Union and several women’s organisations. She is producing book 

reviews for Danish and international gender research periodicals, and has contributed to several 

lager anthologies. Her latest book ”Også andre hensyn. Dansk ligestillingspolitik 1849-1915” is the 

first volume of a handbook about the history of Danish equality policies. 


Leader of the Social Democratic party, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, speaking in the Danish parliament 

’Folketinget’ for the first time since winning the September 2011 election and being appointed 

Prime Minister. (Photo by Martin Lehmann/Polfoto). 


THE DANISH PROCESS OF DEMOCRATISATION 

The Danish success is greatest on the national level. Women have found it harder to 

break into local politics, where historical male dominance has survived, notably on 

the leadership level. Women hold around thirty per cent of the seats on municipal 

councils, and there is only one female mayor in ten. 

Achieving this success has been a lengthy process. It took seventy years from the 

time women’s suffrage was instituted until female politicians made up a so-called 

critical mass of thirty per cent, which any minority generally speaking must achieve 

in order to obtain real influence. 

In Denmark, as everywhere else in the world, women’s political history is an integrated 

part of the national development towards democracy. And in Denmark, as 

in other Western countries, the women’s movement has been a central player in the 

struggles for political rights and, subsequently, for political representation. 

Over the course of the nineteenth century, Denmark – initially bringing up the 

rear of the democratic transition that created the modern Western world around the 

year 1800 – became a pioneer democracy when the Scandinavian welfare model became 

an international brand. The model – based on equality of status and notably 

characterised by a high degree of inclusion of women on the labour market, and a high 

degree of female political representation combined with public child care policies and 

care for the sick and the elderly – has been labelled as woman-friendly. 

The history of democracy in Denmark is thoroughly evolutionary and remarkably 

undramatic. The country’s first free Constitution, from 1849, had been carefully prepared, 

and was adopted in the atmosphere of broad consensus that still characterises 

political life. Thus, the absolute monarch remained as constitutional monarch following 

adoption of the Constitutional Act, and today, Denmark is one of only a handful of 

democratic monarchies in the world. 

“ The history of democracy in Denmark is 

evolutionary and remarkably undramatic.“ 

Danish democracy was imported from abroad. Following the uprising against British 

colonial rule in North America and the founding of the United States of America as 

an independent nation in 1776, a flood of revolutions swept over Europe in three separate 

waves. The two first waves did not reach Denmark with enough force to overthrow 

the absolute monarchy, but they initiated a much-needed process of modernisation. 

During the time of the French Revolution (1789-99), a series of comprehensive 

land and educational reforms were carried out in Denmark. Farmers were released 

from servitude under the landed aristocracy and were granted the opportunity to buy 

the land they farmed. During this period, the establishment of teacher training colleges 

brought improvements to education, which, particularly in rural areas, had been 

of a meagre standard. Compulsory general education was instituted in 1814. 

The July Revolution of 1830 led to cautious democratisation through the establishment 

of elected regional councils – the so-called Advisory Provincial Estates – and 

the fledgling beginnings of municipal government. Only a few per cent of the male 

population were eligible to vote, but in the years leading up to 1848 the new political 

arenas, along with the easing of censorship and a modern press, created a bourgeois 

public sphere. Knowledge of international developments was no longer the privilege 

of a tiny academic elite that was in command of the major European languages and 

undertook educational journeys to the centres of culture. Broad swathes of the pop- 


ulation were now able to read about current political movements and literature in 

Danish-language newspapers and periodicals. 

Due to these reforms, it was a relatively egalitarian, prosperous, and enlightened 

population that took over the management of national affairs in 1848, when the King 

renounced absolute power and convened a constitutional assembly. 

Since then, the Danish Constitutional Act has been revised three times, with the 

latest revision adopted in 1953. The fact that the current Constitutional Act is coming 

up on its sixtieth anniversary is remarkable not least because the concepts of democracy 

and citizenship have been subject to swift and profound transformations in the 

period following World War II. Due to this singularly conservative constitutional tradition, 

Denmark – unlike most other nations – has not embedded a modern notion of 

human rights in the Constitution. 

DEMOCRACY AND HUMAN RIGHTS 

Modern democracy is defined by both a political system of government and a political 

ideology. Both aspects were developed during the Enlightenment, whose ideas of 

human rights, popular sovereignty, and social contract legitimised the abolishment 

of tyrannical regimes and inherited privilege. Under the watchword of “liberty, equality, 

fraternity”, the great majority of farmers and burghers joined forces to combat the 

concentration of power in the hands of royalty, clergy, and nobility. 

The grand narrative of modern democracy is about free and equal individuals 

who enter into a covenant in order to institute governments that further the development 

from a state of barbarity, where the jungle law applies and might makes right, to 

civilised societies and the rule of law. The societal covenant is, in other words, a social 

contract under which private individuals relinquish sovereignty to public authorities 

that, in their turn, undertake to ensure the rights of citizens and maintain law and 

order. From this perspective, despotism and oppression deprives individuals of their 

rights. 

