Women in Politics: Gender, Power and Development 9781350224070, 9781783600526

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Acknowledgements

A special thanks to the Swedish International Development Co­ operation Agency, who helped bring together colleagues from the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment research programme to discuss ways to better understand women’s political trajectories through a bottom-up approach and to explore convergences and divergences across contexts. SIDA’s support was instrumental in allowing us to complete the journey right through to the publication of this book. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Andrea Cornwall, director of Pathways. Andrea was the glue that held us together, creating an enabling environment for us to think and reflect collectively, pursue our research interests with passion and broaden our analytical framings. I owe much to Andrea’s ingenuity in turning around issues by looking at them through a new lens, something which inspired all of us to think beyond the conventional approaches to the study of women and politics. This book would have not seen the light of day without Jenny Edwards, programme officer for Pathways. Jenny’s copy-editing skills are unparalleled, her eye for detail and meticulous review challenged all of us to address any incoherencies, gaps or unrefined arguments in the most comprehensive manner possible. Most of all, her warmth and consistent and persistent support saved this project from hibernating on many an occasion.

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Preface Andrea Cornwall

In recent decades we have seen substantial progress globally in women’s access to electoral office – although not nearly as much as to give women anything close to parity in the overwhelming majority of governments around the world. Women’s pathways to political power have been facilitated not only by electoral quotas, training and investment in inspiring and equipping women with the means to contest elections. Fundamental to change in the electoral arena have been women’s and feminist move­ments, whose engagement in catalysing women’s political participa­tion and channelling women’s demands has made profound contributions to redressing the marginalization of women in public life, and to bringing a concern with issues of gender equality into public policy and non-governmental public action. Women in Politics explores the trajectories of women in and into politics. It injects into a debate dominated by numbers a muchneeded focus on the women who run for office, on what motivates and helps them, as well as the barriers and obstacles that they face in entering the arena of formal politics. It asks searching questions about what is needed for more substantive shifts in accountability of the political arena, and the women in it, to women’s rights and gender justice. Bringing together research in eight countries – Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt, Ghana, India, Palestine, Sierra Leone and Sudan – this collection offers some important insights into women’s pathways to political power. It forms part of a series, Feminisms and Development, that has grown out of a multiviii

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country research and communications programme, Pathways of Women’s Empowerment (www.pathways-of-empowerment. org). Pathways began in 2006 with the aim of understanding what works to support women to empower themselves, and the intention of looking beyond international development’s motor­ ways to the hidden pathways that are changing women’s lives. Taking three themes – body, voice and work – as entry points, Pathways developed research and communications projects that sought to bring a fresh perspective to understanding women’s experiences of empowerment, disempowerment and positive social change. With its focus on countries in the global South that are recog­ nized for the disjuncture between democratic governance – recent or older in provenance – and strikingly low levels of repre­ sentation of women, Women in Politics offers many important insights. We learn of the significance of women’s families and partners, not simply the use of women as proxies or in dynastic politics, but also tales of supportive partners and parents, lessons about political life learnt from the experience of growing up in political families and being mentored by politician relatives, and the role families can play in constituency building. We come to hear about the limitations of training, especially the short-run training courses offered to women around the time of elections, but also of the positive difference that feminist movements and organizations have made through political education. We find out about the challenges of constituency building, but also of the work that women politicians do at the grassroots in the least favourable contexts that give them sufficient recognition amongst the electorate to win them office. Cutting through the essentialism that pervades policy debate on women and politics, Women in Politics contributes to a growing literature that is more critical and nuanced on questions of the con­tribution of women’s political representation to gender justice. What distinguishes it is the use of a methodological approach that is rare in political science: a valuing of the contribution that can be made to understanding politics by qualitative and life historical

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research that is grounded in women’s own narratives about their lives and an appreciation of the social and cultural dynamics of political life. The book offers especially important lessons for policy makers in a context where one-size-fits-all remedies dominate, and where there is comparatively little real data – by which I mean data that are grounded in women’s actual experiences, rather than numbers that tell stories that reveal little of the realities of women’s lives and struggles. What the studies in this book emphasize is that political engage­ ment does not begin and end with electoral politics. Rather, if we look at politics through the eyes of the women who run for office we can see a landscape of informal political institutions that have provided for them crucial support and staging posts on their journeys into formal politics. Support for those journeys must include support to the women’s and feminist organizations that make it possible for women to gain political experience, that mobilize a constituency of women, and that are so important in channelling women’s demands.

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INTRODUCTION Engaging Politically Rethinking Women’s Pathways to Power Mariz Tadros

This book rethinks women’s pathways to power. Its premise is that there is a need to complement the macro-policy focus on narrowing the gender gap in representation by getting the electoral system right. This necessary complement is a bottom-up approach that examines women’s pathways of political engage­ ment. Conceptually, this approach assumes an under­standing that politics is a broader project than winning a seat in a legislature, and challenges the implicit measurement of political empowerment exclusively in terms of reaching political office. Methodologically, its starting point is women’s political trajectories, which are best examined through research methods that allow subjects to define their own concepts and narrate their experiences in their own terms. This represents a departure from some of the more conventional approaches, in which macro-policy is the starting point of analysis (IDEA 2013). The case studies presented here address two critical questions. What under­ mines women’s ability to transform political informal repertoires of power into formal political leadership? And what enabling factors have we overlooked that could potentially play an influential role? Eight countries across three continents feature in this volume: Ghana, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Egypt, the Occupied Palestinian Terri­tories (OPT), Bangladesh, India and Brazil. For all the his­tori­ cal and contextual variation across these case studies, they all share one common feature: the representation gender gap is substantial. 1

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The political systems of the selected countries may vary: Egypt has experienced two major regime-changing uprisings in 30 months; in Sudan, an authoritarian regime has been under pressure from recurring mass protests. Sierra Leone represents a case study of a post-conflict context; the OPT is one of ongoing conflict; while Bangladesh, Ghana and India are fairly stable democracies. Brazil is, for the first time ever, led by a woman president in a context where resistance to women’s representation in legislatures is so deeply entrenched that it succeeds in obfuscating prospects of political empowerment via a quota (see Chapter 8 by Costa and Cornwall). An analysis of the eight country case studies is able to identify patterns of recurring themes and issues, however, despite these contextual differences. In all the contexts discussed in this volume, women’s access to formal political space and representation has been stymied. The Interparliamentary Union’s ranking on women’s political representation places the case study countries in the bottom half of its table (Bangladesh is ranked 71, Brazil 121, Ghana 111, India 110, Sierra Leone 104 and, while Egypt does not feature on the list, with 2 per cent representation, it would rank 141 along with the Solomon Islands). The only exception is Sudan, ranked 48. However, as Sara Abbas’s chapter shows, most of the women in office belong to the ruling party and are there mainly as window dressing: their presence has made little difference to the configuration of power. A life history approach is used across all the country case studies. This research method is particularly useful in capturing women’s entire political pathways, rather than focusing only on the point in this journey they had reached when they assumed office. This allows us to understand how the women define and understand politics, the relationships through which politics is mediated, and the contexts in which the women operate. In some cases a mixed methods approach is used – as in the OPT, India and Brazil, where surveys and focus groups were conducted. All the case studies assume a deep contextual analysis, linking women’s trajectories to the political dynamics and history of the country.

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The unit of analysis used in these case studies varies. The Egyptian case (Chapter 3) involves an investigation of 40 women who ran in the first post-Mubarak parliamentary elections in 2011– 12. A purposive sample was used to ensure a broad spectrum of political, ideological, geographical and religious representation. The Ghana study (Chapter 1) looks at the pathways to political power of a group of District Assembly (DA) women, the lowest tier of governance. The Bangladesh study (Chapter 2) is also based on the lowest political tier, focusing on the political trajectories of women councillors in urban government in three municipalities in Mymensingh, Tongi and Naryanganaj in 2012. Twelve life histories of municipal councillors were collected in total from the three areas. In India (Chapter 6) focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with key stakeholders were conducted in 2012 at district, block and GP (gram panchayat) levels of rural governance. In-depth interviews were also held with key state stakeholders, and 147 life histories of women drawn from each of the levels were also documented. The Sierra Leone study (Chapter 7) focuses on independent women candidates in the 2004 and 2008 local elections. Thirteen in-depth interviews were carried out. The Sudanese case study (Chapter 5) was based on 15 in-depth interviews with women who nominated themselves, as well as those in political office. The interviews were conducted in Khartoum between 2010 and 2011. The case study from Brazil (Chapter 8) focuses on elected women municipal councillors and mayors in the north-eastern state of Bahia. This variation in the unit of analysis allows for comparison of opportunities and constraints, and the ensuing policy implications, across tiers. A common contextual element across all the case studies is the application of some form of affirmative action – poli­ tical empowerment programmes provided by a plethora of state and non-state actors with the aim of increasing women’s political leadership in governance. Some have experienced high levels of violence in politics (Sierra Leone, Palestine, Egypt, Sudan, Bangladesh) while even those dubbed stable democracies, such as Brazil, have witnessed revolts against the system of governance.

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A ‘pathways lens’ to political empowerment Broadly, the literature on women in politics has tackled three kinds of representation: descriptive, substantive and symbolic. Descriptive representation refers to the proportion of women present in electoral political bodies. Substantive representation refers to when legislators pursue policy goals that are aligned with the interests of their constituents, although in the case of women’s representation there are serious question marks as to whether they represent ‘women’ and who defines them (Krook 2012: 87). The question of whether women’s presence in legislatures increases their substantive representation is a controversial one, in view of the fact that women are not a homogeneous group with common interests, and women’s interests and feminist interests may not be completely congruent. In addition, different tiers of legislature provide different opportunities of influence, and the ideological orientation and political inclinations of the regime in power also influences the outcome. The idea of instating a quota of 30 per cent was premised on creating a critical mass of women that would contribute to a substantive representation. Dahlerup’s seminal work (1988) suggested that substantive representation would emerge from critical acts, through the ripple effect that women’s presence has on other contingencies in politics. Symbolic representation captures how legislators’ presence shapes the beliefs and attitudes held by elites and mass publics (Krook 2012: 155; Krook and Childs 2010). It has also been argued that descriptive representation increases symbolic representation (Schwindt-Bayer and Mishler 2005), although Beaman et al.’s (2012) study of local representation in India suggests that symbolic representation is more strongly linked to substantive representation – since it is not when there are more women in legislatures that people’s perceptions change, but when they pursue agendas that make a difference that they elicit a positive role model effect. This book seeks to contribute to broadening the debate on political leadership by analysing women’s trajectories of engaging

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politically as opposed to the extent to which an electoral inter­ vention (law, policy or institution) has succeeded or failed in redressing the gap in representation. The focus on women’s trajectories examines their pathways rather than their agendas (substantive representation) or its impact on the polity (symbolic representation). The researchers acknowledge that a focus on women’s trajectories risks essentializing actors who are very differently positioned. The intention is not to suggest, however, that they all share a common pathway, or that their ideological inclinations and agendas are unimportant. Much of the literature examining women’s descriptive repre­ sentation examines processes of candidate selection, trends in political recruitment and cross-national variations (Krook and Schwindt-Bayer 2013: 555–6). By and large, however, these have been macro-policy studies. The micro studies on women’s engagement in politics have tended to adopt a supply-anddemand model of candidate selection (Randall 1982; Norris and Lovenduski 1995). Such studies examine those who are eligible to run; those who aspire to run; those who are nominated; and those who are eventually elected. To understand why women fall away at different phases, researchers have asked whether women’s underrepresentation stems from gender differences in political ambition, causing fewer women than men to consider running (the supply of female aspirants), biases in the recruitment practices of male elites leading them to select fewer women than men (the demand for certain types of candidates), or prejudices on the part of voters preferring to elect men over women (the outcomes of the elections). (Krook and SchwindtBayer 2013: 556)

Even when the influence of other factors in affecting ‘supply and demand’ is acknowledged, studies tend to focus on the formal political factors such as those pertaining to opportunities in political parties (Kolinsky 1991; Norris and Lovenduski 1995; Opello 2006 in Krook and Schwindt-Bayer 2013: 557). An exception in the scholarly literature on descriptive representation

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– drawing attention to key elements of women’s profiles (personal and professional background) – are the excellent case studies presented in Franceschet et al.’s (2012) volume, although they are all framed in terms of the effectiveness of quotas (chapters on France, Argentina, Uganda and Morocco by Murray, Franceschet et al., O’Brien, and Sater respectively). The scholarly literature has been focused mainly on how to get the macro-level institutional arrangements right to effect increased women’s representation, with a particular con­cen­tra­ tion on the extent to which quotas positively influence their descriptive, substantive and symbolic representation and under what conditions (Caul 2001; Dahlerup 2006; Ballington 2004; Ballington and Karam 2005; Tripp and Kang 2008; Tadros and Costa 2010). The international community’s policy approach, for example in the millennium development goals, established the percen­tage of women in political office as a proxy for political empower­ ment. Implicitly, it meant that empowerment was an outcome of having come to office, and the effectiveness of the quota became the primary policy tool for achieving it. Re-envisaging political empowerment not as a destination (political office) or an out­come (greater numbers), but as a pathway may provide us with a more nuanced understanding of the kind of policy shifts needed in order to create an environment enabling women to assume and sustain political leadership (see Pathways of Women’s Empowerment 2012: 8–9).

Rethinking the political Feminist scholarship has highlighted the importance of rethinking the way in which politics has been understood and defined without addressing the bias of its ethnocentric nature (Krook and Childs 2010) and its privileging of the male experience (Pateman 1988). All the case studies highlight the important influence on women’s political pathways of informal spaces – arenas through which relations, activities and networks are forged and

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negotiated. The Brazil and Bangladesh case studies, for example, clearly show that the association of the home with the private and politics with the public is highly problematic when so many high-profile meetings, whether discreetly behind closed doors or more publicly, happen in people’s homes. The demarcations between the formal and the informal in politics are far more porous than is often assumed. Brownill and Halford (1990) note that the formal/informal dichotomy is as problematic as the public/private division, which feminists sought to deconstruct on account of its reification of categories that serve to entrench particular power hierarchies. They note that the interconnections between political activities across the formal/informal demarcation are too complex to decisively allocate them to one category or another, in particular when ‘informal’ strategies of engagement are used to influence ‘formal’ institutions and structures (ibid.: 398). Moreover, feminist scholarship has drawn attention to the importance of recognizing political processes in which insiders and outsiders in political systems are deeply intertwined (Kenney 2003). A case in point is that of Welaa Salah El-Deen, the first woman to be nominated for, and win, the position of student union president of the University of Khartoum. The university had a curfew requiring women to be back in their dormitories by 9 p.m., which meant that they were unable to be present at any of the evening political meetings. Welaa, therefore, began to hold her own meetings for the women in the dormitories – an informal and supposedly private space. Their political discussions sometimes lasted until 4 a.m. It was in these dormitories that Welaa experienced how to conscientize women, build a con­ stituency and organize collective action. It was through ‘dorm’ politics that Welaa and others changed the nature of women’s formal participation in university elections and representative committees, challenged the patriarchal underpinnings of the party they belonged to (the left-leaning Democratic Front), and ended up challenging the authoritarian rule of the government in power. This informal arena (the dormitory) allowed for

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engagement in contentious politics that was impossible in the formal sphere. Much of how politics is done more generally is informal. Kagee Roman’s path into politics was facilitated by the fact that the SPLM in South Sudan wanted a person of Equatorian ethnic origin and a woman, and she ticked both boxes. However, for her to be appointed by the SPLM party as the Secretary of Culture, Media and Information was a major political accomplishment that even men her age would not have achieved. She argues that politics happens in male informal gatherings that take place after the formal political events and outside the party offices. You have to know in the evening who you need to hang out with. This is why politics works for men in Sudan more than women. The focus for us [women] is things we attend and leave. At night, with men, this one goes to that one, they discuss things. I used to go and sit with them in these sessions … their women were worried at first and then they realized I had no ulterior agenda. (p. 192)

Ahikire (2003) notes that women in local councils in Uganda had very little scope for influencing the agendas in the meetings because they had not had the opportunities of ‘selling’ them to other members – in contrast with male councillors, who would com­ bine business with pleasure and take advantage of gettogethers in bars and other social arenas in order to build support for their ideas (ibid.: 227). It is evident, from the case above, that politics in informal arenas can also be highly exclusionary for women, minimizing the influence of their participation in formal politics. The informal arenas can be terrains of political disempowerment when informal actors such as organized criminals or the secret police see women (or men) aspiring for political office as a threat to their interests. A study of women’s political engagement in Senegal showed how hidden networks of patronage played a key role in obstructing women’s ability to rise to positions of influence (Beck 2003). The role of patronage is also prominent in a study of women’s access to political power in Morocco (Sater

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2012). Cornwall and Goetz (2005) have also expressed concerns over the opportunities for transcending patriarchal hierarchies when working through informal arenas. They note that these informal spaces are often apolitical women’s associations or informal associations that either assign women to the tea-making brigade (women’s wings of parties) or make women’s ascent to leadership positions contingent on patronage from a top male leader. In the first case, women receive little training for democratic participation. In the second, there is often too weak a foundation to back political interests with constituency support and resources for formal politics. In the third, women leaders are cut off from a constituency base that might enable them to question party leadership and bring women’s interests on to party agendas. (Ibid.: 796).

The need for caution also arises when we notice how women’s involvement in the informal arenas can be instrumentalized by actors whose agenda is to confine women to community care roles, and restrict or prevent their political representation in formal politics. A case in point can be found in the narratives of women belonging to the ultra-conservative Islamist Salafi movement in Egypt (Chapter 3), whose position is that divinely prescribed gender roles mean that women may assume nurturing roles in community service – while the kind of political leadership over men and women that goes with formal political office should only be accorded to men. It is noteworthy that many of the women in the case studies did not speak of their work in the community as engaging in politics, often reserving the term to describe the step they took when they officially nominated themselves for office. In Bangladesh (Chapter 2), the women councillors did not perceive their work­ place or student politics experience, or their early exposure to politics through the family as political apprenticeship. Hence, there is a distorted perception, even among the women leaders themselves, that real politics starts with engagement in formal procedures and institutions. A fundamental shift is required in the way in which many of the political empowerment programmes

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work: rather than negating the experiences of women and commencing with them as if they are politically ignorant, the approach needs to be adapted to help them draw creatively on their existing experiences and resources gained in the informal arena to support their performance in formal politics. As the case studies demonstrate, women are able to make the bridge from leadership in the informal to the formal arenas when they have large constituencies that they are able to mobilize and when they have strong rapport with influential informal leaders in the community that endorse them. Perhaps one way to pursue this practically is for political empowerment programmes to help women unearth the full scale of the community relations that they have forged, but which they have yet to tap into in their political campaigns. The understanding of such political processes of formal–informal praxis is made possible by looking at women’s trajectories, which brings out the role that this has to play in their political careers.

Profiling women’s trajectories There are striking similarities in the profiles of women political leaders across the country case studies, which have important policy inferences and which challenge some pervasive myths. For instance, the majority of women were married. Marital status brings prestige and acts as an important buffer against rumours often spread by opponents to tarnish women’s reputations (including, for example, allusions to sexual promiscuity). However, contrary to prevailing myths, the cultural stigma against unmarried women is far more elusive than is assumed. Where women have strong constituencies and have forged a reputation for having served their community with integrity and loyalty, being unmarried is not a barrier to reaching political office. The overwhelming majority of those who assumed office, whether in local or national elections, were women beyond their twenties. In both Ghana and Bangladesh, all the women were above the age of 35. This has more to do with the reproductive

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cycle than with political inexperience. Where women are married and their children are still young, it is very difficult for them to engage in politics because of care responsibilities. This also applies to Palestine, where 52 per cent of the women had more than three children and were likely to rely on older children to take care of younger ones. (It is also partly a community bias towards perceiving older candidates, both women and men, as having more experience, also observed in the context of local government in Uganda (Ahikire 2003)). The issue of care is a recurring one across all the study countries and is corroborated with evidence from other countries. A study of the political backgrounds of women politicians in Argentina shows that female legislators were more likely to be single and have fewer children when compared to the national average, suggesting that family obligations may diminish opportunities to enter politics (Franceschet and Piscopo 2012: 49). Clearly taking care of family members, in particular children, impedes women in pursuing political careers. The exceptions are those women who are sufficiently well-off to delegate care responsibilities to domestic labour, as the Bangladeshi case study shows. In some contexts, such as Ghana and Palestine, women spoke of men and older children providing much appreciated assistance in relieving them of some of the childcare responsibilities. However, policies and programmes to empower women politically have failed to recognize women’s care responsibilities and to adopt responsive measures. It would be interesting, for example, to examine how many political training programmes make childcare provision for female participants. Privileging those women who can afford domestic help shows a clear class bias. Another pervasive dimension of these women’s profiles is the fact that many of them are in professions associated with nurturing community service roles, most notably teaching. In Palestine many of the women local councillors were headmistresses, teachers or social activists. In Ghana, as Manuh writes in Chapter 1:

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the most common occupation was teaching (29 per cent), while another 18 per cent combined farming with trading or administrative work. Eighteen per cent of the women were solely traders, while the remainder were nurses, midwives or healthcare workers; administrative or clerical workers; proprietors of schools/day care centres; or NGO workers. These occupations were located in both the formal and informal sectors, and some of the women straddled both.

