The Incorporation of Women in Rwandan Politics after 1994

2019 ◽  
pp. 83-103
Author(s):  
Louise Umutoni-Bower

Liberation struggle usually entails the active incorporation and participation of women. However, in the period following liberation after power is captured, we tend to see women excluded. Women are often relegated to the sidelines, gender roles are reinforced, with political positions reserved for men. In Africa, the gender backlash that follows liberation was observed in the liberation movements of the first wave (1960s and 1970s) and second wave (1980s and 1990s). However, this was not the case in Rwanda when the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) took power after halting the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. The RPF actively included women in politics appointing women to half their allocated seats in the Transitional National Parliament (TNP). This initial inclusion during the transitional period is important because it lay the ground for women's participation in Rwandan politics. The subsequent policies that enshrined women's political inclusion in the constitution through the quota system, as well the structures developed at the lowest level of government to encourage women's political participation, have their roots in the active incorporation that happened during the transitional period. This chapter explores the factors that led to this initial incorporation and why the gender backlash common in liberation movements did not occur in Rwanda.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vina Salviana Darvina Soedarwo ◽  
Gautam Kumar Jha ◽  
Gonda Yumitro ◽  
Nurul Zuriah

In Indonesia and India the participation of women in politics is influenced by their traditional social roles. This implies that gender ideology, cultural patterns, and previously determined conceptions of suitable social roles dictate the roles of men and women. Although there is a quota system for ensuring that the representation of women in democratic representation reaches the ‘critical minimum of 30%, it is a sad fact that gender sensitivity towards women as a political class is still severely lacking among the political parties both in Indonesia and in India. This is caused by the patriarchal gender bias against women that is inherent in political parties itself and also due to the lack of political education in gender sensitivity for both men and women. In Indonesia and India, the gender sensitivity of secular political parties is almost same but for the Muslim political parties, Indonesia has better condition than in India. Keywords: gender sensitivity, political parties, India, Indonesia


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-71
Author(s):  
Rahmat Salam

Women's representation in politics, especially those who sit as members of the legislature. From the last few elections, the number of women's representation in the legislature in the city of South Tangerang is still minimal, even below the minimum threshold of 30 percent. This shows that the participation of women in the political arena in South Tangerang is still a minority. This study tries to provide an overview of the participation and representation of politics in South Tangerang City. This study used a qualitative approach by conducting direct observation through interviews and gathering information from other sources. The problems that occurred in women's representation in the DPRD of South Tangerang City could be identified. The results showed that women's representation from two elections in the city of South Tangerang was still below the threshold for women's representation, namely still 14.58 in the 2009 election and 17.78% in the 2014 election, where the threshold for women's representation set by law - the invitations are 30%. The lack of women's participation in politics in the city of South Tangerang, especially as members of the DPRD, is due to the strong gender discrimination and patriarchal culture in Indonesia.


Author(s):  
Ishaq Ahmad ◽  
Shahida Aman

This study aims to evaluate the religious and the alternate discourses on women’s political rights in Pakistan; such debates were heightened and intensified as a result of General Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization vision and policies implemented between 1977 to 1988. Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization is argued to have polarized women’s participation in politics and challenged the standing of feminist groups, Islamic feminists, and secularists, which made Islam and women’s political participation the subject of debates that are still relevant in the case of Pakistan. The paper argues that Pakistani state’s Islamic disposition in general and Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization in particular provoked religious conservatism and promoted gender-based discrimination that deeply affected women’s political participation. This study seeks to reconcile the different perspectives of Islamic and secular feminism for realizing the goals of effective participation of women in politics. The paper uses a qualitative research method concentrating on thematic analysis, which employs for identifying and analyzing patterns or themes within qualitative data analysis approaches. The findings suggest that in the case of women rights, Islamic feminism and secular feminism are compatible and complementary, and a synthesis of both is imperative to realize the effective participation of women in politics.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 409-437
Author(s):  
Luciana de Oliveira Ramos ◽  
Virgílio Afonso da Silva

AbstractLike many other countries, Brazil has adopted gender quotas in elections for legislatures at all levels of the federation. However, Brazilian gender quotas have been ineffective at increasing women's participation in politics. Authors usually point to reasons related to the electoral system and party structure. This article analyzes a variable that is rarely considered: the role of the Electoral Court. We argue that the quality and intensity of the control exercised by an electoral court, when called upon to decide on the enforcement of the gender quota law, can influence the efficacy of this policy. We show that, in general, the Brazilian Superior Electoral Court tends to foster the participation of women in politics. However, based on two divides—between easy and difficult cases and between cases with low and high impact—we argue that in the realm of gender quotas, this court takes a rather restrained stance in those cases considered both difficult and with high impact.


2012 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Rhoads

This article contends that cultural, political and historical factors create a local political environment where de facto discrimination against women is the norm. Without thoroughly addressing and altering the underlying issues causing discrimination against women in politics, a weak quota system will not immediately lead to increased women's participation in Bali. This paper argues that the leading factors contributing to low levels of Balinese women's participation include widespread money politics, the revitalisation of customary institutions and local identities through decentralisation, and the collective memory of the violent dissolution of the Indonesian Women's Movement (Gerwani) in 1965–66.