This narrative was laid out with model conciseness in 1776 in the American Declaration 

of Independence: 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they 

are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are 

Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. —That to secure these rights, Governments 

are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of 

the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of 

these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new 

Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in 

such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” 1 

This was followed in 1789 by the French Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du 

citoyen – the first declaration of human rights proper, containing a catalogue of rights 

and duties of democratic citizenship. 

HUMAN RIGHTS AND WOMEN’S RIGHTS 

‘Men’ and ‘homme’ can both mean human, but in the context of the two foundational 

texts of the democratic movement, they meant ‘man’. These documents instituted a 

man’s rights discourse, which was not replaced by a human rights discourse until the 

Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations in 1948. 

1 American Declaration of Independence 


As soon as absolute monarchy came to an end, the liberal bourgeois class broke its 

alliance with the less privileged classes and grabbed power for itself. Running entirely 

counter to its egalitarian rhetoric, the bourgeoisie defined democratic citizenship 

in its own image, and reserved political rights for the educated and married man of 

means – the paterfamilias. And they called this model ‘universal suffrage’. 

The revolutionary left responded with socialism – the second great political ideology 

of modernity – which recycled the liberal criticism of the old regime, but with the 

emphasis on equality and fraternity rather than on individual liberty. 

The fact that both bourgeois liberals and socialists conceived of human rights as 

men’s rights prompted the emergence of feminism – the third great political ideology 

of modernity – with its demands for liberty, equality, and solidarity for both sexes. 

Feminist voices were raised in protest from the very outset of the democratic 

movements. Among the first was Abigail Adams (1744-1818), who was married to John 

Adams, one of the signatories of the American Declaration of Independence. When 

she saw the contours of the man’s rights discourse begin to take shape, she warned her 

husband that a new rebellion loomed if women remained without legal rights: 

“I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And, by the way, in 

the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire 

you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than 

your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. 

Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention 

is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold 

ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.” 2 

In France, the voice of protest was raised by revolutionary activist Olympe de 

Gouges (1748-93), who penned the first declaration of women’s rights, Déclaration des 

droits de la femme et de la citoyenne, in 1791. Here, she replaced the word ‘man’ from 

the Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen with ‘woman’ – and gave us an 

object lesson in just how patriarchal the famed original text is. 

Olympe de Gouges was also the first to gender the deprivation of rights by drawing 

parallels between the King, who deprives the people of their rights, and men, who 

deprive women of their human rights and tyrannise them: 

“Liberty and justice consist of restoring all that belongs to others; thus, the only 

limits on the exercise of the natural rights of woman are perpetual male tyranny; 

these limits are to be reformed by the laws of nature and reason.” 3 

It is worth noting that human rights in their original inception are founded in 

both a religious and a secular world view. In the Christian, American tradition they are 

God-given, while the secular, French tradition roots them in nature and reason. 

Likewise, it is important to emphasise that feminism pertains to political views 

that may be held by both genders. From the outset, men participated in the struggle 

for equal status, which is, after all, just another word for equality. 

One example is the French Enlightenment philosopher J. A. Condorcet (1743-94), 

who forwarded the simple argument that human rights perforce apply to all human 

beings. Rights that apply only to some sections of the population are special rights, 

group rights, or inherited privileges, which the revolution had set out to abolish. 

Rights awarded to wealthy white men can only be called human rights if poor people, 

coloured people, and women are not human beings. 

From around 1830, we may speak of an international women’s move-ment, driven 

2 History.com 

3 Duiker 2006, p. 499 


y American, French, German, and British women, who developed both theory and 

practice through close contacts maintained through travel, letters, and exchange of 

literature. Against the backdrop of the 1848 revolutions, the world’s first women’s 

rights convention, in Seneca Falls, USA, adopted a manifesto entitled the Declaration 

of Sentiments, which called for full implementation of equal rights. 

THE STRUGGLE FOR WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE 

The late fall of absolute monarchy in Denmark meant that feminism had already 

found a definite form when the Constitutional Assembly convened. It was thus an act 

of bad faith when the Danish founding fathers, who were well-informed of international 

developments, inducted the Danish Constitutional Act of June 5th, 1849 into the 

man’s rights tradition based on the infamous – and erroneous – statement that “it is 

thus everywhere recognised that persons of incompetence, children, women, criminals 

shall not be eligible to vote.” 

Hardly had the ink of the Constitutional Act dried before the men of the new democracy 

admitted that they had set aside women’s human rights. As early as in 1857, 

Parliament passed a collection of equal rights laws as part of a major reform programme 

with the goal of making women full citizens. The first concern was making 

unmarried women legally competent, independent citizens. 