There seems to be a strong association between women’s autonomous political agency and having a professional back­ ground of some sort. Costa and Cornwall’s longitudinal study of women’s political trajectories in Brazil (Chapter 8) suggests that, among the women leaders who were working, many were in professions involving community work – which again confirms the impor­tance of recognizing that this is where the greatest pool of future political leaders is likely to lie. Education also plays an important role in women’s political trajectories across the case studies. The higher the tier of office sought, the higher the level of education that women tend to have. This is very evident in Mathur’s study on India (Chapter 6), which shows that a majority of the elected women representatives (EWRs) (57 per cent) were non-literate or had only attained functional literacy (unable to read and could only write their names). Around 22 per cent had educational qualifications up to primary/middle level, 14 per cent up to graduate, and 7.5 per cent were postgraduates or held professional degrees. Those with the higher educational levels held office in the higher tier of government, and vice versa. In Palestine also, local council women are considered to be highly educated relative to the rest of the female population, having at least finished high school. The same trend applies to Bangladesh where all the women councillors had at least an undergraduate degree and one-third of them held MAs. In Egypt, 37 out of the 40 women who ran for parliamentary seats held at least an undergraduate degree, with some holding MAs and PhDs. In Costa and Cornwall’s comparison of the profile

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of women who became mayors in 2008 and 2012 with those in earlier decades, the most significant change has been the increase in their level of education. In Ghana, most of the women had only basic education and most had not been able to further their education as they would have liked. Manuh observes that there were recurrent references throughout the interviews to how the lack of a higher educational attainment was holding back their potential to stand as Members of Parliament in the future, and a few women had enrolled in adult education classes. One woman councillor, Grace O, reflected: ‘I would have run for Parliament if I had a good education. Nonetheless, I have enrolled in a non-formal education programme to upgrade my education for my future political career.’ If women are to make the transition from being informal political leaders to assuming formal political office or to move from contesting at the local to the meso or national levels, meeting the minimum educational attainment that is socially expected is a prerequisite. In view of the fact that women of higher social standing are likely to have greater educational opportunities, as is evident in the case of India, for example, it is also clear that if policies and programmes are serious about expanding the pool of women leaders who are able to nominate themselves for political office beyond the elite cohort, they will have to address the education factor. Since education becomes important to women at a particular stage in their political trajectory, policies and programmes should consider providing women with educational opportunities (such as scholarships) to obtain degrees, even if it is through distance learning, night school, and other less con­ ventional avenues.

Political apprenticeship Political apprenticeship is a term coined by Cornwall and Goetz (2005) to refer to the arenas in which political skills are learnt and constituencies built. Strikingly, there appears to be a pattern

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emerging across several of the study countries (Brazil, Bangladesh, Sudan, India) in which the family provides a real-life opportunity for political immersion. In Bangladesh all of the women had family members – fathers, brothers, uncles, or sometimes mothers – involved in formal party politics. As one councillor explained: Our house was … an open house, with endless streams of people coming and going, and endless cups of tea being made and snacks being served.... My siblings were annoyed but I enjoyed meeting people, talking to them, learning about their problems, listening in on how my father and uncles solved these … how my mother handled the women, the wives, and maintained relations during campaigns and elections. (pp. 80–1)

Discussions within the family regarding these matters provide women with an insider’s knowledge not only of the problems facing their community, but also of the intricate management of relationships between different social and community actors and groups. The intersection of power and influence working in favour of women from political families promotes a kind of patrimonial politics that serves to entrench hierarchies and inequalities. According to Rita Singh, who belongs to a politically influential family (cited by Mathur in Chapter 6): I did not have to struggle to get an entry into politics; besides, the political background of the family had provided immense exposure to the working of local governance institutions. I was elected for two terms as a panchayat samiti member in the years 1995 and 2005 thanks to the positive image of my father-in-law and his hold over local politics. Gradually, I began interacting with the local community and became involved in panchayat samiti level meetings and implementation of development programmes along with my husband. Due to this my image and status improved among the community members. In 2010, I stood for the elections for the third time not as a veteran’s daughter-in-law but in my own identity, and was elected as a zila pramukh on a general seat reserved for women. (pp. 216–17)

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A similar pattern is reported in the Brazilian study: irrespective of the level (macro or micro) at which the women sought office, access to politics was via their husbands. For instance, many of the women elected as mayors began their political lives participating or assisting in the election campaigns of their husbands, some subsequently playing the role of the ‘first lady’. The predominance of political family ties remains unchanged over the course of the three decades studied. The study of mayors and councillors elected in 1982, 1988 and 1992 identified that 51 per cent of these women had family ties with political office holders; in 2008 and 2012, 65.5 per cent had political kinship ties. Associational life, broadly in the area of catering to the needs of marginalized groups, was the most widely cited politi­ cal learning pathway. In Ghana, Rita, a youth counsellor, sponsored the formation of a football club for the youth in her community, which provided them with the space to pursue an activity they loved alongside mentoring from her. In turn, these youths and other community members encouraged her to run for the assembly. In small municipalities in Bahia, Brazil, women councillors find their way into politics through civil society associa­tions – residents’ associations, women’s groups and religious groups, which become spaces that allow women to gain political experience and develop political skills. Contrary to stereotypes of faith-based actors undermining women’s political leadership, in Ghana and Brazil, religious associa­ tions and places of worship prove to be very important avenues through which women assume leadership and build important and powerful allies. In Egypt, the majority of women who ran for parliamentary seats cited the service provision they gave through NGO membership (financial and in-kind assistance for widows and female-headed households, building the trousseaus of women about to marry, and even ‘recycling’ medicine). In Bangladesh, many of the councillors worked in voluntary associations providing emergency relief and welfare, which gave them the experience of dealing with poorer sections of society and also the opportunity to build a reputation for helping disadvantaged groups.

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It is highly significant that in many instances these women are engaged in multiple associations, thus extending their ability to build a repertoire and learn how to mediate interests and conflicts in different settings. In Ghana, 24 out of the 28 women interviewed participated in at least two associations. In Egypt, most women candidates interviewed were on the board of more than one association and worked informally with many others. When women are involved in associations that are spread across different geographical areas, this allows them to broaden their outreach. Similarly, association with multiple causes or different groups allows for an expansion of social capital. It is difficult to discern whether women’s engagement in these associations was democratic, or whether it reproduced the patron–client hierarchies prevalent in society. Certainly there is variation: some women became involved out of a desire to champion a particular cause or a group, while others approached it more pragmatically, seeing associations as a platform through which to forge a particular social image (piety and volunteerism) and access to the community. Engaging in associational life provides an important initiation into politics in terms of building skills of interaction and communication, showing responsiveness to community demands, and becoming involved in the mobilization of resources and people. Moreover, it offers opportunities to gain the support of important allies, and to build a constituency from the ground up. The life histories of women across the different country case studies point to the power of political leverage that working through associational life brings. In Sudan, Palestine and Egypt, political parties act as if they are the principal gatekeepers into formal politics and there is a tacit assumption that if they initiate a woman into politics and provide the technical and financial support to put her into office, she will tow the party line. When women establish their own political profile via associational life, their bargaining power vis-à-vis political parties changes. They do not rely on the political party to initiate them into politics; they bring their own constituencies and network of relations –

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and where leadership opportunities within the party structure are blocked, they have opportunities of assuming those outside. Another important pathway into politics is found in women’s experiences within educational institutions. Many of the leftleaning women who assumed political careers in Bangladesh, Egypt and Sudan became active on university campuses. In Bangla­desh, two-thirds of the women councillors were members of student wings of centrist political parties at the college level. While student wings tend to suffer from the same ills as women’s wings of political parties – ghettoizing women and sidelining them from the centre of power – there is still scope for women’s resistance through collective action on campus. A case in point is Welaa, who joined the leftist Democratic Front (DF). She first became involved in politics in secondary school, but since political work is strictly forbidden in Sudanese schools her work was tentative and sought to attract as little attention as possible. Rather, she focused on opening up a conversation with other students through social and cultural activities. While she argues that she had few political skills coming into univer­sity, she does credit her work at secondary school for giving her an organizational edge compared to her peers, since she was particularly good at building structures: putting together com­mittees assigned with various tasks and figuring out how to organize them to be effective. Many women learn to do politics in the workplace and through work-related union activity – particularly in service- and care-related sectors. Women working as teachers, nurses, doctors, NGO workers and civil servants are often in positions of regular interaction with members of the community and gain popularity for helping people. In Ghana, women in these particular care professions were often encouraged to show leadership in community and church affairs, which in turn provided them with a support base from which to embark on a political career. Trade unions were also mentioned in the women’s narratives, though often in conjunction with other spaces, such as civic associations. In Sudan (Chapter 5), Hawa Hussein, an MP in the National Assembly who ran on the quota seat for the

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Federal Umma Party, said that against the backdrop of blocked opportunities for training in her party, she turned her attention elsewhere: ‘I was a teacher and member of the teachers’ union in Darfur. And I am the head of a voluntary organization [in her area in Darfur]. I was trained at a high level, but not by my party, rather through civil society organizations.’ Political apprenticeship is indispensable for enabling women to do politics, but on its own it does not open up opportunities for leadership. In Sudan, the women belonging to the Islamist ruling National Congress party were the foot soldiers who built a populist base through the distribution of charitable hand-outs and the mobilization of a constituency for their party. This provided them with plenty of experience on how to do politics, but the party continued to sideline them in internal leadership positions. However, when the party won in 2010, people began to talk about how this success was due to the female party members. It took collective action on the part of the women to force the party to make space for them at the top. Magda Naseem, the deputy head of the Khartoum Legislative Assembly and NCP member, recalls that they joined forces and confronted the party, and lobbied so that the women’s quota would be applied informally to leadership positions across the various organizational branches of the party structures.

Enabling and constraining factors The family It is highly significant that the family is often featured in the narratives of the women not only as an incubator of political leadership but also as an enabling agent in other ways. The most common forms of support cited were psychological/emotional, organizational and logistical, support with care responsibilities, and funding campaign activity. In some contexts, due to high levels of government repression or dysfunctional political parties, the family becomes the substitute for doing politics through

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parties. In Chapter 4, Jad notes that with respect to the OPT virtually all women, irrespective of their political affiliation, cited receiving family support. The kind of family backing most cited was moral and organiza­ tional support, which often took the form of campaign assistance. The Ghana study indicates that support from family members is key and even cuts across political party divides, with many women reporting assistance from husbands who were members of opposing political parties. One woman reported that her husband, a former education officer, even rewrites her political speeches in order to ensure that she does not make mistakes and says the right things. In Egypt, husbands, fathers and brothers in particular often play central roles in running political campaigns, including dealing with pressure from political opponents. In Bangladesh, women cited various actors as being enabling: beyond immediate family, they were pleasantly surprised by the wholehearted support offered by their in-laws. One-third of the women married into political families, gaining political connections that help when they run for office. In fact, husbands not only provide moral support, but often finance their wives’ campaigns. The reasons behind a husband’s support vary. Some of the women indicated that their husbands have always been supportive of their interest in politics and want them to follow their dreams. About one-third of the women said their husbands were politically active but had little chance of winning a party nomination, so – as a more strategic option – wanted their wives to run for office and gain formal positions. Several also stated that their election to office brought prestige to their in-laws within the community, as they were called for adjudication and could provide services to local people such as issuing birth certificates. Both love and expectation of material gain are motivations for husbands’ support of their wives. Across all contexts, one of the positive functions of family was in the provision of care. In Ghana and the OPT, children play an important role in assuming some of the care responsibilities while their mothers are away campaigning. In Bangladesh, being

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released from care responsibilities intersects with class privilege. A few of the Bengali women councillors found their mothersin-law willing to provide childcare, allowing them to campaign and discharge their official duties. The reasons behind this cooperation may be that the women’s husbands are extremely supportive of their wives’ political ambitions, and the in-laws can afford to employ domestic workers to perform household chores. Family can also play a disabling role, blocking women’s political leadership in insurmountable ways. In some cases dynastic and kin-based politics play an insidious controlling role. Jad notes that in the OPT, where male members were determined to run in the same elections, women were asked not to stand. One of the interviewees stated that her husband’s clan pressured him to ‘divorce her’ if she insisted on running against another male candidate chosen by the clan. Mathur’s study on India (Chapter 6) notes that in many instances families use women as proxies even if it means the use of coercion: My father-in-law has been involved with party politics for a long time and has been politically influential in the district. I never wanted to contest elections, but was compelled by my marital family to do so as they did not want to lose their stranglehold over local politics. The men in my family conduct all the PRI-related work on my behalf and take all political decisions. I have little knowledge about the functioning of the PRIs and have never been encouraged to learn more about political systems. (Reshma Choudhary, pradhan)

Transforming community repertoire into a constituency The ability of women to forge a constituency in their own right is a major enabling factor. There is a direct relationship between a woman’s own constituency and her negotiating power in relation to her opponents, whether in her own household or in the broader environment. In some cases, women do not have the opportunity to build their own constituency on any significant scale because of mobility constraints and an overpowering family, in particular in instances where there is discrimination as a consequence of the intersection of gender, class and culture.

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It is no secret that the women’s quota seat for which Reshma was nominated in the case above was a proxy seat for her family, since she was an unknown person in her community. However, the opportunities for her to build her own constituency in the first place were deeply constrained – even if she had wanted to compete for office. Hence in this particular context it is a vicious circle: the conditions for building a constituency are absent, women are persuaded to enter politics on proxy terms, and in the absence of their own constituency they lack the leverage to influence their political pathways. On the other hand, where women have built a constituency, their bargaining power differs. In Ghana, Bangladesh, Palestine and Sudan, several women’s narratives suggest that at the crucial juncture when they decided to stand for office, they were backed by members within their community. This was because they had established a positive reputation in the community on account of their good works and support. For women aspiring to political office but hesitant or scared of the opposition that they will face, such community support provides the necessary psychological push to go ahead. What is interesting about the women’s narratives of consti­ tuency building presented in the case studies is not only the combination of strategies used to garner support, but also the groups they targeted. The demographics are critical. In Chapter 1, Manuh notes that the youth in Ghana (15–24 years) constitute almost a quarter of the country’s population, and comprise about 60 per cent of the unemployed, making them a very visible force. Manuh observes that: ‘Aspiring and current political office holders ignore them at their peril, and usually seek to cultivate or at least to neutralize them.’ In Bangladesh (Chapter 2), women councillors also focused on building their constituency from among the youth, as one councillor explained: ‘I chose to focus on the youth and their problems – I am a college teacher, I knew the parents’ concerns in my community, and I knew it would appeal to both the young and the families.’ Yet one should not overemphasize the constituency factor on its own. Having

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a constituency makes an important contribution to enabling women politically, but only in so far as it is combined with a constellation of other factors. For example, in Bangladesh, women found that having a constituency is critical, but in order to deploy it to gain political standing they needed to create networks of relationships with senior political leaders and mentors within the political parties. In some cases, such as Palestine, women chose not to seek the political endorsement of the political party, which changed the terms of engagement. Cultural dynamics along political pathways All the women in these case studies operate in highly patriarchal contexts; however, the impact of culture on their political trajectories varies according to their status (in terms of the intersection of identities), their standing (what social repertoires they bring to the political arena), and the degree of bias in deeply entrenched institutions (such as political parties). Cultural prejudice, caste and gender all work to undermine women’s political trajectories in India, while in Brazil the power of institutional bias in political party structures is very disabling. In other contexts, such as Ghana, Palestine and Egypt, the narratives show that the impact of culture is not an independent variable on its own, but is dependent on other factors. All three country case studies demonstrate that a constellation of factors such as the nature of the constituency, quality of leadership, and how the electoral system works serve to undermine or accentuate the effect of culture on women’s pathway in politics. For example, where women have built a strong reputation for putting their activism and leadership qualities at the service of the community, even when their opponents use deeply entrenched patriarchal values to undermine their candidature, they often come through if the elections are not rigged. In Palestine, contrary to the typical profile of women engaging in politics, more than 17 per cent of the women who vied for political office were unmarried. As Jad reminds us in Chapter 4, this is despite the fact that increasingly powerful Islamist groups

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in Gaza see single women as a social liability who need to be ‘sorted’ by making sure they marry. Yet because these women had earned so much respect in their community for the work they did, their marital status did not deter them from building a constituency and winning seats in the local councils. It is the same story in Ghana, where a cultural stigma attaches to running for office as a single woman. In the case of one successful district assembly woman, however, when two of her male competitors engaged in ‘dirty politics’ and said ‘[you are] not married… [you are]... a tigress’, the women in the district ignored their talk and voted massively for her. Furthermore, the officer in charge of receiving the applications filled in a form for her himself, because he knew how well she had served her community. In the 2011 elections in Egypt, the Islamist political parties used religion to undermine the candidature of their opponents. In a deeply religious society in which people respond very passionately to perceived assaults on their faith, they labelled opposition women as apostates and enemies of Islam. Yet women who had a strong presence in the community and had built a repertoire of social and political relations were still able to win in spite of the defamatory material that was circulated against them. Political parties One of the most conspicuous constraining factors cited by women was the role of political parties. Perhaps because so much was expected of them, disappointment followed in equal measure. In Palestine, where politics is so deeply polarized between Fatah and Hamas that some citizens refuse to be party to either camp, some women consciously chose to run independently, relying on their own constituency in the community and their social and political networks. When approached by a political party to join, they turned down the offer, and in some cases still managed to win a seat. In Sierra Leone, women who chose to run as independent can­di­dates faced insurmountable opposition from the mainstream parties. The playing field was uneven, electoral violations were

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widely preva­ lent, and accountability was unobtainable. Yet an increasing num­ber of women still opted to run as independent candidates, perhaps in the long run putting more pressure on the system to be responsive to the need to address internal party failures in carv­ing out pathways to political power for women. In Egypt, oppor­tunities for women seeking a non-party pathway were also stalled. Their efforts to win as independents were hampered by the fact that political parties violated electoral law and fielded their own can­didates as independents in order to win maximum seats in Par­lia­ment (both under the party list and as independents). This led, however, to the Supreme Constitutional Court’s decision to void the elections on constitutional grounds, and Parliament was dissolved.

Feminist support and the question of training In several of the case studies, particularly those on Sierra Leone and Brazil (chapters 7 and 8), feminist movements played a central role in attending to women’s practical needs by filling the vacuum caused by party abandonment, and addressing their strategic needs by pressing for policy change. In Sierra Leone, since the founding of the 50/50 Group in 2000, the feminist movement has engaged the state, demanding the adoption of a Gender Equality Bill to secure a minimum 30 per cent quota for women in the public arena. The movement provides technical and financial support to female politicians and assists councillors in the formation of the Women Councillors Organization and the Network of Women Ministers and Parliamentarians crossparty alliances. The movement had already made political gains by securing the enactment of three parliamentary gender acts on Domestic Violence, Registration of Customary Marriage, and Devolution of Estates in 2007. The feminist movement also provided key training and financial support for women candidates, in particular those running as independents. In Brazil, the feminist movement pressed the government for the introduction of a new initiative to support women’s political

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trajectories. In response the National Secretariat for Women’s Policies (Secretaria Nacional de Políticas para Mulheres) introduced the ‘More Women in Power’ initiative, which provided both practical training and policy advocacy on changes in the electoral law. In the OPT, the feminist movement at first rejected the introduction of affirmative action in electoral law, and assumed that their revolutionary struggle for the emancipation of Palestine would translate into people electing them to office. When that did not happen, and faced with dismal representation in politics, they mobilized to establish a quota allocating them 20 per cent of legislative seats. The coalition, involving several Palestinian actors, was triggered by activists’ lack of faith in their political parties to field women or support their candidatures. The presence of renowned Fateh figure Khadija Habashneh – who was also part of the old PLO structure – as leader of the coalition gave women easy access to top-level leadership and the media. Thanks to their efforts, a 20 per cent quota was secured and applied in the 2005 local council elections. Political training programmes feature positively in many of the women’s narratives, though in varying degrees. In Brazil the women and democracy programme works quite well in creating feminist networks of professional women who are able to provide training for would-be candidates. In Palestine, several women cited training provided by women’s NGOs as helpful for their campaigning – they gained self-confidence and important information on their role as local councillors. The Women’s Affairs Technical Committee (WATC) and the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH) are both considered crucial in imparting practical skills such as how to run an election campaign, how to fundraise for it, how to mobilize support, how to mobilize a constituency, and how to deal with the media – as well as educating activists about the role of the local councils, election law and the quota. Both organizations work on issues relating to leadership skills and self-assertiveness. But once women are in political office, the role of NGOs in supporting them and equipping them for

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their new role is minimal. While NGOs can be of support to women candidates, this role cannot substitute for political parties’ role in supporting women politicians. NGOs, reliant on a limited project cycle for funding, cannot sustain their support for women in political office. The Ministry of Local Government realized this gap and has worked to bridge it. In Ghana, women councillors cited the training provided by feminist NGOs as helpful in supporting their own sense of self-empowerment and giving them skills in public speaking. ABANTU for Development, Women in Law and Development in Africa (WILDAF), the Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA), and international NGOs such as the Konrad Adenauer Foundation have contributed appreciably to their education and consciousness raising. In Bangladesh, all of the interviewees had received gender training from international development agencies or NGOs that focused on raising awareness about existing legal frameworks, women’s rights, and various services provided for women by the government. Interestingly, in several country case studies, women sug­gested that the training courses are sometimes more useful in terms of the networking opportunities that they offer than of the skills they transfer. As most women interviewed in the Sudan case study (Chapter 5) attested, training is important, but ‘membership’, networks, resources, interaction with male colleagues, and information are often more valuable than ‘a meeting that we attend and leave’, to use one of the political activists’ words. Nazneen et al.’s study in Chapter 2 on women councillors in Bangladesh suggests that beyond training as a desirable good, some of the women sought to maintain relationships with the providers – the development agencies and women’s NGOs – for the social capital that could be drawn upon in the service of their constituencies. Almost two-thirds of the women interviewed pointed out that women’s organizations (both those based in Dhaka and local organizations) have been their first port of call when their constituents need legal advice, legal aid, and shelter from domestic violence and trafficking.

