Implementing Inclusion: Gender Quotas, Inequality, and Backlash in Kenya

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Marie E. Berry ◽  
Yolande Bouka ◽  
Marilyn Muthoni Kamuru
Keyword(s):  
Focus Groups ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Gender Oppression ◽  
Women's Power ◽  
Laws And Policies ◽  
Gender Quota ◽  
New Inequalities

Abstract Extensive research has affirmed the potential of gender quotas to advance women's political inclusion. When Kenya's gender quota took effect after a new constitution was promulgated in 2010, women were elected to the highest number of seats in the country's history. In this article, we investigate how the process of implementing the quota has shaped Kenyan women's power more broadly. Drawing on more than 80 interviews and 24 focus groups with 140 participants, we affirm and refine the literature on quotas by making two conceptual contributions: (1) quota design can inadvertently create new inequalities among women in government, and (2) women's entry into previously male-dominated spaces can be met with patriarchal backlash, amplifying gender oppression. Using the ongoing process of quota implementation in Kenya as a case to theoretically question inclusionary efforts to empower women more generally, our analysis highlights the challenges for implementing women's rights laws and policies and the need for women's rights activists to prioritize a parallel bottom-up process of transforming gendered power relations alongside top-down institutional efforts.

Women, Politics, and Gender Quotas

1970 ◽  
pp. 18-27
Author(s):  
Valentine M. Moghadam
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Arab Region ◽  
The World ◽  
Politics And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Gender Quota

The argument for gender quotas – made by women’s rights activists across the globe has come about in response to women’s continued collective marginalization from political power. According to data from the Inter-Parliamentary Union (2005), the global average for women’s parliamentary representation is 18 percent, with high rates in the Nordic countries, Rwanda, and Argentina, and low rates in the Arab region and Iran.In the vast majority of countries, political power – legislative, juridicial, and executive rests in the hands of men. In recent decades, therefore, the worldwide growth of a population of educated, employed, mobile, and politically aware women, combined with the diffusion of the UN-sponsored global women’s rights agenda, has increased calls for women’s political participation and representation. One of the mechanisms to realize this objective is the gender quota. Feminist groups around the world favor the implementation of the gender quota – which may come in the form of a constitutional quota, an electoral quota, or a political party quota – but it remains both controversial and elusive, especially in the Middle East.

Women in Burundi

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Saiget
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Women's Organizations ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Collective Actions ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
History Of ◽  
Women’S Organizations

The history of women is characterized by nonlinear and gendered social, political and economic processes. In particular, the history of Burundian women’s collective actions has been embedded in the contested and violent trajectory of the Burundian state. Burundian women’s collective actions refer to a broad range of interactions: from protest, and social mobilizations to institutionalized actions. These interactions have been shaped by both global and local social structures, and by complex conflictive and cooperative relations between the Burundian state, political parties, women’s organizations and movements, and external actors (colonial powers, international organizations, non-governmental organizations). Women’s experiences in Burundi’s pre-colonial patriarchal society are little known, with the exception of the glorified Queen-mothers. German and Belgian colonial policies (1886–1962) reinforced and rigidified pre-colonial social constructions of ethnic and gendered social identities and roles, assigning ordinary women to the domestic sphere and sanctioning their social inferior status along with ethnic lines (Tutsi, Hutu, and Twa). After Burundi’s independence, the one-party military regime organized and supervised the first forms of women’s political participation through the Union des femmes burundaises (1962–1980s). The democratic transition of the early 1990s led to the creation of autonomous women’s organizations and networks, which were extended during the civil war (1993–2005). Burundian women actively contributed to national and grassroots peace processes. In particular, a delegation of seven Burundian women participated in the negotiations held in Arusha (1998–2000), with observer status. Post-conflict struggles for women’s rights posed the central issue of women’s political representation, with the adoption of gender quotas from 2005, but left aside other issues after 2010, such as women’s right to inherit land. In Spring 2015, Burundian women were present in protests against the president’s third mandate; with the women’s march being the first to reach the city center in March 2015. Women’s organizations kept mobilizing towards women’s rights after the electoral crisis, in exile or within Burundi, though facing important financial constraints and political repression.