This was because the pre-modern marriage code, with its autocratic paterfamilias, 

stymied the rights of married women. In the article “Three Questions about Womanhood 

Suffrage”, political scientist Carole Pateman reflects on the differences between 

women’s and other social groups’ struggles for political rights. Why did suffragettes in 

Britain and the United States have to fight for half a century for the right to vote? How 

could demands for voting rights in Western democracies around the year 1900 lead to 

assassinations and suicides, mass arrests, hunger strikes, and forced feeding? 

Her answer is that the man’s status as head of the family was regarded as the last 

bastion of patriarchy. Voting rights was not a question of the women’s cause in general; 

it was a matter specifically of the position of the married woman. “[S]uffrage was, 

at bottom, the wife question, not a woman’s question” 4 . 

Danish equal rights policy between 1849 and 1915 falls into two stages. The most 

obvious marker of the watershed is the ascent of the women’s movement in 1871 with 

the formation of the feminist mother organisation Danish Women’s Society. 

In the first phase, the initiative was in the hands of Parliament, who constructed 

the female citizen in the image of the paterfamilias by according civilian and social 

rights to unmarried female heads of household. The second phase is characterised by 

a close alliance between the women’s movement and the increasingly successful political 

left, whose agenda was the extension of democratic rights to all, regardless of 

gender, social class, and civil status. 

In other words, the women’s cause was integrated into the general de-mand for 

democratisation, and the struggles for equal and universal suffrage and against patriarchal 

marriage could be synthesised in the assault on the privileged paterfamilias. 

The chief architects behind the new equal status strategy were the husband and 

wife couple Fredrik and Mathilde Bajer. They drew their inspiration from the international 

women’s movement, and specifically from the British power couple Harriet 

4 Pateman 1994, p. 336. 

“From the outset, men participated 

in the struggle for equal status.” 


Taylor (1807-58) and John Stuart Mill (1806-73), whose close intellectual collaboration 

found its final form in The Subjection of Women (1869) – the first scholarly dissertation 

on the societal significance of gender, published by John Stewart Mill as a memorial 

to his deceased wife. 

In keeping with the women’s movement in general, Harriet Taylor and John Stewart 

Mill placed great emphasis on women’s political rights. The right to vote is labelled 

“a means of self-protection”, which women had sore need of in questions involving 

“interests of women, as such,” since “we know what legal protection the slaves have, 

where the laws are made by their masters.” 5 

The work was an exemplary exposition of the three classical forms of argumentation 

employed by the movement for women’s suffrage, and which will here be labelled 

justice, representation, and resources. The first two of these advocate for women’s human 

rights, including the right to political representation of their interests. The third 

claims that it is not only an obligation of a democratic society to allow its entire mass 

of talent to unfold, doing so is also beneficial to that society. 

While feminist scholars have agreed on the typology, terminology has varied. The 

argument of representation is also known as the interest argument or the feminist 

argument, because insisting on gender-specific political interests is often regarded as 

especially radical. The resource argument is also known as the utility argument or the 

utilitarian argument, with reference to its roots in nineteenth-century utilitarianism. 

Today, it is typically labelled the diversity argument. 

The historical influence of The Subjection of Women can hardly be overestimated. 

The book spurred the formation of the Danish Women’s Society, chaired by Mathilde 

Bajer, and it forms the subtext for the political debaztes on equal rights that Fredrik 

Bajer, as a Member of Parliament, initiated in close collaboration with the women’s 

movement. In the years leading up to the turn of the twentieth century, the women’s 

movement had changed from being an elite Copenhagen phenomenon to a countrywide 

organisation with tens of thousands of activists that had made universal suffrage 

a popular demand. 

On the local level, the breakthrough came in 1908 with the adoption of a modern 

Municipal Voting Rights Act, and on a national level the watershed moment was the 

adoption of the new Constitutional Act in 1915. 

With its duration of some thirty or forty years, the Danish struggle for universal 

suffrage was a brief one when compared with the campaigns in the United States, 

France, and the United Kingdom, where the demand for political rights for women 

was raised earlier and honoured later. In France, this did not happen until 1946. The 

violent confrontations that marked the struggle for universal suffrage in the United 

Kingdom were entirely absent in the Danish campaign. 

In Denmark, married women were granted the vote by special exemption because 

they were unable to fulfil the general demands in the Voting Rights Act that all voters 

have disposal over their estate and be taxpayers, until a reform of the Marriage Act 

rendered them fully competent in the eyes of the law in 1925 – sixty-eight years later 

than their non-married sisters. The tenet that “suffrage was, at bottom, ‘the wife question’” 

thus also applies to the history of equal rights in Denmark. 

5 Mill 1924, p. 49 

“The 1970’ies became the women’s 

decade par excellence.” 


THE STRUGGLE FOR WOMEN’S REPRESENTATION 

Equality before the law is the original feminist demand, and the 1915 amendment to 

the Constitutional Act was celebrated with parties, parades, and memorials across 

Denmark because the recognition of women’s political rights was regarded as the constitutional 

establishment of women’s rights. This view was supported by the fact that 

the government had changes to remaining gender discriminatory legislation on its to 

do list, and that those political parties that did not already have equal rights on their 

agendas now revised their platforms to include it. 