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One of the key recurring messages was the transitory nature of trainings. The fact that trainings are usually only held in the period right before elections is testament to the failure to understand women’s engagement in politics as a pathway and not as an interval. In Palestine, women found that the support provided was meaningful, but its episodic nature limited its usefulness within their overall political trajectories. The disjuncture between the reality of women engaging in politics through pathways that require consistent support and the project-bound nature of training interventions seriously distorts opportunities for political empowerment. In Chaper 6 Mathur notes that according to a national-level study commissioned by the Ministry of Panchayati Raj, India, 50 per cent of the elected women representatives in the country did not receive any training after being elected. Further, 45 per cent of female ex-pradhans did not contest second elections because they felt incompetent in executing their responsibilities and the work entailed was unsuitable for them, although there was variation between states.

Electoral mechanisms and systems through a bottom-up lens Most of the countries focused on in this volume institute a quota for women. The exceptions are Sierra Leone, where the struggle to introduce a quota is still ongoing; Egypt, where a quota instituted in Mubarak’s last days was scrapped after he was overthrown in 2011; and Ghana, where under the decentralized system there is provision for 30 per cent of District Assembly members to be nominated: 50 per cent of these 30 per cent are supposed to be women, but this is not always achieved. In Egypt there was agreement across all political forces that the quota was the illegitimate brainchild of the First Lady’s meddling in the affairs of the state, despite the fact that they had all been involved in its design. This experience should send a sobering signal to women’s rights and gender justice advocates in neighbouring Sudan, where another authoritarian regime thrives. Abbas’s account of the Sudan case (Chapter 5) has strong

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resonance with the Egypt chapter: the ruling powers instrumen­ talize the quota to multiply their seats in Parliament. Ironically, in both contexts, affirmative action has discriminated against women nominating themselves. In both countries the magnitude of the electoral district required under the quota law was far greater than that for candidates nominating themselves for non-quota seats. The district magnitude made it impossible for women to build up a constituency like non-quota candidates, making them rely on the dominant political party (representing the regime) to prop them up. This does not mean that all women vying for political office lacked an impressive political trajectory and an established reputation in political life – only that it would have been impossible to claim a constituency on the scale set in the quota law. It is not surprising that Najah, a Popular Congress Party MP elected through the quota, is conscious of the limited power that comes from a quota seat that is mediated via the powers that be, rather than won through a political constituency. ‘The quota women are brought to power by the parties’ tech­nical committees, not by votes. So that’s where they get their instructions.’ In both Sudan and Egypt, in effect, the quota caused more harm than good because it created a legitimacy deficit for women. The outcome was that a potentially positive instrument of women’s political empowerment was shunned as ‘a First Lady law’ by the powers that be in post-Mubarak Egypt, and it empowered the status quo to use women as pawns in the political struggle for hegemonic control by the ruling powers in Sudan. Yet even when the quota is being implemented in nonauthoritarian, democratic contexts such as Brazil, its potential to challenge the power configurations on the ground can be diluted. Costa and Cornwall’s account of quota implementation in Brazil (Chapter 8) shows that, for it to be effective, its design has to be reworked constantly in order to deal with the different strategies and tactics deployed by political parties determined to avoid its implementation. The Brazil case study shows that policy-wise the battle is not won when a quota is legislated, but is ongoing, requiring

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feminists to press continuously to close the loopholes allowing non-compliance. For example, when the quota law was first introduced in Brazil, political parties ignored it, as there were no political consequences to fear if they did not comply. The matter was taken up by advocates of women’s equality, and the Supreme Electoral Court responded by making it mandatory under quota law to veto the registration of candidate lists that did not attain the female quota. This resolution made the difference in the municipal elections of 2012. The percentage of female candidates for the Municipal Chamber reached 31.5 per cent, contrasting with 21.9 per cent in 2008. However, the resolution brought a new dimension to women’s political participation, the so-called ‘orange candidates’. ‘Orange candidates’ in popular Brazilian culture are proxies who only occupy a place on the list in service of another candidate or a party. The use of ghost or ‘orange’ candidates is common among political parties in Brazil. It enables them to benefit from electoral legislation that bars public functionaries from continuing their work during the period of pre-election campaigning, that is, to allow candidates who are public servants to dedicate themselves to electoral campaigning for candidates who are priorities for the party. A significant number of women who did not get any votes were orange candidates, women who lend their name so that the party is able to ensure that its list is registered. All over the country, allegations about ghost candidates appeared in various municipalities when the election results were announced. This resonates strongly with the Egyptian case where the Al-Nour Party, ultra-conservative and Islamist, also fielded women on its list who were candidates so ghostly that they actually opposed women’s political representation in Parliament! In both cases, we can see how whistle-blowing is needed at every stage of quota implementation, and, even though loopholes cannot all be predicted beforehand, that sustained activism is needed to expose the guises of deeply entrenched patriarchal defiance. Another seemingly ‘democratic’ measure that has also proved to be insufficient to mitigate existing power structures is

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decentralization. In many of the cases examined in this volume (Ghana, Brazil, Palestine and India) women’s experiences of assuming political office came against the backdrop of decentralization. In all of these cases, decentralization preceded the introduction of quotas, and was supposed to contribute to increasing the democratization of local spaces. The limited evidence that exists does not suggest that decentralization by default opens new pathways for women’s political empowerment – in fact, women may face greater obstacles at the local than at the national level, as was the case with South Africa (Beall 2004: 2; Mbatha 2003). Beall argues that ‘one of the reasons why local government is less productive for advancing women’s rights than is often expected is because the informal institutions in which local governments are often embedded are hostile to women’ (2004: 4). The empowerment of local traditional leaders who held deeply entrenched patriarchal values proved to be a great obstacle to carving a space for women’s representation or more gender-sensitive outcomes. The chapters presented here provide further empirical evidence that decentralization, even when accompanied by affirmative action such as quotas, does not by itself democratize local space and generate opportunities for women’s political leadership. In Bangladesh the deeply patriarchal institutional and administrative cultures governing meso- and micro-tiers of government were unmoved by the introduction of a 30 per cent quota for women in all elected bodies. There are various structural, cultural and attitudinal barriers that limit women’s pathways into politics. Nazneen et al.’s study (Chapter 2) indicates that recognition of and leadership by women elected to office are undermined by local norms of gender segregation and purdah, while the gender division of labour severely restricts women’s opportunities for full participation in the first place. Mathur’s study of the impact of the increased reservation of women’s seats in the state of Rajasthan in India (Chapter 6) indicates that the lower the tier of representation, the higher the odds against women, because the hurdles to be overcome in order

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to be treated equally are immense. At the lowest tiers, the ward panches and sarpanches expressed uncertainty as to whether they would want to re-contest elections, because they were excluded from full participation as a consequence of their limited literacy. The Indian and OPT case studies show how the introduction of a dual policy of decentralization and affirmative action with the intention of promoting local-level democracy can in effect serve as a mirror for existing power inequalities in society. In India, this means that women at the lowest tier of government in Rajasthan have very limited or no decision-making power because of the factors that underprivilege them (limited mobility, no constituency, caste, no education, poverty). In Palestine, women find themselves with limited or no decision-making power because of the dysfunctional political order, where policy processes exist more on paper than in reality. Clearly, decentralization of governance does not lead automatically to a devolution or transformation of power hierarchies.

Conclusion This body of cross-country research seeks to expose ways in which a pathways approach to understanding women’s political trajectories contributes to our identification of enabling and disabling factors that influence opportunities for assuming political leadership. While concepts such as descriptive, substantial, and symbolic representation have kept the debate in the realm of formal politics, a bottom-up approach to women’s political engagement suggests that more attention needs to be paid to women’s informal political activism. All eight case studies point to the importance of informal networks, activity in informal associations and institutions, and informal alliance building for building political careers. In affirming women’s informal political engagement, the aim is not to project the impression that they are always flourishing in nurturing informal arenas – but rather to insist that this should be recognized and incorporated into policy frameworks. In effect, it

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would mean that efforts to support women’s political trajectories would build on the existing repertoires of relations that they have forged in the informal sector, and foster their confidence that they do already know how to engage politically (rather than treating them as politically illiterate). The question of how women transform informal political leadership into formal political power, should they aspire to do so, remains a critical one. Certainly, in some highly undemocratic contexts, women may not wish to enter formal political processes so as to avoid co-option or undemocratic practices. However, in other cases, such as that of post-Mubarak Egypt, a large cohort of women who were able to play an important mobilizational role in the informal spaces of the revolution found themselves unable to build the electoral support needed to gain seats in Parliament, precisely because of the absence of the interface between the informal and formal. Two very important factors help bridge the formal with the informal: having a constituency and having networks of allies who are willing to use their influence to support pathways of political activism. Constituencies are built across time and, in most cases examined here, service provision has been a principal pathway for many women to build them. Sometimes, however, the focus for building a constituency is not on the people supported through the intervention, but on targeting a group and responding with varied interventions as required. The cases presented in this volume also suggest that political apprenticeship opportunities in informal arenas provide important bridges to formal political spheres. Much of the literature has tended to focus on political parties as the gatekeepers and pathways into politics. This is undoubtedly true. However, it is also noteworthy that there has been a neglect in the literature of other spaces, terrains and avenues for building a political career through informal clubs, associations and community service. When women build political profiles and constituencies through these political apprenticeship opportunities, they are better positioned to negotiate their relationships with the political parties.

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A striking example of that is in Palestine, where women who had established a solid leadership profile in the community were being wooed by the political parties to join them and to represent them in the elections. In some instances, the women’s positions were strong enough to convince them to run independently, without recourse to support from any political party. The inferences to be drawn here are that the recognition of the diversity of experiences of women’s political apprenticeship would allow for a better understanding of where support is due. In practical terms, it means that rather than focusing exclusively on making political parties responsive to gender issues, it is worthwhile to expand political apprenticeship opportunities elsewhere, with a view to strengthening their constituency-building prospects. The case studies also testify to the importance of a noncompartmentalized approach. Women’s political trajectories cannot be divorced from the socio-economic dimensions of their lives. The importance of unpaid care attests to this. Unpaid care emerges as one of the strongest predictors of age and class in determining women’s profiles. Women who pursue political careers are most likely to have older children, or to have the economic privilege of drawing upon paid domestic help, or have female members in their extended families financially able to stay at home and help them with their children. Unless policies are institutionalized to enable families to deal with care responsibilities, poor young women will be hindered from entering politics not only by class, but also by age. All of the contexts examined in this book are ones in which patriarchal values are deeply entrenched and intersect with class, religion, ethnicity and political affiliation to influence women’s political trajectories in various ways. Yet one of the key findings emanating from the empirical research in contexts as varied as Ghana (fairly stable democracy), Egypt (in difficult transition) and the OPT (conflict) is that a strong leadership profile and constituency trump culture. Some of the narratives from all three country case studies suggest that when opponents sought to use the culture ‘weapon’ to undermine women’s candidature, it was

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members of the same community that rose in their defence to endorse their political nominations. This is not to downplay the impact of deeply entrenched patriarchal norms in institutions such as local government and political parties, as was evident in all case studies. Policy implications Electoral design, macro-level policies and internal power configurations play a pivotal role in creating an enabling environment for women’s rise to political power. Since they have been the subject of extensive study, however, we will focus here on the implications of our findings for interventions designed by international donors and their governmental and non-governmental partners (such as national machineries and NGOs) to increase women’s descriptive representation. All the case studies had political empowerment programmes intended to support women’s leadership, thus allowing for a comparison of features and patterns. Rethink universal blueprints premised on churning out women in legislatures. Abbas’s analysis of the Sudan case study problematized the linear path that most of the UN assistance programmes follow in terms of ‘promote the quota " train women candidates " carry out capacity building for women MPs " do it all again when the next elections come around’. This astute observation is of relevance beyond the donor funding of political empowerment programmes in Sudan, and reflects the broader theory of change underpinning donors’ applied approaches to political empowerment across continents. Practically, it means the need to tailor the programme domestically rather than export a foreign model. Local actors may wish to learn from other country experiences, but how these exposures inform local models needs to be done in-country. Innovate and experiment in developing local programmes that enable women with gender-just agendas to overcome

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barriers to more effective political leadership. Most of the political empowerment programmes focus on women who are already running for political office, which should continue to be a priority. However, in view of the findings highlighted in this volume that for many women leadership begins informally, it is worthwhile to invest in supporting: (1) those who wish to make the bridge into more formal spaces (in particular to run for office) by helping them expand their networks, apprenticeship opportunities and constituencies; and (2) those who do not wish to assume a formal political role but who need support in order to build the credentials to broaden their influence (in particular where there are deficits such as educational opportunities, exposure to alternative country experiences, and international networks). Target the key actors providing support, not only the women as individuals. Most of the political empowerment programmes implicitly treat women’s agency through the prism of the liberal Western individual tradition (Tadros 2011). As is clear from these case studies, women are embedded in relationships that matter a great deal to them. Their husbands and families are not always the key obstacles to their political careers; on the contrary, they are sometimes their greatest supporters. Hence, recognizing their role, where it exists, and supporting them may go a long way. For example, many of the women’s narratives suggest that husbands and male members of the family have sometimes served formally or informally as their election campaign managers. Capacity building and support networks can target these roles in particular. Adapt programmes to take into account women’s unpaid care responsibilities. In the same vein, since many women are burdened with unpaid care responsibilities, programmes should cater to that in every step of their design. Crêches should be set up to care for children while training sessions are in progress; these should coincide with times when women are attending to

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care responsibilities; and extensive campaigning is needed to get unpaid care on the agenda. Programmes must aspire to provide more than technical know-how. Political empowerment programmes need to be redesigned so that they provide more than technical training. Efforts need to be directed towards supporting outreach initia­ tives that assume a dual task: first, reaching out to women in the professions and associational arenas where they are already playing a leadership role and encouraging them to consider more formal political trajectories; and, second, helping link women with political apprenticeship opportunities. Going beyond the technical, political empowerment programmes need to offer women power analysis skills, for example, and should support collective action to name and shame actors using finance and violence against them. A long-term approach to political empowerment, delinked from electoral cycles. Political empowerment programmes need not follow the election campaign cycle. Longer-term initiatives that provide support not only during election time, but well before and after the election phases, are needed to break the cycle that Abbas has identified. Closely associated with this is continuing support for candidates who have lost in elections, instead of treating them as disposable women whose political trajectories are over. The evidence presented in these case studies suggests that Western donors’ investment in political empowerment pro­ grammes that provide women with support to navigate different milestones along their trajectory is worthwhile. Yet there is also a conspicuous disjuncture between the theory of change behind many of these programmes, their design and application, and women’s political trajectories. A broader conceptualization of politics would liberate the theory of change underpinning many of these programmes from ‘How do I get more women into office?’ to ‘What is locally needed to enable women who are

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engaging politically to increase their influence and outreach at different junctures in their pathways?’ More research is needed to examine not only what has not worked (the constraints of the project cycle, the cookie-cutter approach to providing women with a ‘skills set’, the depoliticized technical focus, the absence of follow-up, insufficient attention to building alliances and networks), but also instances in which programmes were designed and implemented in a way that was responsive to enabling women to meet different milestones along their political trajectories.

References Ahikire, J. (2003) ‘Gender Equity and Local Democracy in Contemporary Local Government: Addressing the Challenge of Women’s Political Effectiveness’, in A. M. Goetz and S. Hassim (eds), No Shortcuts to Power: African Women in Politics and Policy Making, Zed Books, London and New York, NY. Ballington, J. (2004) The Implementation of Quotas: African Experiences, Inter­ national Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), Stockholm. Ballington, J. and A. M. Karam (2005) Women in Parliament: Beyond Numbers, IDEA, Stockholm. Beall, C. (2004) ‘Lessons in Engendering Democracy: Lessons from Local Government Reform in South Africa Crisis Programme’, Working Paper No. 54, London School of Economics (LSE), London. Beaman, L., E. Duflo, R. Pande and P. Topalova (2012) ‘Female Leadership Raises Aspirations and Educational Attainment for Girls: A Policy Experiment in India’, Science, Vol. 335, No. 6068, pp. 582–6. Beck, L. J. (2003) ‘Democratization and the Hidden Public – The Impact of Patronage Networks on Senegalese Women’, Comparative Politics, Vol. 35, No. 2, pp. 147–69. Brownill, S. and S. Halford (1990) ‘Understanding Women’s Involvement in Local Politics: How Useful is a Formal/Informal Dichotomy?’, Political Geography Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 4, pp. 396–414. Caul, M. (2001) ‘Political Parties and the Adoption of Candidate Gender Quotas: A Cross-National Analysis’, Journal of Politics, Vol. 63, No. 4, pp. 1214–29. Cornwall, A. and A. M. Goetz (2005) ‘Democratizing Democracy: Feminist Perspectives’, Democratization, Vol. 12, No. 5, pp. 783–800.

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Dahlerup, D. (1988) ‘From a Small to a Large Minority: Women in Scan­ di­na­vian Politics’, Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 275–97. —— (2006) Women, Quotas and Politics, Routledge, London and New York, NY. Franceschet, S., M. L. Krook and J. Piscopo (2012) ‘Conceptualizing the Impact of Gender Quotas’, in S. Franceschet, M. L. Krook and J. Piscopo (eds), The Impact of Gender Quotas, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Franceschet, S. and J. Piscopo (2012) ‘Gender and Political Backgrounds in Argentina’, in S. Franceschet, M. Krook and J. Piscopo (eds), The Impact of Gender Quotas, Oxford University Press, Oxford. IDEA (2013) ‘Women in the Driver’s Seat of Democratic Politics’, http:// www.idea.int/gender/women-in-the-drivers-seat-of-democraticpolitics.cfm (accessed 20 October 2013). Kenney, S. J. (2003) ‘Where Is Gender in Agenda Setting?’, Women and Politics, Vol. 25, Nos 1–2, pp. 179–207. Kolinsky, E. (1991) ‘Political Participation and Parliamentary Careers: Women’s Quotas in Germany’, West European Politics, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 56–72. Krook, M. L. (2012) ‘Substantive Representation’, in S. Franceschet, M. L. Krook and J. Piscopo (eds), The Impact of Gender Quotas, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Krook, M. L. and S. Childs (2010) Women, Gender and Politics: A Reader, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, NY. Krook, M. and L. Schwindt-Bayer (2013) ‘Electoral Institutions’, in G. Waylen, K. Celis, J. Kantola and L. Weldon (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Politics, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Mbatha, L. (2003) ‘Democratising Local Government: Problems and Oppor­ tunities in the Advancement of Gender Equality in South Africa’, in A. M. Goetz and S. Hassim (eds), No Shortcuts to Power: African Women in Politics and Policy Making, Zed Books, London and New York, NY. Norris, P. and J. Lovenduski (1995) Political Recruitment, Cambridge Uni­ ver­sity Press, Cambridge. Pateman, C. (1988) The Sexual Contract, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA. Pathways of Women’s Empowerment (2012) ‘Empowerment: A Journey Not a Destination’, Final Synthesis Report, Pathways of Women’s Empower­ment Research Programme Consortium, Brighton. Randall, V. (1982) Women and Politics: An International Perspective, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

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Sater, J. (2012) ‘Reserved Seats, Patriarchy and Patronage in Morocco’, in S. Franceschet, M. L. Krook and J. Piscopo (eds), The Impact of Gender Quotas, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Schwindt-Bayer, L. and L. Mishler (2005) ‘An Integrated Model of Women’s Representation’, Journal of Politics, Vol. 67, No. 2, pp. 407–28. Tadros, M. (2011) ‘Women Engaging Politically: Beyond Magic Bullets and Motorways’, Pathways Policy Paper, Brighton: Pathways of Women’s Empowerment RPC, www.pathwaysofempowerment.org/Women_ and_Politics_Policy_Paper.pdf (accessed 20 October 2013). Tadros, M. and A. A. Costa (eds) (2010) ‘Quotas: Add Women and Stir?’, IDS Bulletin, Vol. 41, No. 5, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford. Tripp, A. M. and A. Kang (2008) ‘The Global Impact of Quotas – On the Fast Track to Increased Female Legislative Representation’, Com­para­ tive Political Studies, Vol. 41, No. 3, pp. 338–61.