Women's Movements and Constitution Making after Civil Unrest and Conflict in Africa: The Cases of Kenya and Somalia

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (01) ◽  
pp. 78-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aili Mari Tripp
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Women's Movements ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Conflict In Africa ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Constitutional Changes

As numerous conflicts have come to an end in Africa over the past two decades, women's movements have sought to advance a women's rights agenda through peace accords; through constitutional, legislative, and electoral reforms; as well as through the introduction of gender quotas. This article focuses the impact women's movements have had in shaping constitutions after periods of turmoil, particularly in areas of equality, customary law, antidiscrimination, violence against women, quotas, and citizenship rights. It demonstrates how countries that have come out of major civil conflict and violent upheaval in Africa after the mid-1990s—but especially after 2000—have made more constitutional changes with respect to women's rights than other African countries. The second part of the article provides two examples of how women's movements influenced constitutional changes pertaining to gender equality as well as the difficulties they encountered, particularly with respect to the international community.

scholarly journals GENDER DAN PEMBANGUNAN PEREMPUAN DI ACEH PASCA KONFLIK DAN TSUNAMI: PEMBAHASAN TEORITIS

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yeni Sri Lestari
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Development Process ◽  
Women's Movements ◽  
Gender Development ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Women's Development ◽  
Great Opportunity ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Women's Power ◽  
The Relationship

This article discusses the theoretical analysis of gender and its relationship to women's development in post-conflict Aceh and the tsunami. This discussion is considered important because of two causes, first the development of women in most countries is always focused on the gender concepts that discuss the position of men and women from the socio-cultural side that influence development in particular in this study is the development of women's rights Aceh . While the development of women is still minimal has led to demands for the fulfillment of women's rights in Aceh. Based on this, then the issues studied in the discussion of this article are  what is meant by gender and how can gender be formed? What is the relationship between gender concepts and women's development process in Aceh ?. The findings of the study found that the concept of gender is an important contributor to the birth of women's power in advocating for the development of their rights in post-conflict Aceh and the tsunami. This is because the concept of gender provides a great opportunity for the existing women's movements in various parts of the world, especially in post-conflict Aceh and tsunami in Aceh. At the end of the study, this article shows that gender plays an important role in the development of women's rights in Aceh.Keywords: Gender, Development of women, Aceh, Conflict and Tsunami.

Grassroots will drive North Africa women’s rights push

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Women's Issues ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Political Pressure ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Grassroots Movements ◽  
The Past

Significance The past year has seen women’s rights movements come to the fore across the Maghreb, a region where previous initiatives have been driven by Western political pressure and from the top down by predominantly authoritarian leaders. Impacts Grassroots movements will be more likely to succeed in gaining society’s buy-in than elite attempts to impose values. Wider issues in Algeria preclude women’s issues taking centre stage, but the new president may use them to legitimise his position. Tunisian President Kais Saied, a conservative, is unlikely to introduce progressive measures but will face pressure to act on existing ones.

scholarly journals The 2004 Mudawwana Reforms and the Problem of Moroccan Masculinity

1970 ◽  
pp. 99-104
Author(s):  
Elisa Perkins
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Women's Power ◽  
Power And Authority

In October of 2003, King Mohammad VI announced his intention to radically improve women's rights by reforming Morocco's Mudawwana al Ahwal al Shakhsiyyah, or Code de Statut Personnel,1 and in January 2004, parliament unanimously accepted a series of dramatic changes based on his suggestions. The new set of laws, renamed the Mudawwana al Usrah, or Code de la Famille, promises to increase women's power and authority in family and public life.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Goodier
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
New York State ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
York State ◽  
Women's Power ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
National Perspective

This introductory chapter sets out the book's primary goal, which is to understand the movement for women's rights from the point of view of the women who opposed their enfranchisement in New York State. Recovering a clearer understanding of attitudes regarding women's power, as well as the meaning of the vote to women of the time, more accurately illuminates any study of women's rights movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The book analyzes activities at the local and state levels, and those that connected New York State to the national perspective, in an effort to clarify the importance of anti-suffragism for the suffrage movement, as well as for the movement for women's rights. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

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