According to this logic, the women’s movement had accomplished its mission, 

and many of the extensively ramified movement’s associations dissolved themselves. 

Their take on the future was that women should safeguard their interests in the voting 

booth, through membership of political parties, and in Parliament. However, the 

pioneering Danish Women’s Society kept up its work. 

The first elections were something of a wet blanket to this mood of victory. The 

municipal elections of 1909 resulted in a female representation of 1.3 per cent and a 

gender distribution in municipal politics of 127 women to 9682 men. Women fared 

only marginally better in the national elections of 1918. Only 4 of the 140 elected candidates 

were women. 

Those who put the initial results down to teething troubles were about to be even 

more disappointed. As Figure 1 shows, the following elections brought a decline in 

women’s representation. 

FIGURE 1 

Women in the Danish Parliament 1918-2011 6 

200 

150 

100 

50 

0 

1920 

1924 

1932 

1943 

1950 

1957 

1966 

6 Note: In the lower house up until 1953, when the present unicameral system was adopted. 

Source: Kvinder i Folketinget http://www.ft.dk/Demokrati/~/media/Pdf_materiale/Pdf_publikationer/Informationsark/Folketingets_medlemmer/kvinder_i_folketinget%20pdf.ashx 


1973 

1979 

1987 

1994 

No. of MPs 

No. of female MPs 

2005 

2015

Generally speaking, developments are uneven, particularly for the first fifty years, 

which are characterised by long periods of stagnation broken by some notable forward 

leaps in the early 1940s and again in the early 1970s. 

The representation of women in Parliament thus falls into three phases, which 

mirror the general situation when it comes to equal status policy. 

1915-1945 with less than 5 % female representation. 

1945-1971 with a female representation of up to 10%. 

1971-2011 with a rapid and sustained growth in female representation towards the 

40% mark. 

The first phase ends with the close of the Second World War, when a great window 

of opportunity opened up in equal rights policy, as is often the case in post-crisis situations. 

Across the world, women had made a significant contribution during the war 

years, both on the home front and in the field. 

Recognition of this contribution came in several forms. Equal gender rights were 

included in international legislation through the United Nations Charter and the Universal 

Declaration of Human Rights. The political representation of women increased 

in countries with women’s suffrage, including Denmark, and having a female government 

minister became a must. Other countries, including, as previously mentioned, 

France, instituted voting rights for women. 

The second phase ends with the beginning of the second feminist wave in the 

wake of the 1960s youth rebellions. The 1970s became the women’s decade par excellence, 

not least due to the United Nations’ prominent focus on equal rights, including 

the International Women’s Year, the World Conference on Women, and a bill of rights 

for women: the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against 

Women (CEDAW). 

In Denmark, women charged into parliament, where the percentage of women 

surged from eleven to twenty-four per cent over the course of the 1970s. And in a new 

development, women’s political representation continued to increase. Following the 

long period of stagnation, focus shifted from political rights to political participation, 

and the feminist tenet that political organs not having an equal gender distribution 

are illegitimate now garnered broad popular support. 

Revolutions are created by the assault of youth on old regimes, and the second 

feminist wave became the historical youth rebellion of women. In earlier days, female 

politicians were typically middle-aged, because they did not run for office until the 

children were out of the house. Since the mid-1960s, the mean age for women in Parliament 

has dropped by ten years, from fifty-five to forty-five, and the age composition 

has become more diverse. The latest national elections gave seats in Parliament 

to two women between the ages of twenty and twenty-four, and two between the ages 

of sixty and sixty-nine. 

“The entire female elite in the country was 

mobilised in a large-scale media push.” 

The young women brought the issues of pregnancy, birth, and parental leave with 

them into political life. When the first pregnant woman ran for Parliament in 1971, 

and was elected, it made the headlines. Front pages were cleared again when the first 

female minister gave birth while in office in 1998. Since then, many have followed in 

their footsteps, and today nobody disputes female politicians’ right to have children 

while holding office. 


On the municipal level, developments in female representation mirror those of 

Parliament, though women’s representation in local politics still lags behind the national 

level. 

FIGURE 2 

Women’s representation in municipalities and in Parliament 1918-2006 

% 

40 

35 

30 

25 

20 

15 

10 

5 

0 

1918 

1926 

1934 

1942 

1950 

PARLIAMENT MUNICIPALITIES 

1958 

FROM EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW TO GENDER MAINSTREAMING 

Why did it take a hundred years to achieve political participation on an equal level? 

A very significant explanation is the fact that for centuries, feminism was hobbled 

by a theoretical deficiency in relation to liberalism and socialism, modernity’s two 

other political ideologies. Whereas the latter were formulated by the male academic 

elite based on major new theories of politics, economics, sociology, and history, feminism 

did not gain an academic foothold until the 1970s. 