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1 Politics as Service Pathways of District Assembly Women in Ghana Takyiwaa Manuh

My political career has been very empowering. I have learnt to self­ lessly commit myself to the welfare of people. For instance, because of the training I had in the legal process in the 1990s, I sat on a jury at the Sekondi High Court in 2000, and got a rapist sent to jail for 23 years for raping a schoolgirl. I am still strong, and I feel my political experiences over the years have placed me in a better position now to champion the cause of people’s welfare. (former assembly woman, Shama Ahanta East Metropolitan Assembly (SAEMA), Ghana)

Women’s equitable and full participation in politics and decisionmaking structures at all levels of power in their com­munities is now regarded as an indicator of good governance and the consolidation of democracy (UN 1979, 2011; Phillips 1998; Cornwall and Goetz 2005). The 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action affirm these rights and urge governments, political parties and civil society organizations to work towards them. In particular they are urged to promote public debate on the new roles of women and men in society and in the family, review recruitment criteria for public office, and use training and mentoring schemes to build a critical mass of women leaders in strategic decision-making positions, while encouraging women to participate in the electoral process and in political activities and leadership. On the African continent, these conventions have been strengthened by the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality passed by the African 40

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Union in 2004 (AU 2004), and the 2003 Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa (part of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights) (AU 2003). The case for women’s full participation in governance struc­ tures posits that a government that is predominantly male cannot claim to be of the people and for the people when women constitute more than 50 per cent of the population in many countries (Phillips 1998). Others argue that women’s political participation is critical to advance women in all spheres, as democratic governance will not be fully achieved if women are not participating equally in decision making, and policies and laws are made without their voices. An increase in women’s participation could also facilitate positive changes in women’s lives, allow effective exercise of their citizenship, and make transformation possible (Cornwall and Goetz 2005; Costa 2010). The assumption is that women’s participation will lead to fairer and more responsive governments. Gender-sensitive and genderinclusive governments are also likely to reflect women’s main concerns in decision making at all levels. For many of these advocates, women’s participation in national governance is therefore not only an issue of equity and gender justice, but also a measure of good governance and accountability (Mensah-Kutin 2010). But while there is a strong case for increasing women’s representation in national governance, many argue that it is not enough just to have women represented in these structures: in addition, their representation should produce positive outcomes and lead to transformation in the lives of poor and hitherto excluded women (Yoon 2011). Decentralization has emerged in recent years as part of the package of good governance and political reform, particularly in countries that have implemented programmes of structural adjustment, such as Ghana, which passed the District Assemblies Law in 1988 (Provisional National Development Council Law, PNDCL 207). Decentralization is based on assumptions that granting more power to local governments will improve their performance, reduce central government expenditure, and make

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local government more accountable to its constituents, with citizen voice and accountability kept as essential components. As noted by the Commonwealth Secretariat, improving service delivery is a key motive, based on the principle of subsidiarity, which specifies that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority, and that decisions should be taken by the people and at the places most affected. According to Musso et al. (2000), political reforms accompanying decentralization have two components: the entrepreneurial and the participatory. The entrepreneurial component is focused on improvements in service delivery such as water and sanitation services, while the participatory component focuses on civic engagement, both in terms of the participation of otherwise disadvantaged groups in decision making, and in the delivery of pro-poor policies. Research has attempted to assess the extent to which decen­tral­ ized governments around the world are able to fulfil their twopronged mandate, with conflicting results. The same study by Musso et al. – based on a survey of 270 municipalities in the state of California – shows that service delivery in that setting takes pre­ cedence over civic engagement. But Conyers (2007) argues that in Africa the impact of decentralization on service delivery has been trifling. In her words, ‘The main impression gained from the limited data on the actual impact on service delivery is that decentralization has done little to improve the quantity, quality or equity of public services in the region’ (ibid.: 21). For Katsiaouni (2003), on the African continent the emphasis has been on civic engage­ment and not service delivery. Ghana’s decentralization experience has generated a number of studies on its general effective­ness (Ahwoi 2010; Asante and Ayee 2004; Ayee 1996, 2003a, 2003b, 2006; Alam and Koranteng 2011; Crook and Manor 1998; Manor 1999), while a limited literature also assesses its inclusiveness of women and traditionally neglected groups (Ofei-Aboagye 2000, 2004; Allah-Mensah 2005; Ohene-Konadu 2001). Scholars like Evertzen (2001) have argued that local govern­ ance structures are much more female-friendly because of their

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lower eligibility criteria, particularly in service delivery. Local provision of services dovetails with gendered divisions of labour within the household and the domestic sphere – where women tend to be heavily involved as managers and caregivers. But Beall (2005), writing on South Africa, argues that obstacles to political participation are much greater at the local than at the national level. This is because, in her opinion, prejudices towards women are more strongly held at that level, since local-level governance structures are much more informalized than national-level governance structures, which are based on formal rules and regula­ tions. Women’s participation in decentralized levels of govern­ance in Ghana offers a pertinent space to assess progress towards equitable representation for women in decision making, as well as the extent to which such participation leads to positive outcomes. This chapter explores the pathways to political power of a group of District Assembly (DA) women in Ghana, with a view to contributing a grounded account of the factors enhancing or hindering women’s political apprenticeship at the local level; the community, local and national dynamics supporting women’s access to political leadership; and women’s use of their power. Specifically, it examines the processes of women’s political apprenticeship and the spaces that provide opportunities for their political engagement. How do these influence women’s experience and practice of politics, their conceptions of their roles, and the kinds of power that they can claim? And what do they do with the power they capture, against the backdrop of continuing low participation rates for women in local and national governance in Ghana? It is hoped that the findings from the study will provide insight into micro-level factors influencing women’s political engagement, and help build the constituencies to support their greater political participation and effectiveness. The chapter draws on data assembled in a fuller study conducted by Ghanaian researchers from the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment Research Programme Consortium (RPC) and ABANTU for Development, an African-oriented gender

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NGO, to explore the experiences of selected DA women who campaigned in the 2006 elections (Manuh et al., in preparation).1 Organized in the form of a dialogue, a forum was held over three days to create space for reflection by and interaction with assembly members about their engagement in local-level politics, and to link these experiences to their life histories. Methods utilized in the dialogue included brief presentations, individual and group reflections, brainstorming, life history interviews, and plenary discussions. The chapter structure is as follows. I start by discussing the historical evolution of decentralization in Ghana, including the limited roles played by women within this process. The main features of decentralization reforms in the 1980s and women’s participation in this new structure are then presented. The rest of the chapter focuses on the selected assembly women and their pathways to political power, together with their experiences and conceptions of politics.

Decentralization in Ghana Decentralization in Ghana is not new. It can be traced to colonial rule and the introduction of the system of indirect rule by British colonial authorities in 1878 (Nkrumah 2000; Ayee and Amponsah 2003; Appiah et al. 2000; Ahwoi 2010). Later, nationalist agitation for democratic reforms and self-government led to local government reforms based on some measure of democratic representation, albeit with the retention of chiefs. The 1951 Local Government Ordinance ensured that two-thirds of local authority members were elected by universal adult suffrage, while onethird were chosen by traditional authorities. This system largely survived, with some tinkering, after independence, although the powers of traditional authorities were either truncated or restored, according to the leanings of the government in power and the recommendations of successive government commissions (Ayee and Amponsah 2003; Ahwoi 2010). Military seizures of power between 1966 and 1982, with only short periods of civilian

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rule, delayed the emergence of functioning local government structures with active citizen participation until the reforms of the late 1980s. The decentralization reforms of the 1980s In 1983, the military government of the Provisional National Development Council (PNDC) announced its intention to institute comprehensive decentralization reforms, inspired osten­ sibly by its philosophy of ‘giving power to the people’, and aimed at reducing the gulf between rural and urban dwellers; ending the drift of people from the countryside to the towns; and increasing initiative and development at sub-national levels (Appiah et al. 2000; Ayee and Amponsah 2003; Ahwoi 2010). The result was the District Assemblies Law (PNDCL 207 of 1988) which aimed ‘to promote popular participation and ownership of the machinery of government … by devolving power, competence and resource/means to the district level’. Provisions were made in the law for the freedom to use local languages in assembly deliberations, and discretion was given to create additional sub-committees. Originally designed as part of a ‘no-party democracy’,2 district assemblies now operate alongside a fully elected parliamentary system and have distinct responsibilities and powers that are enshrined in the articles of the 1992 constitution. Under Article 241, the DA is the highest political authority in the district, while Unit Committees (UCs) are the lowest units of governance. Each district is presided over by a political appointee, the District Chief Executive (DCE), who is the chief representative of government in the district. Assemblies have deliberative, legislative and executive functions, with power to make by-laws and regulations in their areas and to levy and collect local taxes and fees. They serve as the highest political and administrative authorities at the local level and act as planning, development and budgeting authorities. In particular they coordinate, integrate and harmonize the execution of programmes and projects under approved district development plans.

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Initially, 110 districts were created, with members to be elected on a non-partisan basis, but this has risen over the years – in 2012, there were 230 district, municipal and metropolitan assemblies. Two-thirds of assembly members are elected on individual merit, on a non-partisan basis, although it is widely accepted that, increasingly, some candidates are sponsored by leading political parties. The remaining one-third, along with a district chief executive, are appointed by central government, in consultation with traditional authorities and other interest groups. This appointment is ostensibly to allow the assemblies to benefit from the expertise and skills of persons who may not ordinarily stand in elections. The UC is made up of 15 people, 10 of whom are elected. DA and UC elections are supervised by the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development and the Electoral Com­ mission, independently of political parties. Women and local government in Ghana Women were largely absent in the structures of governance established as Britain gradually extended its power over the then Gold Coast from around 1830. Both official policy as well as women’s generally lower educational and occupational attainments, and relative lack of property, ensured that they continued to be absent in the different constitutional arrangements attempted after the formal extension of colonial rule; there were no women in the various Legislative and Executive Councils after membership was extended to Africans. Indeed it was not until the introduction of a new system of local government by the Nkrumah government in the period of self-government after 1951 that one woman, Mabel Dove, was elected in the general elections of 1954 (Gold Coast Gazette Extraordinary 1954).3 A few more women – like Stella Dorothy Lokko, Hesse EvansLutterodt and Charlotte Bart-Plage – were elected to wards in Accra and Cape Coast (Gold Coast Gazette 1954). After independence, more women, many of whom were associated with the ruling Convention People’s Party (CPP),

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were elected to wards around Ghana. They included Lucy Kpakpa Quartey for the Accra City Council, Grace Abban for the Anhwiaso-Bekwai-Bibiani Local Council, Ernestina Anim for Bechem Urban Municipality, Nancy Phillipa Wood and Charlotte Bart-Plage for the Cape Coast Municipality, Nancy Tsiboe for Kumasi South Municipality, Fati Mahama for Nanumba Local Council, Mary Okyere for Nsawam Local Council, Grace Ayensu and Joana Cross-Cole for Sekondi-Takoradi Municipality and Anna Augustina Eshun for Tarkwa/Aboso Urban Council (Republic of Ghana 1961). Their occupations were listed as journalists, saleswomen and housewives, among others, demon­ strating that women from different walks of life contested local elections. But the potential for increased involvement of women in local governance was truncated by the military coups that Ghana experienced over the period 1966–82. As noted, the avowed aim of the decentralization policy initiated in 1988 is to devolve power to lower levels and to increase popular participation in decision making. To encourage women’s participation in politics, a directive in 1998 reserved a quota of the appointed membership of assemblies for women. Originally set at 30 per cent of appointed members, the quota was subsequently raised to 50 per cent, although this change has not been enforced vigorously, and women’s participation in local government has continued to be low. In 1994, women made up about 3 per cent of elected members. This rose to 5 per cent in 1998 and to about 7 per cent in 2002, even though women constituted about half of all registered voters. Between 1994 and 2002, the proportion of women contesting elections increased from 27 per cent to 38 per cent. By 2006, women represented 39 per cent of all DA members, but only 10.1 per cent of these members were elected. In 2010, there were 17,315 nominations for DA elections from 170 Districts and 6,160 Electoral Areas, but women formed only 7.9 per cent of nominees. At the UC level, there were 45,762 nominations, 10.2 per cent of whom were women (NDPC 2011). Only 6.8 per cent of members elected to the DAs and 6.4 per cent of members elected to the

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UCs were women, despite heightened interventions by women’s rights organizations and the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs (MOWAC) to encourage more women to contest the elections. Judging from these proportions, decentralization thus far in Ghana has not managed to deliver on enhancing women’s access to political power, despite its avowed intentions. While the few women assembly members have embraced their work actively – as can be seen from the film Honourable Women, commissioned as part of Pathways of Women’s Empowerment’s activities in Ghana (Badoe 2010) – they also complain of several administrative bottlenecks and frustrations. Some view their DA membership more pragmatically as a route to parliamentary office. The problems faced by assembly women are not unlike those faced by female MPs in Ghana, who cite problems such as funds to sustain political campaigns, increasing violence (or threats of it) against candidates, and the nature of politics in Ghana, which creates a highly competitive environment. All these factors serve as a deterrent to women’s participation in politics, and currently only 9 per cent of parliamentarians in Ghana are female (NDPC 2011). Political parties are also present in the putative non-party DA elections as they seek to control districts, and it is often the party in power that gets most candidates in. The current ‘first-past-the-post system’, in which the political party which wins the majority of votes in an election also wins control over the state, creates a highly competitive environment in which minority groups cannot find a foothold in government. In these circumstances, political parties are not willing to offer positions to women, who are less likely to have access to funds and the social capital that can easily win votes. Several studies have explored the constraints on women’s participation in governance at the local and national levels in Ghana (Ofei-Aboagye 2000, 2004; Allah-Mensah 2005; OheneKonadu 2001). They argue that decentralization in Ghana has been based on the premise that local governments are the natural extension of democracy, encouraging, in a gender-neutral manner,

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the maximum participation of all citizens in the affairs of local government. Thus not much thought was given in the design of local government to questioning and tackling entrenched gender stereotypes and inequalities operating at several levels in Ghanaian society – a necessary move if women were to participate effectively and derive maximum benefits from the system. On a more practical level, many women have also been constrained from entering local politics by lack of campaign finances and the competing demands on their time because of their management and care responsibilities for families (largely defined as ‘women’s work’) and their participation in paid and unpaid work alongside their political careers. Coupled with this is the widely held perception that politics is ‘dirty’ and unfit for ‘decent’ women. Furthermore, the notion that politics belongs to the public arena, best managed by men, limits the chances of women being voted into political office, and many husbands and families seem reluctant to have ‘their’ women in the public eye. Many would-be women contestants do not have the same socializing opportunities as male contestants because of conventions in their communities governing female interaction, particularly at night, and in places such as bars, unless they are accompanied by men. Many women also lack public-speaking skills and some complain of intimidation by male opponents. The lack of efficient services and poor facilities in several communities, alongside unresponsive bureaucracies, are often blamed on representatives at both local and national levels, and family members who try to discourage women from contesting may be acting out of a desire to protect them from the inevitable pains and frustrations of political life. Inside the assembly, it is argued that women have yet to make their presence felt and that, regardless of the increase in their numbers provided for by the government directive, women’s performances and/or opinions as assembly members have been muted. Ofei-Aboagye (2000) suggests that part of the reason why women’s presence has not been felt at the local level is the general paucity of women in government administration itself, both as politically appointed heads of districts (mayors) and as administrators and civil servants.

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In the analysis of the dialogue with the selected assembly women that follows, it is instructive to understand their specific pathways to power and how far their experiences as elected or aspirant assembly members correspond to what has emerged so far in the literature, as well as understanding what it is that they have made of their positions and powers.

Pathways to political power of selected assembly women Family life, education and work Twenty-eight assembly women participated in the dialogue. They were aged between 34 and 63 years and the majority were Christian, with two Muslims. They were mainly current or former elected assembly members, although four were government appointees. Thus they were a purposively selected group of women who had contested and won or lost elections to the assembly. The majority were married, but six were separated or divorced, and three others were widows. Irrespective of marital status, family life is central to the everyday lives of many of the women interviewed. For married assembly women, marriage is important for the status it brings, along with husbands to provide support. Most of them considered their husbands ‘supportive’, and more likely to help in domestic duties or not complain when their wives were frequently away on work or politics-related trips. One woman reported that her husband, a former education officer, even rewrote her political speeches in order to ensure that she did not make mistakes and said the right things. Such support seemed to cut across political party divides, and women reported assistance from husbands who were members of opposing political parties. In contrast to married women, many single women risked having their sexuality, maturity, and ability to perform in the public sphere questioned by their competitors, as well as by the community they sought to serve. According to Ruth, two of her male competitors engaged in ‘dirty politics’ and claimed that she ‘was not fit ... [you are]

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not married … [you are] ... a tigress’. It was also claimed that if she was elected she would not respect other women. However that message was rejected by the women in her district, who voted massively for her. At the same time, some of the single women, particularly the older women who had been widowed or had divorced, felt the autonomy they enjoyed had enabled their success in their political careers. Children, as well as husbands and other family members, often provided moral support during election campaigns, or through contributions to domestic activities on an ongoing basis, to allow the women politicians to combine their duties in the assembly with household obligations. Sometimes this back-up was from family members who lived in the same household, and in other cases adult children who had moved out took on the household chores. A few women also received support in their income-generating work from their mothers or other female relatives who were their partners. One relatively young married woman with a three-year-old child relied on domestic help. These domestic arrangements were instrumental in allowing assembly women to manage their political work and activities. But a few husbands were unsupportive of their wives’ involvement in politics and found ways to discourage them. Work and education are closely linked for the women as critical factors in their empowerment. The majority had received only a basic education and most had not been able to further their studies as they would have liked. But they had been able to support their children’s education to appreciable levels and found this rewarding. However, there were constant references throughout the interviews to how the lack of a higher educational attainment was holding back their potential to stand for office as MPs in the future, and a few women had enrolled in adult education classes. According to Grace O, ‘I would have run for Parliament if I had a good education. Nonetheless, I have enrolled in a non-formal education programme to upgrade my education for my future political career.’

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As with the majority of women in Ghana, work – whether paid or unpaid, as self-employed or as an employee – is a critical aspect in the lives of the assembly women. The most common occupation was teaching (29 per cent), while another 18 per cent combined farming with trading or administrative work. Eighteen per cent of the women were solely traders, while the remainder were nurses, midwives or healthcare workers; administrative or clerical workers; proprietors of schools/day care centres; or NGO workers. These occupations were located in both the formal and informal sectors, and some of the women straddled both. Virtually all the women in the informal sector were self-employed. The location of work is important because of its compatibility with women’s DA work and the effect on their incomes. Employees in the formal economy, such as teachers, could seek permission from their supervisors to attend assembly meetings with little effect on their income. On the other hand, the self-employed often experienced conflict between making a living and representing their communities, particularly as assembly members are not paid a salary, but only sitting allowances when they attend meetings. According to Becky, when she was approached by her community leaders to run as an assembly woman – having demonstrated potential in the community work she had done for them – she responded as follows: I told them I want to be on my own because I like business, moving up and down. Can you believe I am selling petrol? I have a small filling station. Just to earn something small to support the children. I also sell iced water and have a beer bar. In fact, I am moving around. So this thing which will take my time, no I don’t want it…. [But] I took it up when my father accepted it and advised me to go – then I offered myself.

In such situations, assembly women must find ways of con­ tinuing to make a living at the same time as satisfying community expectations, some of which involve out-of-pocket expenditure. The majority of assembly women felt their political work was compatible with their careers, however, and found creative ways to manage the challenge.

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Indirect but important connections often existed between the work that women did and their entry into politics. Thus women in certain professions such as teachers, nurses and NGO workers were often encouraged to show leadership in com­ munity and church affairs. In turn, this often provided them with a support base with which to embark on a political career. Rosemary,4 an environmental health worker, credits her work for helping her win the first election she contested. Constituents were confident that she would use her new position to maintain environmental standards and provide them with toilets, which is a major problem in the area. Thus the decision to enter public life was not planned for by some of the women, who had to be persuaded to enter into politics. These women had doubts about their ability to succeed or to appeal to their constituents, and a few needed reinforcement and encouragement to collect and submit nomination forms, particularly when they lived in highly patriarchal communities where women were expected to take a back seat to men, or, as Ruth put it, where ‘women were expected to dance and do the following of important people’. The persuasion and encouragement from community members that many assembly women seek reflect the embeddedness of local politics in gendered and local understandings of permissible political behaviour and power. Assembly women who accept candidacy after such encouragement are not necessarily in politics ‘by accident’, but may merely be seeking endorsement of what they also desire to do, while some others make conscious, selfwilled decisions to become assembly members. While the full enormity of the consequences of their decisions may not have been immediately apparent, assembly women quickly became aware of their new realities and worked to achieve them, at the same time as some learnt to enjoy their new positions – and, indeed, to aspire to national political office. Who/what inspired these women? A number of factors influenced the women’s decision to contest for seats in the assemblies. For some women, it was out of concern

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for the development of their community. According to Marian, it was the huge mountain of refuse in the estate where she lived that led to her decision: When you are entering into the estate, it is between the two estates, the ‘low cost’ and the new site ... the bola [refuse] was there for the past three years, they haven’t evacuated it before. So that prompted me and I said, ‘When I came here two assemblymen have passed by. This is the third person, so what are they doing about this? I have to wake up and do something.’ So I told some people and they gave me the go-ahead.

For others, the decision was prompted by the encouragement of religious leaders and/or prominent public figures, while for others again it stemmed from the conviction that women are important partners in community development. A few others were also inspired by women politicians both in domestic and international circles, like the late Hawa Yakubu of Ghana, Winnie Mandela of South Africa or the UK’s Margaret Thatcher, whom they regarded as role models. Although about half of the women had or still have family members who were/are involved in political careers or activities, many of them did not cite that as a strong motivation for their entry into politics. According to Asana, however, ‘My motivation was also my mother’s achievements as a politician, though she was not educated. Her experiences convinced me that I could do as much and even more.’ But some recalled their own involvement in politics during their childhood and teenage days. One woman, Mercy K, remem­­bered joining her uncle, a former Member of Parliament (MP), on the campaign trail when she was seventeen. She recalled being so moved the night before the 1979 national elections that she ‘preached’ to her townsfolk: I woke up in the morning preaching that the party for which my uncle was a candidate was a star, the star is going to show us the way, hence he should be voted for.… I was a brave girl, so I was not

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afraid to wake up at dawn in a town without street lights and sing and preach that my uncle should be voted for.