2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-93
Author(s):  
Peter Mortensen

This essay takes its cue from second-wave ecocriticism and from recent scholarly interest in the “appropriate technology” movement that evolved during the 1960s and 1970s in California and elsewhere. “Appropriate technology” (or AT) refers to a loosely-knit group of writers, engineers and designers active in the years around 1970, and more generally to the counterculture’s promotion, development and application of technologies that were small-scale, low-cost, user-friendly, human-empowering and environmentally sound. Focusing on two roughly contemporary but now largely forgotten American texts Sidney Goldfarb’s lyric poem “Solar-Heated-Rhombic-Dodecahedron” (1969) and Gurney Norman’s novel Divine Right’s Trip (1971)—I consider how “hip” literary writers contributed to eco-technological discourse and argue for the 1960s counterculture’s relevance to present-day ecological concerns. Goldfarb’s and Norman’s texts interest me because they conceptualize iconic 1960s technologies—especially the Buckminster Fuller-inspired geodesic dome and the Volkswagen van—not as inherently alienating machines but as tools of profound individual, social and environmental transformation. Synthesizing antimodernist back-to-nature desires with modernist enthusiasm for (certain kinds of) machinery, these texts adumbrate a humanity- and modernity-centered post-wilderness model of environmentalism that resonates with the dilemmas that we face in our increasingly resource-impoverished, rapidly warming and densely populated world.


Author(s):  
Ruth Rubio-Marín

This chapter explores how human rights law has contributed to the shift towards participatory gender equality by legitimating the adoption of quotas and parity mechanisms to ensure women’s equal participation in decision-making. Since the adoption of CEDAW, human rights law has moved away from formal equality notions that simply affirm women’s equal political rights. Instead, we see growing endorsement of substantive equality doctrines that validate the adoption of gender quotas, initially as temporary special measures to ensure women equal opportunities, and, more recently, as permanent measures targeting the gender-balanced composition of an ever-expanding range of public and private governance bodies. The chapter explores how human rights law connects this participatory turn to issues of pluralism, calling attention to the need for public bodies to represent the full diversity of the population, and calling on state parties to increase the participation of women from ethnic minorities, indigenous groups, and religious minorities.


2021 ◽  
pp. 239448112110203
Author(s):  
Rebat Kumar Dhakal

Women representation in public institutions has been a key policy shift in Nepal in the recent decade. Despite such policy intervention as affirmative action measures to encourage women participation in public institutions and likewise increased presence of women in politics and public institutions, women’s participation at local level school decision-making processes remains limited. Through a lens of representation and theory of participation and an examination of women’s experiences, this study critically examines the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in the School Management Committee. Drawing on original ethnographic research in a secondary school in rural Kaski, Gandaki Province, Nepal, this study draws that predominant female gender images were reproduced in the initial stage of women participation which made them feel ‘othered’ and ‘excluded’; however, gradually, with the passage of time and learning, such images receded and they felt more ‘included’ and were thereby likely to demonstrate more substantive participation.


Author(s):  
T Sudalai Moni

Panchayati Raj plays a formidable role in enhancing the status of women in India during post-Independent times. In the colonial regime, women were not given adequate opportunity to involve and participate in the affairs of local bodies. However, in the 19th century, women gradually participated in the Panchayati Raj bodies when they were formally included in the electoral roll. During post-independent Era, due to the implementation of the Ashok Mehta Committee (1978) recommendation, National Perspective Plan, and 30 percent reservations seats for women in panchayats, there has been a substantial increase in women’s participation at all the levels of the Panchayati Raj bodies. Subsequently, the 72nd Amendment Bill and the 73rd amendment introduced in our parliament recommended 33 percent quotas for women. Encouraged by this, women have come forward in an ever-increasing number to join hands with the activities of Panchayat Raj Institution.Consequently, Central and State Governments encouraged women by implementing the 73rd constitutional amendment in 1993 (adding Article 243D and 243T), which also extended the privilege of seat reservation for SC/ST women in the local bodies. Due to this positive impetus, there has been a perceptible improvement in women’s participation in the last two decades. Due to unrestrained encouragement, the participation of women in Panchayati Raj is highly effective; thus, across India, more than 26 lakhs of women representatives got elected in PRI. This paper attempts to delineate the gradual growth of women’s participation in the Panchayati Raj Institution in various states in India.


2019 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 86-118
Author(s):  
RATA B KENEA

Though the participation of women in economic development and community work usually realized low as a whole due to various reasons, the contribution of gender in creating the difference in terms of their status even among the participatory women is untouched area. For instance, the research conducted by Atinafu Diga (2013) on assessment of economic empowerment of women the related studies entitled Assessment of economic empowerment of Women in Kolobo kebele, Abay chomman Woreda dealt with only inadequate economic empowerment problems and low participation of Women in educational leadership areas respectively as their overall findings. As a result, this study is undertaken to assess the status of women disparity to participate in community work in case of kolobo kebele, Ambo town, Oromia Regional State; Ethiopia.This study is descriptive in nature. For this particular study, both quantitative and qualitative research approach were employed. In doing this research paper, of the total population,79 samples were selected from the town selected using simple random and purposive sampling techniques. Here, 79 were responded for the 20 close-ended questions of the questionnaire and another 10 were responded for open-ended questions of the interview. To analyses the quantitative data, techniques such as tabulation, percentages, and numerical figures were employed to. On the other hand, Narration and comparative discussion were covered to analyse the qualitatively collected data.


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