While it is true that the University of Copenhagen (the only university in Denmark 

at the time) opened its doors to female students in 1875, and that female academics 

returned the favour by getting involved in the women’s cause – two of the first four female 

Members of Parliament were academics – research positions were long reserved 

for men. And even if a woman managed to squeeze through the eye of the needle, this 

was due to merits in traditional fields of research. 

Commitment to feminist politics was relegated to off-duty hours up until the second 

feminist wave, in which a large, young, and highly educated generation of women 

occupied universities and under the motto of Research of women, by women, for women 

developed theories on the societal import of gender that finally put feminism on a 

scholarly par with liberalism and socialism. 

By organising the insights that had run as a subtext throughout the feminist criticism 

of liberalism and socialism since the democratic transition in the late eighteenth 

century, women’s studies and gender studies forged the basis for new and effective 

strategies, including affirmative action towards the underrepresented gender and 

gender mainstreaming. 


1966 

1974 

1982 

1990 

1998 

2006

In point form, these insights, which seem commonplace today, may be summed 

up thus: 

´ Formal equality is a necessary, but not a sufficient, prerequisite of true equality. 

´ Direct gender discrimination is only the tip of the iceberg, with wide-spread indirect gen- 

der discrimination hiding beneath the surface. 

´ The private is political. 

´ Civilian, political, and social rights are based on sexual and reproductive rights. 

But in 1915, equality before the law and political rights were the undisputed road 

to equal status. Though there were discussions in what remained of the women’s 

movement of forming a women’s party, and though women’s lists were entered in 

the first municipal elections, the main tenet throughout the inter-war years was that 

women should enrol in, and run for office via, existing political parties. 

However, in the parties the interest in female voters was higher than the interest 

in female candidates, and more so once the first election results had been reviewed. 

Political parties maintained that the state no longer had a part to play given that direct 

gender discrimination in legislation had been abolished. From here on out, it was 

up to civil society and the market to create a fitting gender balance. Until 1945, this 

meant one female Member of Parliament per party – the so-called token woman. 

The women’s movement thus ended up with the full responsibility for increased 

political representation of women. To begin with, the movement took up the gauntlet 

by launching a nationwide educational programme in citizenship, and by facilitating 

the founding of women’s organisations within the political parties. Thanks to the 

initiative of members active in the women’s cause, all political parties had women’s 

committees in the 1930s. 

The close collaboration between the women’s movement and the political parties 

could also be seen in the fact that women’s organisations until the end of the 1970s 

drew their chairman from the ranks of prominent female politicians – preferably government 

ministers – and that the parties took turns holding the post. 

Following the Second World War, the women’s movement expanded its repertoire 

to include proper electoral campaigns. In the 1945 elections, the “vote for a woman”campaign 

was launched. This was to become a fixture of Danish electoral campaigns 

for many years to come. The concept is simple: activists position themselves outside 

voting stations carrying posters encouraging voters on their way to the ballot to vote 

for a woman. This is also when the women’s movement founded the tradition of crossparty 

election meetings – a tradition still alive today. 

The most spectacular campaign was carried out in the municipal elec-tions of 

1970, when the entire female elite in the country was mobilised in a large-scale media 

push. The weekend preceding the elections, every nationwide newspaper as well as the 

major regional papers carried opinion pieces urging voters to vote for a female candidate 

and written by politicians from all parties, leading members of the women’s organisations, 

and famous artists. Demonstrating the strength of the feminist heritage, 

every single opinion writer drew on the classical arguments of justice, representation, 

and resources in their plea for increased political representation for women. 

In 1945, the women’s movement also suggested the implementation of a quota 

system in the form of a proposal that all parties be mandated to reserve 33 per cent 

of the spots on their lists of candidates for women. However, this type of affirmative 

action did not receive broad support until the third wave of the movement: between 

1977 and 1996, several parties operated with some form of quota system or other. 

By this time the glass ceiling had, however, been broken by the second feminist 

wave, which paved the way for a new understanding of the entire concept of politics 


and set new standards of female citizenship with the demand that women have the 

right to rule their own bodies. Affirmative action became statutory and was, on the 

advice of the United Nations’ fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, supplemented 

by a third equal status strategy, gender mainstreaming. 

WOMEN AND DEMOCRACY 

So what has a hundred years of women in politics meant to Danish society? First and 

foremost, it has meant democratisation. Long gone are the days when regimes that 

reserved political rights for (select groups of) men could be labelled democratic. Today, 

democracy legitimises itself through universal human rights and equal political 

representation. In other words, by recognising the legitimacy of feminism’s first two 

arguments for women’s political rights. 

The resource argument – that women have different areas of compe-tence than 

men, and that this has contributed to an improved process of political decision-making 

– is more questionable. 