However, when Mercy herself wanted to stand for elections, her mother tried to discourage her, while her brother was in full support of this move to contest for a seat. Mercy spoke with delight of her children, whose sing-song support never wavered: ‘Mama Mercy, a na eko!’ (‘Mama Mercy, all the way!’) Another woman, Christina P, mentioned her father, who encouraged her to join Kwame Nkrumah’s Young Pioneers because he believed in Kwame Nkrumah’s leadership in Ghana. She also credited some Russian women she interacted with at the Atomic Energy Commission, where she worked for a short period. They had encouraged her to be ‘bold’ and ‘assertive’, she recalled. But not everyone in the community was so encouraging. One woman, Ekua, recalled that when she decided to contest the 2002 elections, many people in her community discouraged her, saying that her educational attainments were not good enough. Other people accused her of promiscuity and said she would misuse community money. This discouraged her and she decided not to run. But when she tried to return the nomination forms to the electoral officer, he was very encouraging and told her to ignore the negativity and stand for the elections. He also assured her that her campaign was doing well, and all this helped her to persevere. Rita, who sees herself as a youth counsellor, had sponsored the formation of a football club for the youth in her community, as a channel for interacting with them and counselling them on life and career choices. In turn, these young people and other community members prevailed on her to run for the assembly, in recognition of her selfless devotion to community development. One woman credits the voluntary work she engaged in for ‘bringing out the power that was within’. She distributed condoms in her community and spread messages about family planning at weddings and other social functions. She and her

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co-volunteers would request the elders present at such functions to allow them a few minutes to give a message to the women, and she believes that this was how she learned to speak in public – and eventually came to be motivated to run for office. Other women derived motivation from workshops that they had attended, which urged women to get involved in DA elections. Initially some of these women had tried to encourage other women to take up the challenge, but they were rebuffed. One woman recounted how it was the push from her bishop in 2000 that swayed her. The bishop spoke to them about the need for women to get involved in the assembly elections. Then she had attended a temple meeting and it was the same thing, women were being encouraged to take part in district and parliamentary elections.... So after these I decided to give it a try. I told my husband I want to take part in the district assembly elections, but he said no, saying the children are not grown.

In 2002, she attended yet another workshop. Once again women were being asked to get involved, and the late Hawa Yakubu was there as well, to encourage them. When she got home, she informed her husband that this time around she was going to give it a try, and he agreed. After that, she informed her NGO team members and the coordinator, who congratulated her and reminded her of what they had been urging her to do. Finally, the Christian Mothers’ Association, of which she was a member, was preparing for International Women’s Day on 8 March, and she was selected to make a speech on behalf of her parish on women’s decision making and participation in politics. She used her notes from the workshops she had attended to prepare her speech, which was very well received. There and then, the chairperson of the association informed her that they were going to submit her name as the parish candidate for the election. The workshops that several of the women had attended – organized by women’s rights groups such as ABANTU for Development, WILDAF, FIDA, and international NGOs such as

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the Konrad Adenauer Foundation – appear to have contributed greatly to their education and consciousness raising. These work­ shops also directly encouraged the women to take up oppor­ tunities offered by national laws and policies, and have done much to raise the confidence of women in their own abilities. The nurturing space provided by many of the groups and their constant reinforcement, have helped women to confront local patriarchal practices and values and to dare to imagine different futures for themselves. One of the assembly women had travelled to Beijing in 1995 and participated in the World Conference on Women, and this was the turning point in her life: My interest in politics began after I had returned from the Beijing Conference. I realized that I had some good potential in me to be a woman leader, to help my community. Before then I was very concerned with the problems in my community. I talked to other people and they encouraged me to go ahead with my plans to contest for the elections. I was also encouraged by Madam Hawa to run. In 2000, I attended a lot of workshops that tried to encourage women to run for the District Assemblies. I had a lot of exposure and was empowered by these workshops. I also realized that I could be a single mother and still achieve a lot for myself because I take decisions for myself.... I joined the New Patriotic Party in 1996 and became a very active member.

Associational life as political apprenticeship An examination of the associational life of the assembly women revealed the ways in which active participation in associations proved useful. It provided many women with an opportunity to demonstrate their leadership potential and to learn lessons that benefited them in their lives as political leaders. A clear relationship between participation in associations and political careers is evident in the fact that 24 out of the 28 women interviewed participated in at least two associations. A few women had been active in various associations since childhood, with some recalling how they had joined almost

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every possible association while at school. One woman, Isatou, had been a member of the drama troupe, the tae kwan do group, the cadet corps, and even the Scripture Union, though she was not a Christian. She also played hockey and football. As adults, the women tended to be active in two major kinds of organization: religious and political. Religion, predominantly the Christian faith, plays a huge role in the lives of the assembly women, and all the women, including the four who limited themselves to activities in only one association, participated in religious activity. Many of the women played multiple roles in their churches. Esi Mansa had this to say: I am a member of the Methodist Women’s Fellowship in Accra when I visit. I am also the Assistant Chaplain in the Accra Diocese of the Methodist Church, and a Vice President of the Lay Council of the Good Shepherd Methodist Church. I am also the only woman in the Men’s Fellowship.

There were three main types of political organization that the women had joined. The first was the Young Pioneer Movement, a youth wing of the CPP that was active from the late 1950s until 1966. The second was the 31st December Women’s Movement (DWM), formed in 1982 and later led by former first lady Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, which was very active in Ghana until 2000.5 The third type was political parties that formed in the early 1990s following Ghana’s return to constitutional rule in 1993. The two major political parties in Ghana are the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC), and the women involved in either the NDC or NPP were mostly to be found in the women’s wings of the parties. Four of the women in their fifties had been members of the Young Pioneers, an organization that sowed seeds of Pan-Africanism and politics in eager and impressionable youth. Christina P. provided more insights into her experience as a teenager: I was introduced to the Young Pioneers by my father when I was 17. As a Young Pioneer, I was in charge of projecting the African person­ality among the youth in Efiekuma, Takoradi. I taught the

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youth the history of Kwame Nkrumah’s struggle for independence and his experiences with the colonial administration.

And here is Grace O on the DWM: While living in Apam I heard of what the 31st DWM had done for the community so I decided to join and also to be able to lead the movement in my community to do similar things. I did not have much support then, but I managed to run the 31st DWM in my area. Joining the 31st DWM has benefited me.... I have become bolder and assertive through my membership of the movement. I also acquired a lot of organizational skills. However, the movement was not too helpful to the community as a whole.

Hajjia Asana, who was active in a political party, had this to say: I am the first Vice-Chairperson of the New Patriotic Party for my constituency. And the polling station chairman. I am the Public Relations Officer of the General Nurses Group for OsuKlotey district, and the National Vice-President of the Midwifery Association. I am also the Treasurer of the Ghana Registered Nurses Association for the Osu-Klotey district. I refused to accept the offer to contest for the National Treasurer of the Private Midwives’ Association because I felt it would have been too much work for me. I am a Board member of the National Health Insurance Scheme. I also used to attend meetings of the Ghana Muslim Ladies’ Association but I am not an active member.

In addition to their involvement in political and religious organ­ izations and associations, two of the women also held volunteer jobs with the state, helping with registration of citizens for the National Insurance Health Scheme (NIHS). Maame worked as a premium collector for the District Mutual Health Insurance Scheme and noted proudly that ‘Through my efforts, the Mutual Health Insurance Scheme has attracted a lot of contributors. Many people have come to associate me with the benefits of the scheme.’ But some of the women had also formed new groups where they had interests that were not met by any existing organ­ization.

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These interests included addressing the welfare of women, par­ ticularly poor women. Grace O formed a benevolent society and credit union, the Nyame Bèkyerè (God Will Show the Way) Women’s Group, to help raise project funds that needy women would not have been able to raise on their own. The welfare of youth, both male and female, also motivated women to form groups, while a few other women concerned themselves with needy children who were not able to go to school because of limited financial resources. Two of the women, Emma and Rita, had formed football clubs for the youth in their communities. This examination of associational life highlights the salience of multiple associational life for these women, and how the skills and experiences gained are positively correlated with the probability of engaging in local politics. Relationships with communities and key constituents To be an assembly member or a politician, particularly at the local level, demands accessibility and close attention to key constituents, such as local opinion leaders and the youth. It is their endorsement that determines to a large extent the outcome of electoral contests. In order of importance, the following were the key sources of support mentioned by the assembly women: the youth, chiefs and community elders, women’s groups, family members, close friends, and religious leaders. That the youth, particularly male youth, emerge as among the most impor­tant if not the most important constituency for women and men seeking local political office is explained in part by demo­graphics and in part by culture. Young Ghanaians (15–24 years) constitute almost a quarter of Ghana’s population and about 60 per cent of the unemployed (Amankrah 2012). Thus they are a very visible presence in communities. Culturally, the youth, (nkwankwaa in Akan) are a political force (Owusu 2006) and can mobilize to support or to oppose traditional and modern political leaders. Aspiring and current political office holders ignore them at their peril, and usually seek to cultivate or at least to neutralize them. Assembly women in the dialogue were attuned to this and

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developed strategies to obtain such endorsements. Thus one Muslim woman described how she cultivated local Muslim leaders’ opinions, to convince them of her intentions and to seek their blessings. This was to counter patriarchal and stereotypical views, prevalent in her community, of women and their attempts to take on decision-making roles. Her status as a hajjia, someone who had performed the haj (pilgrimage to Mecca), enhanced her image in the community, gaining her much respect and recognition. The quality of affability and of ‘being there for everyone’ is a valued trait and assembly members took on a lot of responsibility to live up to it. They were expected to help find solutions to widely differing situations, including the death of a mother in childbirth. In that case, Rita, the assembly woman, offered to look after the new baby for six months! Assembly women went out during floods to ensure the safety of others in their communities, and dealt with practical matters of waste collection and sanitation, the provision of public toilets, potable water, and the maintenance of local roads. They were also expected to show up for funerals of community members, make monetary donations, and attend church harvest and other events, both in their own churches and in others. A small number of the women found these challenges so daunting that they were not sure they would contest again. Given women’s more restricted employment options in Ghana and their consequently weaker earning power,6 it was more difficult for women assembly members to meet the needs of their constituents, who normally approached them for both financial and non-financial assistance. It is likely that women with fewer resources, and unable to count on access to the resources of others, would not contemplate standing for office, thus further restricting the opportunities for poorer women especially to participate as assembly or unit committee members. Political life and work in the assembly In a typical assembly such as Ruth’s, there were 5 women out of

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27 members, and she was the only elected woman, while the other 4 were government appointees. In Mercy’s municipal assembly, total membership was between 50 and 70, with 12 women, 8 of whom were elected members. Women’s experiences of serving in the assemblies reveal both the impediments to their equitable participation in governance and decision making, and the increasing sense of personal satisfaction that many of them felt. A few of the women reported being shouted down by male members when assembly matters were being discussed, because the men felt ‘the women do not have anything good to say’. Others were told that they were engaging in ‘women talk’. But some assembly women had learnt to stand their ground. Some attributed the attitudes of male colleagues to the ‘sheer jealousy’ of the women’s achievement in making it to the assembly. Another woman, who served with two other women in the assembly, had formed an alliance with them, and they were able to get back at their critics and to counter their patriarchal norms and practices by arguing that in the assembly ‘there is no woman’ (as in the domestic sphere). Moreover, they reminded their male colleagues that they were all literate and were in the assembly to learn from each other, to share ideas, and to send feedback to their people. There are three statutory meetings of the assembly each year, and each assembly member can serve on two committees. The women served on a variety of committees, including development planning, security and justice, social services, finance, women and children, and works and environment. Other women also served on executive committees, and a few women chaired some of the committees on which they served and were responsible for convening meetings. While almost all the assembly women served on women and children’s committees, it appears that these committees had not been formed automatically and some women may have had to push for their creation. According to Efua, her first attempt at getting such as a committee set up did not work because she and her colleagues supporting the change had not studied the standing order to know where it would fit in the

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regulations. However they succeeded at their second attempt. Another assembly woman stated that the four women in her assembly had developed close relationships with each other and even set up a District Women’s Caucus which met every month. Participation in the work of the assembly in general and on committees in particular had helped the assembly women acquire background knowledge and built their skills to engage on issues with their peers. According to some of the women, they spent most of their first year observing and learning procedures, ‘the way they ask questions and so on’. Then they gradually started contributing at meetings and getting to know their colleagues. Operating within the assembly requires tact as well as being attuned to local politics, and many of the women had become savvy at avoiding conflict or giving in on some issues to preserve the peace. Some were convinced that they were better lobbyists and gained a better reception from others than their male counterparts. In the words of Grace O: Women have some innate quality to attract a better reception than men. An assembly woman can be more successful than men to lobby for development for their communities. I believe my community as well as the assembly has supported me to bring some development projects to the community, which I believe would not have been possible if I were a man. This is because the previous assembly men rather took sides in chieftaincy disputes and could not bring any development to the community. I have even included some members of the factions in the chieftaincy disputes in the unit committee in my area so that together we would develop consensus for development. But I believe not all women can be this successful in politics. In any case I think one’s relationship with other people counts a lot in politics, irrespective of being a man or woman.

Some women had cultivated good relationships with the DCE, or the MP for their constituencies. They approached them with their problems and were often able to get a hearing and the needed assistance. Many women saw this ability to establish relationships with powerful local personalities as a unique advantage, which they hope to exploit to address the challenges

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faced by women in their communities. But they acknowledged that they also had to work hard to remove popular perceptions about the leadership capabilities of women. Serving assembly women reported that they had been able to bring ‘lots of development’ to their communities, in the form of toilet facilities, garbage containers, potable water, street lights and market stalls. Others were working at getting broken-down hand-dug wells or boreholes repaired, and had contacted regional engineers or international and bilateral agencies. One assembly woman reported that she had ensured that the public toilets were emptied every month as they were close to the community’s source of drinking water, while another woman managed to convince the local branch of the state telephone company to install pay phones in the community.7 Another had lobbied for the reconstruction of the local market at a new and convenient site for women, who were its main users. Some assembly women had been successful in seeking funding for different women’s groups, including some to which they them­­selves belonged. But the ‘development’ that assembly women were interested in bringing to their communities was not only about immediate practical needs. According to Rita, in the north of Ghana (Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions), many discriminatory practices against women prevail, such as cruel and degrading widowhood rites. In her view, if more women could join the assembly they could make decisions on widowhood rites and other practices, and then work with their male counterparts for the decisions to be implemented at the local level. In recognition of their hard work and services, assembly women indicated, they enjoyed respect and popularity in their communities. They believed that they had become bolder and more confident, and could meet and discuss issues with important people, including chiefs, DCEs and MPs. Others believed that they had become enlightened and had acquired leadership skills from the various workshops that they attended. The women feel fulfilled and believe that they have become role models for women and young girls in their

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communities. According to Rita, who is now an appointed member of the assembly: People see me as a role model. They see me riding on my motorbike and they pass good comments. Those I started school with but could not continue to higher levels feel regret that they could not continue their education to become as popular and influential as I am now. Many people are really happy I am in the assembly. In fact many also do not even know I lost the elections.

Many women appreciated the fact that their position was an opportunity to serve other people, and especially to address the needs of women. In Esi’s view, The experience to contest the elections has been very empowering for me. I feel more confident and bolder now as a woman. On the whole I feel much empowered because I have been more involved in communal development than before.... I wield a good level of influence in my community now than before. People can be called to meetings and gatherings in my name. I can meet the chief and boldly present the problems of the community, without fear or favour.

The general observation is that the assembly women are happy to be part of the decision-making process in the various district/ municipal and metropolitan assemblies. They are conscious of the power that they hold and fully intend to exercise it: None of my opponents is in good relation with me. They do not talk to me and do not attend communal labour when I call for one.8 I intend to warn them and, if this persists, I will report them to the District Assembly for them to be fined. They had been fined before for refusing to attend a communal labour. The community and the chiefs support me in this.

They also realize that they can use their positions as assembly women to challenge systems that discriminate against women and bring positive changes in the lives of other women. Their hope is to take development to their communities if the assemblies are able to provide adequate logistical support.

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However, the assembly women did not feel that it was all gains; they believed that they had also incurred some losses in contesting their seats. The most important loss was the huge amount of money spent on campaigns, and in honouring numerous invitations to social functions and funerals. They believed that assembly members should be given a monthly allowance instead of the sitting allowance they were paid when they attended meetings, which is based on the assembly’s resources. In some districts this was as low as 5 Ghana cedis (approximately US$3). Many women also reported the severe time crunch that they faced. While this is not unique to female assembly members, it can be argued that they were more adversely affected on account of their familial obligations, as well as the fact that many of them were self-employed. According to the women, their constituents expected them to go around on a regular basis. As Ruth said, When they fail to see you for a month, they will say, ‘Now that we have voted for you, you have forgotten about us,’ even if you might be somewhere trying to develop yourself and even come back to make the community better – but they would not know that.

Conclusion The decentralization reforms introduced in Ghana in 1988 opened up some space for citizen participation in local governance. The DAs brought into being then have maintained their ostensible non-partisan character within a multi-party political environment. This chapter has highlighted women’s limited participation in the assemblies and in national governance generally, and a number of reasons have been adduced in the literature to explain this. However, the accounts of current and former assembly women presented in the chapter also challenge some of these factors. This underlines the importance of research that creates space for women such as these to articulate their views about their pasts and presents, and the futures that they desire. The life history approach reveals the agency of assembly

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women – an element absent from previous studies on women in local governance in Ghana. It goes beyond the constraints that women face to reveal what women are able to do with their relatively limited educational attainments, and how they use their deep knowledge and commitment to their communities to enter politics and carve out a distinct path based on service. In contradistinction to the existing literature that has presented families, especially husbands, and local community structures as the impediments to women’s enhanced participation in local politics, the life history method brings out the supportive role that many family members, including husbands, and local chiefs play in encouraging women to stand, as well as the continuing support that they give after women are elected. While this account does not seek to minimize the real impediments that some families and communities place in the way of women’s enhanced participation, it points to the importance of detailed ethnography and of understanding local factors that both support and constrain women’s political participation. The chapter has traced the family lives and educational and occupational trajectories of the assembly women, and the crucial roles played by family members, including husbands and children. Thus the oft-cited reluctance of families to allow women to embark on political careers needs some reconceptualization, while more attention may need to be focused on the structure of politics and institutions in Ghana that hinder women’s entry and participation in politics. The linkages between educational attainment, occupation and political career have also been explored in the chapter. Clearly, the relatively low levels of education attained by the majority of the women has not hindered their political careers at the local level, but most sought the momentum of further education with its capacity to catapult them on to the national stage. Be that as it may, the women have used their current attainments and the entry points through their occupations and other pursuits to show their public-spiritedness and interest in their communities. They have formed strategic relationships and alliances with the youth,

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chiefs, opinion leaders and other women in their communities, and used these to gain their confidence and support. The women have also acquired skills, experience and credibility from their participation in voluntary, religious and political groups. They appear to have been ably assisted by the several women’s rights organizations in Ghana, such as ABANTU for Development, WILDAF and FIDA. Women in the dialogue frame their politics in terms of service to their communities, and to ‘bringing development’ to those communities. In the poor and deprived communities in which many of them live, this is a politics that resonates with their constituents, and the assembly women are justifiably proud of what they are able to do as they ensure that toilets are provided and emptied, potable water and street lights are provided, and markets are built. But the development that women seek to bring is not without cost to themselves – they must cope with criticism and name calling from constituents, at the same time as they expend both financial and time resources to meet their expectations. The low entitlements of assembly members, compared to other office holders such as MPs, needs redress from central government, which still controls the purse. While the frenzied activities of assembly women to provide the basic needs of poor communities is necessary, it is to be hoped that central government itself will be alive to its responsibilities to provide such basic needs in the future. Assembly women could then devote more of their time to dealing with the strategic interests of women as they acquire the competence to deliver on a fuller range of rights for women through local governance systems.

Notes 1

This chapter draws on the work of my Ghanaian Pathways colleagues Rose Mensah Kutin, Akosua Darkwah, Akosua Adomako Ampofo and Dzodzi Tsikata, which is presented more fully in Manuh et al. (in preparation). 2 Effectively Ghana operated a no-party system of government from 1982

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3 4 5

6

7 8

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until 1993. The PNDC that took power following the military coup of December 1981 promoted this as a people’s democracy and resisted demands for a return to constitutional government. Some devolution of power in the form of a non-politicized, decentralized system was to be the solution. However continued demands by organized groups for a full return to constitutional democracy led to the inauguration of Ghana’s Fourth Republic in 1993. Two other women, Nancy Tsiboe and Muriel Asafu-Adjaye, also stood but lost (Gold Coast Gazette 1954). Not her real name. All names have been modified to respect the privacy of the women. There have been several studies of the DWM including Manuh (1993) and Tsikata (1989). It was formed by a group of radical young women to mobilize women in support of the so-called 31st December revolution of 1982, following a military takeover. By 1985 it was led by the first lady, who used it to mobilize support for her husband, and it remained the leading women’s organization until the late 1990s when more independent women’s organizations were able to assert themselves and claim the political space. Oduro et al. (2011) bring out the gender dimensions and differentials in wealth inequality in Ghana. When all households irrespective of quintile were considered, male-owned wealth constituted almost 70 per cent of total wealth. However the richest quintile accounted for approximately 86.7 per cent of the wealth of all households, while the female share of this quintile’s total wealth was only 28 per cent – similar to the 30.2 per cent female share of overall total wealth. This was before the use of mobile phones became widespread in Ghana. Communal labour refers to the unpaid work that communities are obliged to put in, often as their share of development projects. It evolved from traditional cooperative activities that communities engaged in, to become almost compulsory under colonialism when communities were often forced to provide unpaid labour services for the construction of roads and local services, and has continued in post-independence Ghana. However it is in rural communities that their demand and supply is enforced, often with resistance. The power of chiefs to demand communal labour has been transferred to local authorities/DAs. See Amanor (2003), Hontondji (2001) and Mamdani (1996) for a critical discussion of tradition, community and participation.

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References Ahwoi, K. (2010) Local Government and Decentralization in Ghana, Unimax McMillan, Accra. Alam, M. and R. Koranteng (eds) (2011) ‘Decentralization in Ghana’, paper presented at a workshop held at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Accra, 2010. Allah-Mensah, B. (2005) Women in Politics and Public Life in Ghana, Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES), Accra. Amankrah, J. Y. (2012) ‘Youth Unemployment in Ghana: Prospects and Challenges’, Research Working Papers, www.cepa.org.gh/research papers/Youth73.pd, Centre for Policy Analysis, Accra. Amanor, K. S. (2003) ‘Natural and Cultural Assets and Participatory Forest Management in West Africa’, PERI Working Paper Series No. 75, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA. Appiah, F., J. R. A. Ayee and J. Appeah (2000) ‘Fiscal Decentralization and Sub-National Government Finance in Relation to Infrastructure and Service Provision in Ghana’, main report of a collaborative study by the National Association of Local Authorities in Denmark (NALAD) and the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD, Ghana), Copenhagen and Accra. Asante, F. A. and J. R. A. Ayee (2004) ‘Decentralization and Poverty Reduc­ tion’, paper presented at the International Conference on ‘Ghana’s Economy at the Half Century’, organized by the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) and Cornell University, 18–20 July, Accra. AU (African Union) (2003) ‘Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa’, adopted by the 2nd Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the Union, Maputo, 11 July. —— (2004) ‘Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality’, Third Ordinary Session of the African Union (AU) Assembly of Heads of State and Government, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Ayee, J. R. A. (1996) ‘The Measurement of Decentralization: The Ghanaian Experience, 1988–92’, African Affairs, Vol. 95, No. 378, pp. 31–50. —— (2003a) ‘Towards Effective and Accountable Local Govern­ ment in Ghana’, Critical Perspectives No. 3, Ghana Centre for Demo­cratic Development, Accra. —— (2003b) ‘Decentralization and Local Governance in Ghana’, in N.  Amponsah and K. Boafo-Arthur (eds), Local Government in Ghana: Grassroots in the 2002 Local Government Elections, Department of Political Science, University of Ghana, Legon.

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—— (2006) ‘The Participation of Chiefs in Modern Decentralization in Ghana’, paper presented at a workshop on ‘Decentralization and Traditional Authorities in Ghana’, Volta Hotel, Akosombo, 16–18 August. Ayee, J. R. A. and N. Amponsah (2003) ‘The District Assemblies and Local Governance: Reflections on the 2002 Local Elections’, in N.  Amponsah and K. Boafo-Arthur (eds), Local Government in Ghana: Grassroots in the 2002 Local Government Elections, Department of Political Science, University of Ghana, Legon. Badoe, Y. (2010) Honourable Women, film directed and produced by Yaba Badoe for Pathways of Women’s Empowerment Research Programme Consortium, http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJLY8mkZwe GPeqvH91wwOr71UjoKDBrPx Beall, J. (2005) ‘Decentralizing Government and Decentering Gender: Lessons from Local Government Reform in South Africa’, Politics and Society, Vol. 33, No. 2, pp. 253–76. Conyers, D. (2007) ‘Decentralization and Service Delivery: Lessons from Sub-Saharan Africa’, IDS Bulletin, Vol. 38, No. 1, pp. 18–32. Cornwall, A. and A. M. Goetz (2005) ‘Democratising Democracy: Feminist Perspectives’, Democratization, Vol. 12, No. 5, pp. 783–800. Costa, A. A. (2010) ‘Quotas as a Path to Parity: Challenges to Women’s Participation in Politics’, IDS Bulletin, Vol. 41, No. 5, pp. 116–120. Crook, R. C. and J. Manor (1998) Democracy and Decentralization in South Asia and West Africa: Participation, Accountability and Performance, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Evertzen, A. (2001) Gender and Local Governance, Netherlands Development Organization (SNV), Amsterdam. Gold Coast Gazette (1954) ‘The Elections (Municipal Council Regulations, 1953)’, Government Printing Department, Accra. Gold Coast Gazette Extraordinary (1954) ‘Preliminary Results of General Elec­tion, 1954’, No. 39, 17 June, Government Printing Department, Accra. Hontondji, P. (2001) ‘Tempting Traditions: Internal Debate Needed in Traditional Culture’, Compass Magazine, No. 4, pp. 12–13. Katsiaouni, O. (2003) ‘Decentralization and Poverty Reduction: Does It Work?’, paper presented at workshop on ‘Linking Decentralized Govern­ ance and Human Development’, Fifth Global Forum on Reinventing Government, Mexico City, 3–7 November. Mamdani, M. (1996) Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Manor, J. (1999) The Political Economy of Democratic Decentralization, World Bank, Washington, DC.

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Manuh, T. (1993) ‘Women, State and Society under the PNDC’, in E. Gyimah-Boadi (ed.), Ghana under PNDC Rule, Council for the Develop­­ ment of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) Books, Dakar. Manuh, T. et al. (in preparation) ‘“Serving the Community” Doing Politics in Poor and Deprived Communities in Ghana: A Dialogue with Selected District Assembly Women in Ghana’, Legon: University of Ghana. Mensah-Kutin, R. (2010) ‘Democratic Governance and Women’s Rights in West Africa’, Department for International Development (DFID), International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Accra. Musso, J., C. Weare and M. Hale (2000) ‘Designing Web Technologies for Local Governance Reform: Good Management or Good Democracy?’, Political Communication, Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 1–19. NDPC (National Development Planning Commission) (2011) Annual Pro­ gress Report, NDPC, Accra. Nkrumah, S. A. (2000) ‘Decentralization for Good Governance and Development: The Ghanaian Experience’, Regional Development Dialogue, Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 53–67. Oduro, A. D., W. Baah-Boateng and L. Boakye-Yiadom (2011) ‘Measuring the Gender Asset Gap in Ghana’, Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon. Ofei-Aboagye, E. (2000) ‘Promoting the Participation of Women in Local Governance and Development: The Case of Ghana’, European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM), Discussion Paper 18, Maastricht. —— (2004) ‘Promoting Gender Sensitivity in Local Governance in Ghana’, Development in Practice, Vol. 14, No. 6, pp. 753–60. Ohene-Konadu, G. (2001) ‘Gender Analysis and Interpretation of Barriers to Women’s Participation in Ghana’s Decentralized Local Government System’, paper presented at the African Gender Institute, University of Cape Town, South Africa. Owusu, M. (2006) The Uses and Abuses of Political Power, Ghana Universities Press, Accra. Phillips, A. (1998) ‘Democracy and Representation: Or, Why Should It Matter Who Our Representatives Are?’, in A. Phillips (ed.), Feminism and Politics, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Republic of Ghana (1961) ‘Ghana Local Government Bulletin’, No. 34, 14 April, Government Printing Department, Accra. Tsikata, D. (1989) ‘Women’s Political Organization, 1951–1987’, in E.  Hansen and K. A. Ninsin (eds), The State, Development and Politics in Ghana, CODESRIA, Dakar.

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UN (1979) ‘Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)’, General Assembly Resolution 34/180, United Nations, New York. —— (2011) ‘General Assembly Resolution on Women’s Political Participation’ (A/RES/66/130), United Nations, New York. Yoon, M. Y. (2011) ‘More Women in the Tanzanian Legislature: Do Numbers Matter?’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 83–98.

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2 Exceptional Women Reserved Councillors in Municipal Corporations in Bangladesh Sohela Nazneen, Iqbal Ehsan and Bayazid Hasan Most of the literature on women in politics and political empower­ment in Bangladesh has focused either on the elected women representatives at the union level in rural areas (and the constraints they face) or on the ineffectiveness of women Members of Parliament (MPs) in reserved seats (Chowdhury 1994; Frankl 2004; Khan and Ara 2006; Panday 2008). In this chapter, we shift the focus from rural areas and women MPs to women councillors in urban government. Instead of highlighting the barriers experienced by women, through life history narratives we explore women’s political agency and their pathways of power. We investigate the following questions: What are the various entry points that enable women to gain political apprenticeship? How have these learning thresholds shaped their experience in politics, especially in building constituencies and support networks? And how have these experiences in turn influenced the ways these women engage with the issues they confront once in formal office? The answers to these questions provide interesting insights and challenge popularly held assumptions about women councillors and their pathways of political power in Bangladesh. Many people assume, for example, that the women in these reserved seats have little political experience. We argue, in answer, that though these women have not been active in formal party politics, they have learnt ‘how to do politics’ through voluntary and welfare work, and in other informal spaces. Some of them have been active in student politics. Their experience in these spaces has allowed them 74

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to build a constituency and gain an ‘unconventional’ political apprenticeship. Another assumption is that women councillors are proxy candidates for the male members of their families. We show that while these women’s families have encouraged and helped them to run for elections, and their social and political capital has been useful to establish them as candidates, once in office the women have also used their families to build their own constituencies and political networks, to address the needs of their constituents, and thus to develop their own identity as politicians. Our findings reveal the creative ways in which women try to address demands and negotiate a space, albeit constrained by larger political and social factors. We argue that, to develop a nuanced understanding of women’s political agency at the local level, we need to focus on the lived experiences of these councillors, understand how and why they use certain strategies, recognize what they find valuable, and rethink the established literature on women’s representation in politics. This chapter is based on life histories of incumbent women councillors collected in three municipalities in Mymensingh, Tongi and Naryanganaj in 2012. Mymensingh is an old city situated in the north, and the other two are industrial centres near Dhaka, the capital. These cities were selected because they had seen competitive electoral battles in previous elections. The councillors interviewed were purposively selected through the snowballing method, with preference given to those who had run for office in the past. Our research team had worked in this area on other development projects and was known to the interviewees, their families and the community. This relationship made it easier to approach the women for interviews and also to shadow them during interactions with their constituents.1 The chapter also uses data from existing secondary sources on local government and women in politics to supplement the findings. In the next section, we provide a brief discussion on women in politics in Bangladesh. This offers an understanding of the political and social contexts within which women political leaders operate. The third section investigates the various

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pathways through which women learn about politics and serve an apprenticeship that teaches the necessary skills. It also explores the different ways in which women build constituency and use existing networks and relationships to further their agenda. What these forms of engagement and constituency building mean for strengthening women’s presence in politics is discussed in the concluding section, with a view towards what new questions may arise from the discussions in this chapter.

Women in politics: the Bangladesh context When it comes to women in politics, Bangladesh presents an interesting paradox. A Muslim-majority state2 with a parliamentary system, Bangladesh became independent from Pakistan in 1971. As a neo-patrimonial state, Bangladesh has a social structure that is hierarchical by gender and class (Goetz 2001). Since 1981, the two major political parties, the Awami League (AL) and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), have been led by women, Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia respectively. Since 1991, after the democratic transition, these two women have held the posts of prime minister and leader of the opposition in alternation. They became the heads of their parties through their kinship ties; Sheikh Hasina is the daughter of the founding leader of AL, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman; and Khaleda Zia is the widow of the founder leader of BNP, Ziaur Rahman. These women leaders have played a pivotal role in ensuring the survival of their parties after the founder leaders were assassinated, as they were seen as figureheads acceptable to rank-and-file party members during the resultant leadership crises. They also consolidated party strength and ably spearheaded the pro-democracy movement, despite political repression by the military dictatorship during the 1980s. In the previous government, women headed the following four ministries: home, foreign affairs, agriculture and women’s affairs. Yet despite their accession to these top positions, the overall number of women in leadership positions in different electoral and decision-making bodies has been low.

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Women’s representation in elected bodies is ensured through the reservation of 30 per cent of seats in the Parliament and at various tiers of local government. Except for the 2008 national election, women’s representation was under or around 2 per cent in the various national parliamentary elections in the general seats (Chowdhury 1994; Khan and Mohsin 2008). In 2008, 17 women were directly elected to the general seats. Counting the 45 women MPs in reserved seats, the number of women in the current Parliament is 65, the highest since the creation of Bangladesh (Bangladesh Election Commission, no date).3 Whether the increase in numbers signalled a greater voice for women in the national Parliament is questionable. The women MPs in reserved seats are not directly linked to a constituency as they are nominated by their parties. This process, giving rise to the perception that some of these MPs are proxy candidates, has limited their ability to exercise voice. None of the political parties are willing to introduce direct elections to the reserved seats despite strong demands from the women’s movement. The majority party and those in the ruling coalition are allocated these seats based on the proportion of seats they have won. The majority party is able to use the seats to make deals with coalition parties, and also as patronage, distributing them to the wives and daughters of elected MPs as rewards. The most dynamic changes regarding women’s voice and par­ticipa­tion in politics have taken place at the Union Parishad (UP) level (the lowest tier of local government). Direct elections to reserved seats (three seats in each parishad) were introduced in 1997. Several provisions were also passed to ensure women’s inclusion in various committees and development programmes. After the introduction of direct elections to reserved seats, more than 12,000 women were elected to these reserved seats and upwards of 24,000 women contested the last round of elections (Panday 2008). Women UP members have gained social legitimacy in dealing with ‘women’s issues’ (such as UP adjudication in marital and inheritance-related disputes).

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Studies also show that their aspirations have changed (Khan and Mohsin 2008). The feminist movement in Bangladesh has a long history dating back to the anti-colonial nationalist movements (Jahan 1995). In the post-independence phase, the movement has mobilized around various issues such as legal reforms, antidowry campaigns, education, health service delivery, sexual harassment and violence against women, and has had successes in changing government policies and laws (Kabeer 1988; Jahan 1995; Nazneen et al. 2011). However, the culture and norms of the political and administrative structure remain genderbiased, despite the provision for 30 per cent representation of women in all elected bodies and a vibrant feminist movement. There are various structural, cultural and attitudinal barriers that limit women’s pathways into politics. Women’s time and ability to participate in formal politics are constrained by the gender division of labour. Female mobility and access to formal political and public spaces are restricted by purdah and notions about gender-segregated public spaces. Lack of knowledge about government functioning and rules frustrates the ability of women once elected to office (Frankl 2004; Panday 2008). Male resistance against female candidates and workers within political parties is prevalent, which creates an adverse climate for the rise of women in the party ranks. In mainstream politics, women’s rights issues, including women’s political empowerment, have little currency, though the major political parties are willing to pay them lip service (Nazneen 2009). Given this difficult context, the women who do decide to engage in formal politics, repeatedly running for office and winning elections, are in one sense exceptional women.4 Understanding where and how these women learn about politics and their ways of engaging and gaining formal political power provide key insights in seeking to strengthen women’s presence in politics.

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Pathways of power in politics for Bangladeshi women councillors Learning ‘how to do politics’ is a complex process, important aspects of which are political apprenticeship; constituency building and the creation of support networks; and developing negotiating skills based on the critical analysis of specific contexts. Political apprenticeship allows women to develop public speaking, problem solving and negotiation skills, and relationships with other political and social actors that are crucial to building support in politics. For women political leaders in the Bangladesh context, pathways of power are shaped by where and how they learn to do politics. Political apprenticeship begins at home and in informal spaces Contrary to popularly held perceptions, the women councillors we interviewed have had experience of political apprenticeship, albeit in different and less conventional settings than their male colleagues. The dominant perception of women who contest in reserved seats is that they are home makers who have become proxy candidates without previous experience of involvement in formal party politics (Chowdhury 1994; Khan and Ara 2006; Panday 2008). These women are considered ‘rag dolls’ (kagojer bou, Interviewee 6, 3 September 2012) or puppets in the hands of their families and parties, and as lacking the necessary training required for engaging in politics. They are also assumed to lack the connections and mentors for climbing up the political ladder. This perception, while correct for many of the women elected representatives, overlooks the various changes in women’s condition in Bangladesh and how experience gained through participation in other sectors of public life can teach candidates ‘how to do’ politics. This misperception may explain why various gender and development training programmes run by the government, INGOs and development agencies assume that women have no political experience and place stress on individual capacity building through providing public-speaking, media and

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networking skills – while failing to capture the lived reality of women’s experience, and addressing their needs in this light.5 The profile of the women we interviewed was different from the characteristics perceived to be indicative of the ‘typical’ woman representative in Bangladesh. Marriage is universal for adult women in Bangladesh, and all the women we interviewed married when they were in their mid-twenties; some of them were now widowed. However, all had completed their undergraduate degrees (one-third of them had MAs); were between 35 and 55; and had held formal jobs and worked till their children were born, or continued working even thereafter. Those who continued working pointed out that they worked because it allowed them to use their education and provided a sense of identity. This indicates that perhaps, in terms of education and paid work, there has been a change in the demographic profile of the women running for municipal office (Khan and Mohsin 2008). It perhaps also reveals that there are increased opportunities for women in urban areas in terms of education and work since the creation of Bangladesh (Nazneen et al. 2011). However, it is important to note that, despite positive changes in the various social indicators related to girls’ education and engagement in paid work, the women we interviewed were exceptional because of their middle-class backgrounds: this allowed them to stay unmarried till their midtwenties, a deferment that women from the rural areas or lowerincome groups would find it difficult to negotiate. For all of the women interviewed, political apprenticeship began within their natal family. The family was an important site for learning about how to do politics and developing skills that were later deployed with the support of their in-laws. All of the women had family members – fathers, brothers, uncles, and even mothers – involved in formal party politics. One interviewee sums up their experience succinctly: Our house was … an open house, with endless streams of people coming and going, and endless cups of tea being made and snacks being served.... My siblings were annoyed but I enjoyed meeting people, talking to them, learning about their problems, listening

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in on how my father and uncles solved these … how my mother handled the women, the wives, and maintained relations during campaigns and elections.… The ABC (ka-kha-gha) of politics was learnt here at home (Interviewee 4, 2 September 2012).

Besides being engaged in formal party politics, the family members served as community leaders in deciding various welfare issues, adjudicating over disputes, and addressing community concerns during humanitarian emergencies such as floods or river erosion. The discussions within the family regarding these matters provided the women with insider knowledge not only about the problems facing their community, but also on the intricacies of how relationships between different social and community actors and groups were handled. Interestingly, all the women interviewed married within their natal family city, which allowed them to use this insider knowledge as the key to relationships within a specific community. Residing in the same city or community had another advantage: most women councillors reported that they faced fewer restrictions in terms of purdah since the community had seen them grow up and so was less critical of their movements in public and political spaces (Interviewee 2, 28 August 2012). Natal family emerged as a major asset and an entry point into formal politics for the women during campaigns and elections, and while serving in office. The reputation of the family members and their social and political relationships were capital that the women were able to utilize to win election. Several of the women pointed out that, although the community knew them for their work, before the elections their main identity was as daughter/niece/sister of a family the people trusted, rather than a part of formal party politics. One of them explained it as follows: Oh, they knew what I did, that I taught at the school … and as their kids’ teacher, which definitely gave me credibility, but I was not a part of formal party politics and there was a long gap after my involvement in student politics.… The fact that they knew my father and my uncles, who held elected office, helped. I did not have to bring in the party bigwigs to ask for votes, I just said to people

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‘you know what my family has done for you’. And when they voted for me they were voting for my father and my uncles. And now, as I keep serving, they have come to know me. (Interviewee 5, 2 September 2012)

The fact that family emerges as a major site for learning politics is not unusual, since women’s extra-household relations are more restricted in the Bangladeshi context. The use of their family’s reputation and political capital during elections is also not surprising, when kinship remains a key social and political asset, and the dynastic nature of local and national politics makes this an effective option. In fact, several of the women explicitly stated that they were carrying on the legacy of their father or other natal family members, and that their constituents also viewed their candidacy in that manner. What is surprising, when it comes to family support, is that in-laws were willing to support a daughterin-law’s political ambition and work to get her into office. About one-third of the women married into political families, and their new political connections helped when they ran for office. A few of the interviewees reported that their mothers-in-law were willing to provide childcare so they could campaign and discharge their official duties. This lack of resistance from inlaws may reflect the extremely supportive stance of the women’s husbands towards their wives’ political ambitions, and the fact that the in-laws could afford to employ domestic workers to perform household chores. About one-third of the women were widows, for whom there was no question of conflict. In fact, husbands often provided more than moral support: about two-thirds of those interviewed said they also financed their campaigns. The reasons behind a husband’s support varied. Some indicated that their husbands had always been supportive of their interest in politics and wanted them to follow their dreams (shopno puron korte pari). About one-third said their husbands were politically active but had little chance of winning a party nomination themselves, and so wanted their wives to run for office and gain formal positions. Several also stated that their election to office had brought ‘prestige’ (shomman) to

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their in-laws within the community, as they were called on for adjudication and could provide services to local people such as issuing birth certificates. One interviewee narrated the following incident, which highlights how the position taken by in-laws could shift in a positive direction: My husband’s maternal uncle (mama) was against me running for office. He even said that our daughters-in-law ‘should refrain from dishonouring the family. It is shameless … going around and asking for votes from random people in the bazaar. And politics is dirty … [it] requires dirty money and muscle power to win.’ But once I won fairly and without using dirty money, he went around proudly pointing me out to people and saying, ‘This is my niece (amar bhagni).’ He did not say his nephew’s wife (bhagn-e bou) – he said his niece! He brought people to my office for various services. His acceptance means a lot to me (onek boro orjon) at a personal level. (Interviewee 2, 28 August 2012)

Some also stated that their official position and relations with other political party leaders and councillors have been useful for their husband’s professional work (Interviewee 3, 30 August 2012). In the literature on women in politics in Bangladesh, the gender division of labour and resistance from the family (particularly husbands and in-laws) are identified as key factors that limit women’s political participation (Chowdhury 1994; Frankl 2004; Panday 2008). However, several of the women councillors we interviewed were pleasantly surprised (obak) at the wholehearted support offered by their in-laws (including husbands). Support in these cases came as the women had married into political families and the in-laws identified women’s participation in public life as a way to enhance family standing in the community. The inlaws also expected to gain from the election of these women to political office. What these insights indicate is that, as we explore pathways of women’s entry into politics, we need to have a deeper and a more nuanced understanding of how the family can be a facilitating factor for women’s participation in politics. We also need to