On the one hand, a clear, gender-based division of labour can be demonstrated, 

under which women have handled the ‘softer’ policy areas, such as equal status policy, 

social policy, and cultural policy. On the other hand, women have stuck to party lines 

in these as in all other policy issues. There are very few examples of women collaborating 

across party divides, and in the end, it is the male majority that has established 

the “woman-friendly” welfare state through their votes in Parliament. More research 

is thus needed to properly investigate this important question 

The question remains whether the Danish model may serve as inspiration for 

countries undergoing democratic transition today, when alternative, and faster, roads 

to political equality are available. Quota systems, in particular, have proven to be very 

effective instruments. 

But maybe the secret to sustainable equal status development is that it is rooted 

in a combination of top-down and bottom-up politics. The state may institute equality 

before the law, but carrying this over into equality in life required the cooperation 

of civil society. And here, others can perhaps draw on the experiences of the Danish 

women’s movement when it comes to information campaigns, women’s mobilisation 

and organisation within political parties, and electoral campaigns. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

American Declaration of Independence. United States National Archives; http://www.archives.gov/ 

exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html 

Dansk kvindehistorie www.kvinfo.dk 

History.com; http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/abigail-adams-urges-husband-to-remember-the-ladies 

Kvinder i Folketinget; http://www.ft.dk/Demokrati/~/media/Pdf_materiale/Pdf_publikationer/Informationsark/Folketingets_medlemmer/kvinder_i_folketinget%20pdf.ashx 

Dahlerup, Drude, Vi har ventet længe nok: håndbog i kvinderepræsentation, Kbh.: Nordisk Ministerråd, 

1988 

Equal democracies?: gender and politics in the Nordic countries, Christina Bergqvist (editor in chief), 

Anette Borchorst ... [et al.], Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1999 

Duiker, William J., and Jackson J. Spielvogel. World History: From 1500. Cengage Learning, 2006. 

Larsen, Jytte, Også andre hensyn: dansk ligestillingspolitik 1849-1915, Århus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 

2010 

Mill, John Stuart. The Subjection of Women. Hayes Barton Press, 1924. 

Pateman, Carole, “Three Questions about Womanhood Suffrage”, Caroline Daley & Melanie Noland 

(red.), Suffrage and Beyond. International Feminist Perspectives. New York University Press, 1994 



NETWORKS AND 

TOOLKITS 

Some resources that can inspire your work 

Participating in the ‘Christiansborg Seminar’ in Copenhagen offers the 

participants an opportunity to meet with colleagues from around the 

world who struggle with similar challenges on a daily basis. 

While there is probably no better way of learning than to share your 

experiences face-to-face with colleagues in the global community, 

this is not an option for all. In fact, for most of us the most practical 

option is to read what others have put on paper or decided to share on 

the internet. 

Much has already been produced by practitioners, academics and 

institutions, and some of the resources are listed in the bibliography 

section of the previous chapters. In this section we only highlight a few 

resources that we find particularly relevant and useful. 


A worker removes election posters on January 8, 2008 in Nairobi, Kenya. Normal business has 

resumed in the capital after post election violence abated. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty 

Images). 


IKNOWPOLITICS – INTERNATIONAL KNOWLEDGE NETWORK OF WOMEN IN POLITICS 

A network developed by International IDEA, International Parliamentary Union, National 

Democratic Institute, UNDP and UN WOMEN. 

http://iknowpolitics.org/en 

This is an interactive network of and for women engaging in politics. The goal of the 

network is to increase participation and effectiveness of women in political life by 

utilizing a technology enabled forum that provides access to critical resources and 

expertise, stimulates dialogue, creates knowledge, and shares experiences on women’s 

political participation. The network also allows women to collaborate on issues of 

common interest. The platform runs e-discussions on selected topics, offers e-learning, 

and provides a knowledge library. 

WOMEN’S DEMOCRACY NETWORK – EMPOWERING WOMEN TO LEAD 

International Republican Institute 

http://www.wdn.org/about-wdn 

The Women’s Democracy Network connects women leaders and aspiring leaders with 

their counterparts around the world to share best practices and learn new skills. Working 

together, members of the Network are building thriving communities and lasting 

democracies. 

In many countries, women are just beginning to enter the political sphere, and 

many continue to struggle to gain positions that will enable them to push forward 

democratic reforms. Among women worldwide, there is a growing need to break traditional 

barriers that discourage or prevent their political participation. The WDN seeks 

to enable women to do this, by connecting them to their best resource: themselves. 

The goals of the Women’s Democracy Network are: To formalize a network of women 

who have gained experience in political and civil society with women who struggle to 

take part in the democratic development of their countries so that they might engage 

in sharing experiences; to provide training and mentoring opportunities that address 

the specific needs of women within the regions of Africa, Asia, Eurasia, Europe, Latin 

America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, and North America. 

ACE ELECTORAL KNOWLEDGE NETWORK 

ACE is a collaborative effort between nine organisations: International IDEA, EISA, Elections 

Canada, the Federal Electoral Institute of Mexico (IFE), IFES, UNDESA, UNDP and the UNEAD. 