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explore what kind of limits this form of dynastic and kinshipbased politics places on women’s political empowerment. If family social and political capital is so important for urban women seeking to gain entry into formal politics, what does this mean for women who lack such social networks and political capital? Student politics emerged as another area where women coun­ cillors had their first real taste of ‘doing politics’ and experienced the challenges involved. About two-thirds of the women were members of student wings of centrist political parties (AL or BNP) at the college level (higher secondary and undergraduate). Being active in student politics remains an unusual activity for female students in both urban and rural areas (perhaps less so in major cities like Dhaka), though the major political parties have had female student wings for a long time. Several of the women reported that their interest in politics was piqued by the fact that the student wings and the college authority were unwilling to nominate women candidates to the key posts in student government – such as vice-president or general secretary of the student body – or take up issues that directly affected the female students. The statements below demonstrate how their interest was raised and how it allowed them to learn ‘how to do politics’: The number of toilets for women students was inadequate, we had no ‘common room’, we had no canteen and no separate space for prayers. The male students had that. When the existing student body president came to canvass I was not afraid to raise these issues. But these were not seen as key issues, though it did get me noticed by the girls who wanted someone who would ‘tell it like it is’. That is how I got into student politics.... I learnt a lot from the years I served as a representative in the student government. (Interviewee 4, 2 September 2012) When they announced the names of the panel, I was only nominated for the post of the sports secretary [as it was not an important post]. I wanted the vice-president (VP) post.… One of our teachers and also some of the student leaders said, ‘This is Bangladesh, and we are not ready for a female VP.’ I was upset … I was determined to play their game.… I did win with a wide margin [as sports secretary] and the

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VP candidate lost from our panel really badly.... Students voted for me regardless of party affiliation, because they liked my no-nonsense approach, particularly the girls, as there were very few [women] who were willing to be demanding … that is when I knew politics is hard for women, but I was willing to play ball (rajniti-r khela) and play hard. (Interviewee 5, 2 September 2012)

Work was another area where the women learnt about politics, perhaps not in the conventional but in the larger sense – in terms of social provisioning and building relationships. About two-thirds of the councillors were school and college teachers, which allowed them to meet people from various sections of society and develop relationships that were useful in running for office. The councillors repeatedly stressed that their position as a ‘teacher of their kids’ created trust among the community. They also pointed out that their jobs created scope for learning about the various development and social problems facing Bangladesh, which influenced their choice of issues on which to campaign. Some of the councillors had worked in voluntary associations providing emergency relief and welfare, which gave them the experience of dealing with poorer sections of society and also the opportunity to build a reputation for helping disadvantaged groups. These experiences were useful, during election campaigns, for demonstrating a previous track record in development – as succinctly stated below: I have been working with Kumudini [a welfare trust]. I started as a volunteer right after I completed high school and moved up the ladder.… I have gone into various communities, talked to them, and assessed their needs.… Kumudini’s approach to welfare work influenced me to challenge how we think about poverty and what women can do, and what can be done for changing people’s lives.… Once I left this organization, because my children were young, I started a small savings group for the women in my own ward … by the time I decided to run for office, the poor in this ward knew who I was, that I have always worked to help them. I did not have to make my case … they trusted [biswas] me. (Interviewee 6, 3 September 2012)

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Interestingly, the women councillors did not perceive their workplace or student politics experiences, or their early exposure to politics through the family, as political apprenticeship. It was only after they were specifically asked about how these aspects of their lives influenced their politics that they acknowledged the validity of these unconventional apprenticeships. In fact, when the women were initially approached by local political party leaders to run for election, all had refused (even those secretly nurturing a political ambition), saying that they had no formal political experience as they were not active in party politics, even though about one-third were members of (or were holding official positions in) the women’s wing of major political parties. The women were persuaded by the political parties through their family members (mostly fathers, husbands, brothers, uncles and, in one case, the mother). The political parties were willing to expend energy in ensuring the women’s candidacy because of the nature of the electoral competition for reserved seats in municipalities, and the personal qualities that these women candidates embodied. Both major parties, the AL and the BNP, wanted to capture as many of the reserved seats as possible, so they needed to nominate well-established and loyal women candidates. These women would not have been courted by the parties if these were general seats, nearly all of which would have been allocated to men. The families of the women councillors were loyal party supporters and had longstanding credentials among the community, which both ensured party loyalty and increased the chances of these women winning the reserved seats. The women themselves were educated and in most cases were professionals (teachers, development workers), which provided assurance for the voters that ‘eligible’ candidates were being selected by the parties. This is important given that both major parties have nominated corrupt candidates for general seats in recent elections (particularly in Narayanganj). One benefit of being persuaded by their political parties to compete was that the women did not have to entreat the ‘bigwigs’ from Dhaka or other party leaders to come and campaign on their behalf; their

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local party was willing to spend time and money on campaigning for them. Building relationships and constituencies: negotiating patronagebased politics Absence of a track record of being active in formal party politics is a major barrier for women councillors in advancing in local politics, particularly when they fail to create networks and relationships with senior political leaders and mentors within the party. Political party structures in Bangladesh are ‘informal and centralized’ (Goetz and Hassim 2003) and failure to create these relationships with senior leaders translates into an absence of opportunities for climbing up the political ladder or taking part in important decision-making processes or ensuring a share of the development budget for one’s electoral constituency. All of the interviewees pointed out that they have experienced these difficulties and that their ‘political effectiveness’ has been constrained. To overcome these constraints, women councillors have tried to create networks and address the demands of their constituencies using the strength of their existing familial and community relations. They also use creative strategies to communicate with their constituents (discussed below), build a strong support base, and develop networks with external and local actors that would allow them to address their constituents’ demands. While these strategies allowed the women to operate in local politics, address immediate needs and practical concerns, and increase their individual status, they did not lead to a transformative change in the women’s overall position as political actors within the system. All of the women councillors interviewed stated that they had refrained from making ‘big’ promises of large infrastructural change and focused instead on local issues when they cam­ paigned. Several of the councillors pointed out that this distinguished them from other (male) candidates who promised to build bridges or increase allocations of various government programmes for the poor. All of the women chose to campaign

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on issues such as prevention of drug use, protection of public parks and playgrounds for the youth, sanitation, and widening of neighbourhood sidewalks and streets. The reason for taking up these very specific issues was to appeal to the immediate needs of the local community. The women were also afraid that they would not be able to deliver on ‘big’ projects, which would then reflect badly on them once they were in office. I chose to focus on the youth and their problems – I am a college teacher, I knew the parents’ concerns in my community, and I knew it would appeal to both the young and the families.… I did not go and say ‘Once elected I will bring you this or get you that from the government’ … [I] did not want to make promises I could not keep if I were elected. Getting government funds, making huge infra­ structural changes, requires doing a kind of [dirty] politics that I do not want to do, and also requires having close links with the leaders, which I lacked.… So I campaigned on issues that I knew would appeal to voters but I also knew I could deliver on. (Interviewee 5, 2 September 2012)

Once in office, the women relied largely on their family and friends to meet the various demands of their electorate. Twothirds of the women we interviewed pointed out that the salary from their regular jobs is limited and the remuneration they receive as councillors is very small. Given that the women receive smaller shares of the various government social safety net allocations, they experience difficulties in providing assistance to poor constituents or funding development and charity works, particularly during religious festivals. They also pointed out that they face unfair competition from their male colleagues, who are ‘professional’ politicians, have more assets, receive larger grants from political parties and the state, and thus are able to meet the needs of the poor and conduct development and charity work on a larger scale. For two-thirds of the women, their husbands and fathers have financed their charity work so that they are able to ‘save face’ (much rokhkha) among their poor constituents during religious holidays. During both Eids (Muslim holidays) people expect to receive alms, zakat (money equivalent to 2.5 per cent of

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the value of one’s assets is distributed among the poor) and meat (during Bakar Eid when a sacrifice is performed) from the elected officials who are perceived as local patrons. The interviewees explained that meeting these demands is crucial since they live in the same area as their constituents and they have more frequent interactions than any other elected officials (such as MPs). This financial help from families allowed the women to meet their constituents’ expectations, and it is perceived by the families as a form of ‘investment’ to ensure the women’s re-election and repu­ tation, as they expect (as has been mentioned above) to gain from the political, business and social contacts. However, the women were sceptical about how long they would be able to use family finances and were concerned, if they couldn’t, about how this might affect their electoral chances in the next round of elections. Aside from material help, the social relations and networks these women’s family members have were used to address various social and political problems. About one-third of the women councillors had to deal with extortion at local bazaars during their first days after taking office. This posed a difficult problem, because as women who were not active within the inner circle of party politics, they were unable to employ muscle power (‘enforcers’ attached to political parties) to protect local shopkeepers. Moreover, as women, they did not even have contacts with the local mastans (thugs used for political purposes). In a violent and patriarchal political culture, the women’s ability to negotiate a solution with the petty political thugs was also constrained. They had to rely on their family’s personal relationship with security forces or the local police to create a sense of obligation among the law-and-order personnel and ensure the security of the local businesses that way. The following narrative highlights their strategy and also the limitations of using personal networks: My ward has a large Hindu [religious minority] population. My family has always protected them and they have always voted for us. They feel that I would do the same, and I also feel a sense of obligation.… After the election, an old Hindu man came to me … crying.… [H]e said that they [Hindu shopkeepers] were unable to

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make any profit as the local thugs were ‘collecting toll’ [extortion] from them daily and asked me to help them.… I knew I would not get much help from my party as these thugs have links with some party leaders.… My husband was a major in the army, and I knew the officers and have kept in touch even after I became a widow. I called them up for help, who called the local OC [Officer-in-Charge] of police. The OC was more than willing to help … and I also got the local shopkeepers organized.… Making the local market in my ward safe is one of my biggest achievements as a councillor.… But I was ineffective in helping the shopkeepers of one of the larger markets in another ward, as too many political leaders from all parties benefit from the extortionist practices. My personal connections with the police were not enough. I tried reasoning with the local leaders at a municipal council meeting, but no one listened, I was shushed. (Interviewee 2, 28 August 2012)

The women also used personal or family relationships with the mayor and local MP to counter the difficulties they faced from the administration and their male colleagues. Several of the councillors stressed that they had called directly upon these authority figures to intervene on their behalf when faced with resistance from the municipal office. One interviewee recalled the following incident: One of my duties as a representative is to issue birth certificates. I had signed a few and the administrative officer refused to accept the ones I had issued, saying that a certificate signed by a woman is not official.… I complained to the Ivy apa (the mayor).6 My family knew her but I was not close to her, but I knew she would be on my side … she has always supported women’s rights.… She called up the officer and asked for an explanation … showed him the government circulars ... after that no women councillor had any problems from him. (Interviewee 5, 2 September 2012)

Having strong relationships with female leaders within their political party also facilitated the women’s access to the centralized command within the political parties and, at times, helped them to counter police/state repression before they were elected to office. These relationships also offered protection from local thugs when

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the women councillors pursued cases of violence against women perpetrated by local gangs. However, not all councillors have these kinds of relationships with top party officials, so this strategy is limited. Moreover, once the sympathetic person is removed from office, the councillor’s effectiveness also diminishes. Using personal networks remains an effective strategy, how­ ever, in motivating the police or local community to address law and order issues in their electoral wards, particularly cases of rape, wife battering, violence against women and ‘eve teasing’ (a colloquial term used to refer to sexual harassment in the streets). Besides using family networks, once in office the women have sought to establish their own networks and close relationships with authorities. In incidents of rape, some of the women councillors have called the police, paid for medical examinations, and followed up on court cases themselves (Interviewees 4 and 5, 2 September 2012). As a consequence of their active role, these women have become one of the first points of contact for the local police (besides women’s organizations) when incidents of rape occur. Sexual harassment on the streets as an issue was taken up by one-third of the women councillors. They were elected to wards where large numbers of women garment workers reside, who work late and use the river ports for travelling to their place of work. The councillors pursued this issue not only within the community, but also with port authorities to provide security and lighting in the evening when women workers returned from the industrial areas. Even though the workers themselves had not raised it, the women councillors pushed for the change because the garment workers vote too and we are an industrial town … and it is not just about votes … they are women trying to earn a living just like everyone else … like me … and they should be able to come back home without being harassed.… I did not know anyone in the port authority, but I wanted to take this up with them. I called up, cajoled, persisted.… Once I started negotiating with the port authority, I also spoke to the mayor, who is always supportive of women’s issues. I did not hesitate even though she is not from my political party. (Interviewee 5, 2 September 2012)

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The empathy and willingness to address sexual violence, rape and security problems experienced by women was evident in all the women councillors interviewed. They all indicated that they saw women as a key constituency and that, as councillors, their responsibility was to address women’s issues and promote women’s rights. They stressed that their electorates perceived them, particularly in cases of violence against women, and marriage and divorce issues (the municipal government issues divorce certificates), as an adjudicator who would be able to understand the woman’s situation and intervene. The legitimacy that these councillors have in addressing these social concerns has been accepted by their male colleagues. This is partly because of the state’s and development agencies’ insistence on including women in traditional shalish or informal adjudication and local government processes in addressing these issues. It is also due to the fact that their inclusion does not threaten their male colleagues’ control over development projects or patronage distribution. However, in cases where the perpetrators of violence had powerful connections, the women councillors’ efforts to address matters were stalled by their male colleagues. For example, in one instance, the interviewee was able to persuade the police to arrest perpetrators of rape and draw up charges. But the perpetrators were released on bail, as one of them was the son of a powerful local leader. Pressure on the police from some of the councillor’s male colleagues stalled the case in court and she received threats on her mobile from the perpetrators warning her against following up the case (Interviewee 7, 4 September 2012). All of the interviewees had received gender training from international development agencies or NGOs, which focused on raising awareness about existing legal frameworks, women’s rights, and various services provided for women by the government. These trainings are a part of the women’s empowerment work in Bangladesh implemented by these various agencies. However, the interviewees’ understandings of women’s rights vary, and for some their conception of rights may not necessarily reflect feminist notions of rights. What the insights from the interviews

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reveal is that empathy does prompt women councillors to act on behalf of women on certain issues, such as violence. However, their actions on other matters, such as personal issues related to marital dispute, usually follow the dictates of religious personal laws and the councillors try to provide ‘pragmatic’ solutions. For example, they may push for reconciliation between the first wife and the husband after the husband has married a second time. The latter is a rational response in a context where most of the women petitioners would need social and economic protection from men. The women councillors’ motivation to choose and push for specific cases concerning women’s rights violations may also be influenced by considerations about the community perception of their role and about the institutional space provided for their role, by whether promotion of an issue brings them into direct conflict with their (male) colleagues, and by whether it gains them electoral advantage. The interviewees also revealed that they actively sought and, in some cases after the initial contact, maintained relationships with development agencies and women’s organizations. Generally these relationships were developed when the women were contacted for training. All the councillors agreed that the knowledge gained from past training on women’s rights and local government functions has been useful, whether the workshop was provided by the UNDP, a Bangladesh programme, national NGOs such as BRAC, or women’s organizations. However, all the women felt that their male colleagues and the community also need to be targeted for gender and women’s rights training, and that refresher courses for the women on legal and administrative changes are needed. Interestingly, the interviewees valued the networks, services and development programmes implemented by these agencies even more than the training. These resources have been effective in allowing the women to address the needs and demands of their electoral constituents. Almost two-thirds of the women pointed out that women’s organizations (both those based in Dhaka and local organizations) have been their first port of call

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when their constituents needed legal advice, legal aid, and shelter from domestic violence and trafficking. One of the interviewees explained that this relationship has raised her credibility in the eyes of her constituents, as she is able to offer assistance and demonstrate that she has links with a larger body of actors. The councillors have increased their standing through their membership of local planning/advisory bodies on development programmes, as they are able to take credit for various welfare activities and ‘appear to play a part in distributing benefits’ (Interviewee 6, 3 September 2012). For women, who have limited financial means and have to rely on family support for charity work, being seen to meet the needs of the constituents through these programmes is critical. Given that women’s ability to secure government allocation is constrained by the gendered nature and structural constraints in the local municipal councils, participation in these development programmes has had an ‘unintended’ benefit for the women councillors. One of the interviewees explained the advantages of this relationship: The UPPR [Urban Partnerships for Poverty Reduction – a UNDP programme] focuses on slum dwellers. I am a member of the committee. We collectively decide about the programme … through this we were able to build toilets for women in the slums, install two tubewells and also fix the kachcha roads [unpaved] … we used funds from the programme and raised money from the community.… We also save and … provide assistance to school-going children for continuing education … all of these works show the community that I am a part of their collective process … and I could not have done this all on my own. I told you about my finances and difficulties in the council. (Interviewee 6, 3 September 2012)

Conclusions: towards a more nuanced understanding of Bangladeshi women in politics At the beginning of this chapter we set out to explore what the various pathways or entry points into politics were for women in Bangladesh, and how they shaped their experience and the

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way they ‘do politics’. Undeniably, our sample is purposive and too small for any generalizations. Yet life histories and close ethnographic research do offer insights into the ways women councillors negotiate structures, as do the explanations the women themselves offer regarding their motivations and actions. These methods also provide a nuanced picture of what the women find valuable when it comes to capacity-building measures, and the unexpected benefits that result from these. For example, we see how the relationships and networks these women developed during training programmes were then used to address constituency needs. But what implications does this analysis have for researching women’s representation and roles in politics, both in Bangladesh and in other contexts? As stated in the introduction, these life histories challenge conventional notions of women in politics in Bangladesh. The women interviewed have had an unconventional political apprenticeship within their families and through their places of study and work, and although we cannot say all women councillors share this experience, much of the research on women in politics in Bangladesh neglects these potential entry points. Addressing this research gap would be a start, as it would shift the starting points of the training programmes and research from the assumption that ‘women have no formal political experience’ to a focus on women’s actual lived experience, and how this influences their understanding of politics. The life histories also reveal that natal families and in-laws are key resources, both for meeting financial need and for providing networks for addressing constituents’ demands. This insight contradicts the established development literature on women in politics in Bangladesh (Chowdhury 1994; Frankl 2004; Panday 2008) that identifies families as barriers to women’s participation in politics. Our findings indicate that families are sites of both cooperation and conflict when it comes to women’s participation in politics.7 The findings also indicate that there is a complex set of reasons behind the family’s support including material gain, increased prestige, and the desire to help the women succeed.

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In addition, given the dynastic and patronage-based politics and the informal-centralized party structures, having family support – particularly if the family has social and political capital – has been crucial for women who have run in and won elections. This points to the need for a more nuanced analysis of who benefits – and which women – from various reform-oriented measures, including gender quotas, both in Bangladesh and in other contexts.8 Another issue that emerges in the context of Bangladesh, but has relevance in other contexts, is that informal networks matter. The women adapt and learn to use these relationships in dealing with state services and political parties in order to advance their constituents’ interests. This has various implications. First, women’s ‘political effectiveness’ may be tenuous, as it would be adversely affected should the sympathetic individual willing to support them leave office. Second, a more nuanced analysis of the strategies used by women councillors to exploit these networks and negotiate a patronage-based political system is needed if programmes are to be developed to build their capacity. Third, not all women councillors who are elected will be ‘political cleaners’ (Goetz 2007); some may choose to be as corrupt and gender-biased as men. Last, women’s ability to promote women’s rights may be adversely constrained if promotion of these rights goes against the interests of the party’s central leadership.9 Besides the above issues, our life histories also indicate the need to rethink current research and policy focus to get women to ‘act for’ women’s interests in both Bangladesh and other contexts. Whether women representatives promote women’s interests is mediated by a complex set of factors and the evidence on this issue remains debatable (Childs and Krook 2009). Most of the emphasis in recent literature has been on creating a critical mass and reaching a tipping point (ibid.). In South Asia, studies on women representatives in local government reveal contradictory evidence. Women representatives in the panchayats (local government) in India have worked hard to address women’s practical concerns around employment, health

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and water collection (Chattopadhay and Duflo 2004; Beaman et al. 2008). However, studies also show some urban women councillors resist being labelled as ‘women’s representatives’ and at times do not promote women’s concerns for fear of losing electoral votes (John 2007). In the Bangladesh context, there is a gap in conducting systematic analysis (similar to these studies) on whether having a critical mass of women representatives promotes women’s interests. What may advance the analysis on ‘substantive representatives’ (Phillips 1991), and what insights from the life histories point towards, is to explore the process of when and how a representative (male or female) becomes a substantive representative, and is willing to act for women. Finally, neither the development literature nor the political science literature have explored the gender impact of decentraliza­ tion extensively (MacPherson 2008). The focus of policy makers, donors and states, when it comes to gender and local governance, has been on creating participatory spaces, increasing the number of women in local government, supporting gender quotas, and increasing the individual capacity of women representatives through training in areas such as public speaking or budgeting (Tadros 2011). However, as the discussion above shows, despite the structural and individual constraints, the interviewees did not lack in ‘grit, guts and gumption’ or ‘public speaking and negotiation skills’ (Interviewee 5, 2 September 2012); and they have been through various trainings. In Bangladesh and other contexts, where local government is a weak institution with central government having control over its functions and budgets, increasing women’s visibility, numbers or individual capacity at the local level, while having a ‘demonstration effect’ (Mansbridge 1999), will limit gains in transforming party politics or policy. Blanket, one-size-fits-all prescriptions for training, quotas, and participatory mechanisms will not empower women. What is required is a clear gendered analysis of the ‘political settlement/ pact’ around decentralization,10 and devising strategies to change the pact in women’s favour (Nazneen and Mahmud 2012).

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Acknowledgements We are grateful to the UNDP’s UPPR programme, Bangladesh country office, which facilitated our access to the interviewees in Narayanganj. We are also grateful to our interviewees in all three cities for opening up to us and answering our various queries with frankness, humour and patience, and for giving us time for repeat interviews and phone calls even during the Eid holidays and weekends.