The European Commission is an ex-officio member. 

http://aceproject.org 

Established in 1998, the ACE network promotes credible, and transparent electoral processes 

with an emphasis on sustainability, professionalism and trust in the electoral 

process. ACE offers a wide range of services related to electoral knowledge, assistance 

and capacity development. The network comprises of a global, thematic component, 

and a regional component. 

The ACE website is an online knowledge repository that provides comprehensive 

information and customised advice on electoral processes. The website contains indepth 

articles, global statistics and data, an Encyclopaedia of Elections, information on 

electoral assistance, observation and professional development, region- and countryspecific 

resources, daily electoral news, an election calendar, quizzes, expert networks 

and much more. It is freely accessible to all and the number of visitors is constantly 

growing – as of January 2012 the website has more than 1,3 million visitors per year. 

While ACE does not have a particular focus on women like networks like iKNOWpolitics 

and Women’s Democracy Network, it is possible to find a lot of very relevant information 

regarding women’s involvement in elections. 


EMPOWERING WOMEN FOR STRONGER POLITICAL PARTIES – 

A GUIDEBOOK TO PROMOTE WOMEN’S POLITICAL PARTICIPATION 

UNDP and NDI, February 2012, 120 pages 

This publication identifies targeted interventions for promoting the stronger presence 

and influence of women in political parties as well as advancing gender equality 

issues in party policies and platforms. The lessons learned and common strategies 

in this Guide are drawn mainly, but not exclusively, from 20 case studies that were 

commissioned by UNDP and conducted by NDI during 2009-2010. The entry points 

identified are designed to provide ideas for action for political parties, development 

assistance providers, party foundations, and CSOs in their work to support parties. 

GENDER AND POLITICAL PARTIES – FAR FROM PARITY 

International IDEA, June 2011, 90 pages 

The election of four female presidents in Latin America in recent years has drawn attention 

to women’s political participation and their access to political decision-making. 

Despite these encouraging results, statistics reveal that the Latin American region 

is still far from achieving gender equality in politics. Although women are increasingly 

involved in politics, they still have limited access to leadership positions in political 

party contexts. 

Researchers from 18 countries provided input to the Gender and Political Parties 

in Latin America database (www.iadb.org/research/geppal/) based on a survey of 94 

political parties. This report presents an analysis of database information. The purpose 

of the report is to provide comparative data on women and men in political parties 

to inform on the situation and challenges of women’s political participation. 

WOMEN IN PARLIAMENT: BEYOND NUMBERS 

International IDEA, 2005, 264 pages 

Little research had been done so far on the way and extent to which women Members 

of Parliament influence politics. With this Handbook, the focus shifts from getting 

more women elected to the parliament, to giving those elected the means to make a 

greater impact on politics. Key findings include: 

It is not all about numbers: While a critical mass of women is necessary to ensure 

women’s representation, the quality of the representation is just as important. Training 

is crucial to avoid the trap of electing “token women”. 

Gender perspectives, not gender issues: Women elected to parliament change politics 

globally; they introduce a women’s perspective into all areas of political life, they 

are not limited to gender issues. 

Representation means more than elected politics: It means that more women 

must have seats at the Cabinet table, more women must be appointed to senior decision-making 

positions, and more women’s voices must be heard and included when 

major political reform or transformation is undertaken. 

The handbook includes case studies from Argentina, Burkina Faso, Ecuador, 

France, Indonesia, Rwanda, South Africa and Sweden, as well as regional overviews 

from the Arab World, Latin America, South Asia and a case study on the Inter-Parliamentary 

Union (IPU). 

HANDBOOK FOR MONITORING WOMEN’S PARTICIPATION IN ELECTIONS 

OSCE, 2004, 54 pages 

This handbook provides guidance on monitoring women’s participation in the electoral 

process. The handbook was designed as a working tool to assist ODIHR election 


observation missions in identifying the various elements of an election process that 

may impact on women’s equal participation. It sets out practical steps to be taken to 

integrate a gender perspective into election observation and should serve to ensure 

that conclusions drawn on the extent to which an election process meets OSCE commitments 

and other international standards for democratic elections fully takes into 

account how the election process affects both women and men. 

GENDER EQUALITY IN ELECTED OFFICE: A SIX-STEP ACTION PLAN 

OSCE/ODIHR, 2012, 76 pages 

The report is an overview of current trends in women’s political participation across 

the OSCE region. It identifies a Six-Step Action Plan, a series of fast-track strategic interventions 

which can contribute towards the attainment of gender equality in elected 

office, in a ‘nested’ model. Each of the six strategies can be a starting point for action, 

taking into consideration the variety of different political and electoral systems 

and traditions in place. It offers a visible understanding of the need to cover all of the 

areas, not just one or two, and it links up very well to the understanding of the need 

for both a top-down state focused response (legislation) and a bottom-up civil society 

oriented response (changing gender attitudes etc.). 

COUNTRIES IN TRANSITION – OPTIONS FOR WOMEN’S POLITICAL PARTICIPATION 

A conference report by Africa Contact, Gendernet, The Danish Institute for Human Rights, 

KVINFO, and Danish Institute for Parties and Democracy, 2011, 36 pages. 

The report is a short record of the conference which dealt with the challenges related 

to developing and enabling a democratic political culture for women in a large number 

of countries that are undergoing various processes of transition, including countries 

in Sub-Saharan and North Africa. 

The key areas of the conference were: the structures of exclusion – focusing on 

barriers to political participation; responses to exclusion – focusing on best practices 

for enhancing the political participation of women; and finally, workshop discussions 

on challenges and recommendations in relation to; local civil society cooperation; engaging 

international actors; from politics of presence to critical influence and action; 

and from elite driven democracy to broad-based participation. 

AFGHANISTAN’S PARLIAMENT IN THE MAKING – GENDERED UNDERSTANDINGS AND 

POLITICS IN A TRANSITIONAL COUNTRY 

UNIFEM & Henrich Böll Stiftung, 2009, 192 pages 

The report casts a light on the socio-political context and the space of agency for male 

and female parliamentarians in both houses of Parliament, the Wolesi Jirga and Meshrano 

Jirga. Due to conservative gender relations and traditional beliefs about the 

status of women in Afghan society, women politicians much more than their male 

counterparts have to prove themselves in their roles as the people’s representatives. 

However, instead of joining together as one force against the current political environment 

that is curtailing the political, social and economic freedoms that have only 

recently been achieved, women parliamentarians are being swept up in political, ethnic 

or regional power structures and agendas. 


MAKING DEMOCRACY WORK FOR WOMEN: INITIAL EXPERIENCES 

FROM 10 UNDEF FUNDED PROJECTS 

UNIFEM, 2008, 24 pages 

The document describes initial results of the projects of the United Nations Democracy 

Fund (UNDEF). Women’s participation in governance, whether in time of peace 

or war, continues to be limited, yet it remains a top priority and a critical element 

for achieving gender equality. Only when women have full access to decision-making 

positions will laws, policies, and budgets reflect the needs of all citizens and support 

women’s rights. 

The purpose of the Fund is to promote democracy by providing assistance for 

projects that consolidate and strengthen democratic institutions and facilitate democratic 

governance. A common factor among the projects is the creation of an enabling 

environment that provides an opportunity for women to participate in reform policies, 

agendas and decentralization processes. Many of the countries involved have 

held elections between 2006 and 2009, and in several countries, women have run for 

office. 

PARLIAMENT, THE BUDGET AND GENDER 

UN Women, 2004, 105 pages 

This handbook was inspired by a series of regional and national seminars on Parliament 

and the Budgetary Process, including from a Gender Perspective. Intended as 

a reference tool, the handbook sets out practical examples of parliament’s active engagement 

in the budgetary process. It seeks to advance parliament’s own institutional 

capacity to make a positive impact on the budget, and to equip parliament, its members 

and parliamentary staff with the necessary tools to examine the budget from a 

gender perspective. 

DEMOCRACY AND THE CHALLENGE OF CHANGE – 

A GUIDE TO INCREASING WOMEN’S POLITICAL PARTICIPATION 

National Democratic Institute, 2011, 138 pages 

The Guide focuses on programs in the areas of citizen participation, elections, political 

parties and governance. It presents the case for increasing women’s participation 

and provides information on best practices and strategies to move that goal forward. 

It also offers case studies, check lists and additional reading for each of the areas highlighted, 

as well as a general list of factors or tactics to consider when designing a program. 


© Danish Institute for 

Parties and Democracy 

Strandgade 56 

1401 Copenhagen K 

Denmark 

Tel: +45 32 69 89 89 

Email: dipd@dipd.dk 

This publication is also available on www.dipd.dk. 

Views expressed in this publication do not necessarily 

represent the views of the Board of DIPD. 

Responsible Editor: Bjørn Førde 

Consultant: Marie Skov Madsen 

Design: detusch&luba 

Print: TOPTRYK 

ISBN print 978-87-92796-10-3 

ISBN web 978-87-92796-11-0

CHRISTIANSBORG 

SEMINAR 

The ’Christiansborg Seminar’ is an annual event, bringing 

DIPD partners and colleagues from around the world 

together to share ideas and practices on a specific theme. 

The seminar offers a unique opportunity for Danish 

political parties and NGOs to learn from other Nordic 

organisations as well as from partners in political parties 

and democracy organisations in Africa, Asia, the Middle 

East and Latin America. 

DANISH INSTITUTE FOR PARTIES AND DEMOCRACY 

INSTITUT FOR FLERPARTISAMARBEJDE 


STRANDGADE 56 

1401 COPENHAGEN K 

DENMARK 

TEL.: +45 32 69 89 89 

MAIL: DIPD@DIPD.DK 

WEB: WWW.DIPD.DK

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