Notes 1 Most of the interviews took place at home during the afternoon or evening. However, our interviewers had the chance to follow the councillors around and were present as observers in their offices during their interactions with various constituents. Previously, they also had the opportunity to observe most of the interviewees in action during UNDP project planning meetings and various training seminars organized by BRAC. 2 About 88 per cent of the population are Muslims (BBS 2008). 3 Ten women were directly elected and eight women won uncontested in the national parliamentary elections held in January 2014. The major opposition parties did not participate in this election, which raises questions about the representative nature of this Parliament. 4 In the 2008 national parliamentary elections, 54 women contested in 55 general seats out of the 345 general seats available (Bangladesh Election Commission, no date). In the 2003 UP elections, in which 4,443 UPs were contested, only 167 women competed in general seats (Khan and Ara 2006). 5 See Frankl (2004) for an analysis of trainings provided to the women representatives at the UP level; also see ADB (2004) and Nazneen and Tasneem (2009). 6 Selina Hayat Ivy is unique as a female mayor, who contested indepen­ dently after the AL refused to nominate her as a candidate, and won. She has a strong position against crime, drugs, and corruption and a clear agenda on development. She is universally popular among the women councillors in Narayanganj, regardless of their political affiliation, and widely seen as a role model. 7 Khan and Mohsin (2008) had similar findings. 8 See John (2007) for Mumbai in Maharastra state in India, and Goetz and Hassim (2003) for the Ugandan case. 9 See Goetz and Hassim (2003) and Tripp (2004) for the Ugandan case. 10 Political settlements refer to a balance of power between contending

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social groups and classes upon which the state is based (Di John and Putzel 2009). Political settlement includes intra-elite bargaining, contention between elite and non-elite groups, inter-group contention (gender, caste, race, religious, ethnic, et cetera).

References ADB (Asian Development Bank) (2004) Legal and Institutional Reform Essential for Inclusive Development, ADB, Manila. Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) (2008) Statistical Pocketbook 2008, BBS, Dhaka. Bangladesh Election Commission (no date) www.ecs.gov.bd (accessed 9 August 2012). Beaman, L., R. Chattopadhyay, E. Duflo, R. Pande and P. Topalova (2008) ‘Powerful Women: Does Exposure Reduce Bias?’, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Working Paper Series 14198, London and Cambridge, MA. Chattopadhay, R. and E. Duflo (2004) ‘Women as Policymakers: Evidence from Randomized Policy Experiment in India’, Econometrica, Vol. 72, No. 5, pp. 1409–43. Childs, S. and M. L. Krook (2009) ‘Analysing Women’s Substantive Repre­sentation: From Critical Mass to Critical Actors’, Government and Opposition, Vol. 44, No. 2, pp. 125–45. Chowdhury, N. (1994) ‘Bangladesh: Gender Issues and Politics in a Patriarchy’, in B. Nelson and N. Chowdhury (eds), Women in Politics Worldwide, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. Di John, J. and J. Putzel (2009) ‘Political Settlements Issues Paper’, June, Governance and Social Development Resource Centre (GSDRC), International Development Department, University of Birmingham, http://www.gsdrc.org/docs/open/EIRS7.pdf. Frankl, E. (2004) ‘Quotas and Empowerment: The Use of Reserved Seats in Union Parishad as an Instrument for Women’s Political Empowerment in Bangladesh’, Working Paper Series No. 4, Department of Political Science, University of Stockholm, www.statsvet.su.se/quotas (accessed 2 May 2010). Goetz, A. M. (2001) Women Development Workers, University Press Ltd, Dhaka. —— (2007) ‘Political Cleaners: Women as the New Anti-Corruption Force’, Development and Change, Vol. 38, No. 1, pp. 87–105. Goetz, A. M. and S. Hassim (2003) No Short Cuts to Power: African Women in Politics and Policy Making, Zed Books, London and New York, NY. Jahan, R. (1995) ‘Men in Purdah and Women in Public: Rokeya’s Dreams

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and Women’s Struggles in Bangladesh’, in A. Basu (ed.), The Challenges of Local Feminisms: Women’s Movement in Global Perspective, Westview Press, Boulder, CO. John, M. E. (2007) ‘Women in Power: Gender, Caste and Politics in Local Govern­ance’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 42, No. 39, pp. 3986–99. Kabeer, N. (1988) ‘Subordination and Struggle’, New Left Review, No. 168, March–April, http://newleftreview.org/I/168/naila-kabeer-sub ordination-and-struggle-women-in-bangladesh. Khan, M. R. and F. Ara (2006) ‘Women, Participation and Empowerment in Local Government: The Bangladesh Union Parishad Perspective’, Asian Affairs, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 73–92. Khan, Z. R. and A. Mohsin (2008) ‘Women’s Empowerment through Local Governance: Emerging Issues and Debates’, paper presented at Pathways of Women’s Empowerment Research Programme Consor­ tium Mid-Term Review Conference, Cairo, 20–24 January. MacPherson, E. (2008) ‘Invisible Agents: Women in Service Delivery Reform’, IDS Bulletin, Vol. 38, No. 6, pp. 38–46. Mansbridge, J. (1999) ‘Should Blacks Represent Blacks and Women Represent Women? A Contingent “Yes”’, The Journal of Politics, Vol. 61, No. 3, pp. 628–57. Nazneen, S. (2009) ‘Bangladesh: Political Party Discourses on Women’s Empower­ment’, South Asian Journal, No. 24, pp. 44–52. Nazneen, S. and S. Mahmud (2012) ‘Gendered Politics of Securing Inclusive Development’, Effective States and Inclusive Development Research Centre (ESID) Working Paper No. 13, University of Manchester. Nazneen S. and S. Tasneem (2009), ‘Legitimacy Enhances Capacity’, Capa­ city, Issue 36, April, www.capacity.org/en/journal/practice_reports/ legitimacy_enhances_capacity. Nazneen, S., N. Hossain and M. Sultan (2011) ‘National Discourses on Women’s Empowerment in Bangladesh: Continuities and Changes’, IDS Working Paper No. 368, Institute of Development Studies, Brighton. Panday, P. K. (2008) ‘Representation without Participation: Quotas for Women in Bangladesh’, International Political Science Review, Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 489–512. Phillips, A. (1991) Engendering Democracy, Polity Press, Cambridge. Tadros, M. (2011) ‘Women Engaging Politically: Beyond Magic Bullets and Motorways’, Pathways Policy Paper, October, Pathways of Women’s Empowerment Research Programme Consortium, Brighton. Tripp, A. M. (2004) ‘Women’s Movement, Customary Law and Land Rights in Africa: The Case of Uganda’, African Studies Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 1–19.

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3 Ejecting Women from Formal Politics in the ‘Old-New’ Egypt (2011–12) Mariz Tadros

This chapter is a tale of how women’s political activism during the revolution of 25 January 2011 was followed in the space of twelve months by a major setback – when the country’s first elections after the demise of President Mubarak’s regime recorded one of the lowest proportionate rates of political representation by women. Two key questions inform this chapter. Has the change of regime leadership influenced the kind of women who engage in electoral politics through competing for seats in parliamentary legislatures? And, second, did the change in political leadership of the country lead to a change in women’s pathways into (and out of ) formal politics? While political engagement should by no means be restricted to the formal political sphere, this chapter’s focus is on women’s bid for political leadership in Parliament because it is one area which has been visibly affected by the revolution. The country witnessed two critical elections before and after the outbreak of the Egyptian revolution. The December 2010 parliamentary elections are believed to be one of the precursors to the Egyptian 25th January revolution because the level of corruption and rigging characterizing it played an instrumental role in mobilizing the oppositional forces to put aside their differences and unite under the umbrella of a counter-coalition against the ruling regime (Tadros 2012). The 2011–12 parliamentary elections have been lauded as the first relatively democratic parliamentary elections the country 101

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has witnessed in over 60 years of its modern history. The implementation of a quota policy in the 2010 elections led to the appointment of the highest-ever percentage of women in Parliament (13 per cent), yet it lacked legitimacy in the eyes of the people and was declared null and void a few months later after the ousting of President Mubarak. The Egyptian revolt represents one of the pinnacles of women’s political activism yet, ironically, the first post-Mubarak election produced a Parliament in which 2 per cent of the members were women – one of the lowest percentages ever for Egypt, and one that also plumbed the depths by contemporary global standards. Then it, too, was declared unconstitutional and became null and void six months after it was held. There were high expectations that women’s revolutionary activism would translate into political recognition when Egypt voted for the first time after the ousting of President Mubarak. Not only would the political environment be more democratic, but the recognition of women’s contribution to the overthrow of the regime would translate into a more enabling pathway towards their political empowerment. It is against this backdrop that we ask whether the post-Mubarak political setting opened up political representation to a cohort of women distinct from those associated with the former regime’s elite. In posing this question, we explore the pathways through which women engage politically. The first part of the chapter introduces the assumptions that informed women’s political activism and describes the method­ ology pursued in this study. The second sets out the contextual dynamics influencing the political scene at the time of the elections; while an examination of the specific electoral policies pursued and their implications for gender politics forms the third part. The fourth part explores the prospects and constraints of winning for different women; the fifth examines whether the new power configurations altered constituency-building strategies of engaging; and the final part examines the election outcomes and interprets the results from the perspective of women of different political orientations.

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Background The moment of the rupture with Mubarak’s status quo was one of high hopes that the dignity of Egyptians would be restored and all citizens – men, women and children – would take part in the building of a more egalitarian political order. Since women had played such a pivotal role in the revolution, these hopes included a place for them in the new political order. Women were involved both in instigating the uprising and in keeping its momentum going until it achieved its goal of ousting Mubarak. They physically resisted the security forces and thugs, strategized through backstage meetings, brought food and drink for the protesters, treated the injured in makeshift hospitals, and pressed the citizenry into maintaining the revolt. During those 18 days of revolt, many conventional gender norms of appropriate behaviour for women and men were defied. In the densely packed crowds that gathered in public squares, women’s bodies would be closely compressed against men’s and yet sexual harassment was not reported. Women spent the nights in makeshift tents set up in Tahrir Square, without any moral condemnation from their families (though Mubarak’s media certainly had a go at attacking their moral integrity). Women gave themselves to political activism in numbers unparalleled since the 1919 Egyptian revolution against the British colonial occupation. During those 18 days, there were some voices of opposition from within Tahrir Square, asking the women to go back home, yet these were overborne by the more general public recognition of the women’s positive political agency, and the local and international media’s celebration of their role. In short, in February 2011, there was much hope that the ousting of President Mubarak would herald the dawn of a new era for Egypt and for its citizens, including women. The extent to which this moral recognition would translate into a political will to integrate women within positions of political leadership was another matter. The chapter engages with a number of contestations in relation to gender politics in transition contexts.

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The findings presented here are commensurate with earlier scholarly work cautioning that the uprooting of an authoritarian leader does not necessarily bring about a political order committed to the pursuit of gender-sensitive or politically inclusive politics. Brunnbauer’s analysis of south-eastern European countries (Moldova and Hungary excepted) that have gone through transi­­ tions argues that discrimination against women in fact increased after the dismantling of communist regimes, partly as a consequence of the institutional set-up that the new orders inherited and partly as a consequence of economic restructuring (Brunnbauer 2000: 151). Waylen argues that even in Latin America, where women’s participation in the transition processes was more prominent than in south-eastern Europe, that still did not signify any guarantee of a positive outcome (Waylen 1994: 353). There were concerns for other contexts as well. Viterna and Fallon’s review of the literature suggests that ‘in the developing world, democratization brought a reassertion of traditional gender expectations (Jaquette1994; Rai 1996) [and] waning women’s mobilizations (Craske 1998) …’ (Viterna and Fallon 2008: 669). The literature also suggests that in many contexts there were declines in women’s parliamentary representation and formal political power (Bystydzienski and Sekhon 1999; Fisher 1993; Jaquette and Wolchik 1998; Waylen 1994 – all cited in Viterna and Fallon 2008: 671). The case of Egypt in 2011, presented here, sheds light on how such a decline in formal political representation can happen so rapidly in a transition context. The Egyptian case study also shows that instituting quotas by requiring women’s representation within party proportional lists is not necessarily a better pathway for women’s ascendancy to power than reserved seats. However, one of the well-supported critical reactions of feminists to the reserved seat quota instituted by the former Mubarak regime was the counter-proposal that a quota through party proportional lists works better for women’s representation. Yet the dramatic drop in women winning seats witnessed in the 2011–12 Parliament supports Dahlerup’s caution that the party proportional list can potentially lead to

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zero representation if there are no specific conditions regarding rank order (that is, where women are placed on the list) and if the sanctions for non-compliance are lame (Dahlerup 2005). In effect, what was applied in the Egyptian elections of 2011–12 was what Ballington (2010) terms an ‘indicative quota’ – one where women are required to feature on the lists as a target, but no enforcement mechanisms are set. What is needed is a ‘a compulsory quota’ which, as Ballington notes, not only sets a target, but also stipulates how it will be implemented, usually through a placement mandate or double quota. The law or regulations introduce measures so that women are placed in ‘winnable’ positions on party lists, i.e. every second or third place on the list, and the party electoral lists are rejected by the electoral authorities until they comply with the law. In Costa Rica, for example, strict enforcement measures oblige political parties to have at least 30 per cent women in winnable positions on candidate lists, failing which they will be unable to register the lists for the election. In Argentina, Mexico and Peru the original quota laws had to be amended because they were indicative and did not ensure compliance. Today, there are enforcement mechanisms in place. (Ballington 2010: 14)

The data presented in this chapter are based on a tracking of the political developments unfolding in Egypt in the period 2009– 12. Primary data were collected through interviews and political ethnography, and secondary data from a press review, scrutiny of legislation, and relevant document analysis. During the 2011–12 elections 40 interviews were conducted with women who had campaigned for a parliamentary seat. Purposive sampling was used to ensure those selected represented a diversity of Egyptian women running for office. The 40 women interviewed included candidates for: • the Islamists: the Freedom and Justice Party (Muslim Brother­ hood) and the Al-Nour Party (Salafi) • the left-of-centre parties: the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, the Nasserite Party

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• the leftist parties: the Socialist Coalition Party, the Tagammu Party • the right: the Wafd Party, the Conservative Party, the Equality and Development Party. The sample also actively sought the following variations: women running on the party proportional lists and running as independents; women who belong to the Muslim majority and Christian minority; women from different geographical areas (urban/rural, Upper Egypt, Delta and Cairo) and across governorates: 21 were based in Cairo, 5 in Alexandria, 9 in Upper Egypt, and 5 in the Delta. From the sample, three candidates had won (two from the Freedom and Justice Party and one from the Social Democratic Party) and 37 had lost. Ten were aged between 20 and 35, 19 were between 36 and 50, and 11 were over 51. Since the 40 women interviewed were not selected on the basis of a random sample,1 no generalization for all the women who nominated themselves for office can be made. On the other hand, a conscious effort was made to be representative of the diversity inherent in the kind of women who put themselves forward. Moreover, although the sample may not be large, its size allowed for in-depth interviewing and analysis of individual nominees and hence the capture of a more nuanced understanding of their political trajectories.

Political context: exit Mubarak’s authoritarianism, enter Mursi’s Islamic dictatorship For a long time Egypt had been sitting on a volcano. Everyone expected it to erupt, but no one could quite predict when or how. A constellation of factors contributed to a highly unstable political context at the end of Mubarak’s reign. Increasing economic deprivation, high levels of corruption, the political ascendancy of Mubarak junior and his grooming for the inheritance of

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the presidency, and rising political repression and brutality all created a highly unstable situation. A number of more immediate precursors served to catalyse the mobilization of various political forces and the citizenry against the regime. These included the bombing of the Two Saints Church in Alexandria on New Year’s Eve, which propelled many to go out on to the streets and resist earlier barriers to defying political authority;2 and the brutal murder of Khalid Said at the hands of security forces followed by its widespread diffusion through the ‘We are all Khalid Said’ Facebook page, which generated an internet following of over two million people. The Tunisian revolution, of course, created a precedent which challenged Egyptian political activists to ask ‘If it is possible in Tunisia, why not in Egypt?’ By the time people joined the uprising in large numbers on 28 January, demands from the vanguard of revolutionary youth had changed from political reform to the removal of the President. What decisively determined the fate of the revolution was the army’s switch of allegiance from the ruler to the people. When Mubarak’s ‘departure’ was announced on 11 February 2011, it was also declared that the army represented in the Supreme Council for Armed Forces (SCAF) would take charge of the country. At first, the revolutionary forces welcomed SCAF’s takeover – after all, had it not been for the positive intervention of the army, the revolt could have turned into a civil war. However, shortly after the removal of Mubarak, the first indicators of SCAF’s alignment with the Muslim Brotherhood began to appear in the form of a political settlement – an agreement reflecting that ‘the best interests of both parties are served in a particular way of organizing political power’.3 The kind of political settlement between the two parties can best be described as an informal pact. An informal pact is an ‘uneasy arrangements between elites that find accommodation through the brokering of interests. These may stagnate, often as a result of prolonged crisis’ (DfID 2010). The informal pact established between SCAF and the Muslim Brotherhood did eventually stagnate, though it seems that each side kept its part of the informal deal. On the one hand, SCAF

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facilitated the political ascendancy of the Muslim Brotherhood to power and repressed the revolutionary opposition. On the other, the Muslim Brotherhood controlled the streets so as to inhibit any opposition to the army and, eventually, secure the army’s safe exit from power so that the army would not be held accountable for any rights infractions under its term. However, the rules of the game set afoot by this informal pact involved highly exclusionary political practices that led to the deliberate suppression of non-state actors such as women, youth coalitions, the non-Islamist political parties and religious minorities. In effect what emerged as a consequence of the informal political settlement between the Muslim Brotherhood and SCAF was a form of political order that seemed on the surface democratic because it was majoritarian, but which in essence lacked the basic tenets of an inclusive system of governance. Through parliamentary and presidential elections – two central tenets of liberal democracy – the Muslim Brotherhood won majority votes, claiming thus to be the legitimate voice of the masses. The Brotherhood was able to win the largest number of seats in Parliament (42.7 per cent), although its popularity fell dramatically in the presidential elections when its candidate Mohamed Morsi was able to win the election by a margin of only 1 per cent over his opponent, Ahmed Shafik. Prior to winning the parliamentary and presidential elections the Brotherhood had assured the other political forces – including a wide array of political parties and youth coalitions and movements – that, in the event of its victory, it would be committed to adopting an inclusive policy of seeking the representation of various sections of the Egyptian polity. In both instances, the Brotherhood adopted an exclusionary policy, claiming that it was empowered to govern through the masses. In the Parliament of January 2011–12 (later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Constitutional Court), Brotherhood MPs assumed leadership of the majority of committees. And after being declared President, Morsi gave most of the ministerial and governor posts to Muslim Brotherhood members. A similar dynamic characterized the

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constitutional writing committee, which experienced a stalemate over several months. The Brotherhood, in alliance with the radical Islamist Salafis,4 enjoyed a majority in the 100-member committee and marginalized the representation of women to only 6 members, half of whom were affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood. The foundations of a highly exclusionary political order were instated, dubbed democratic because it emanated from liberal procedures such as elections but in effect tyrannical. While the formal system of governance was being dominated by the Brothers, the informal dynamics of negotiating the new status quo in society were becoming equally exclusionary, or perhaps more so. On 8 March 2011, a women’s march in Tahrir Square to demand the recognition of women’s rights within the building of a new Egypt was met with verbal and physical abuse from unknown individuals. The military also waged an assault on the women in the protest, arresting them and subjugating an unknown number to sexual abuse. Neither the Muslim Brotherhood nor the Salafis ever criticized SCAF for such violations. Islamists made gains in the formal sphere via recognition of their parties, and their representation on various political committees. This emboldened them to enforce their own code of socially appropriate behaviour. Women have been verbally (and in some instances physically and sexually) assaulted for how they are dressed or how they conduct themselves in public, though in many instances women themselves have resisted the Islamists or members of the community have stood up to them. The Muslim Brotherhood was able to monopolize political power after Morsi became President and, in the process, highly repressive strategies were pursued. After the military were removed from governance, the Brotherhood enjoyed full executive and legislative power through the President and made moves to encroach upon the judiciary. Press freedom came under severe attack, with voices critical of the Muslim Brotherhood muted. Editors-in-chief on the major newspapers (Al-Ahram, Al-Gomhorriya, Al-Akhbar) were replaced by new men – all with strong Muslim Brotherhood sympathies. TV personalities

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working for independent satellite media who were vocal in their critiques of the President and his cabinet were threatened with violence. The press campaign to hold Morsi accountable after one hundred days in office was quietly abandoned. Arts and culture also came under attack. Protesters who took to the streets to defend civil liberties and speak out against the ‘Brotherhoodization of Egypt’ were vilified, using tactics very similar to those pursued by President Mubarak against the opposition only two years earlier. In effect, all the shackles of authoritarian rule were being reproduced – the only difference was that now they were all enforced by a political elite who ruled in the name of God. In what is a deeply religious and economically impoverished society, where illiteracy rates are high (estimated at 37 per cent of women), religion was instrumentalized to prop up the regime in more ways than one. While Mubarak also sought to prop up the legitimacy of his regime through recourse to religious rhetoric and institutional support, the Brotherhood’s instrumental use of religion assumed new dimensions. When protesters announced a general demonstration, prominent sheikhs issued religious fatwas (religious opinions of authority) decrying them and signalling that violence against their impiety was legitimate. On Friday mornings, many of the pulpits of Egypt’s mosques repeatedly became platforms for bolstering support for a pious Muslim ruler and the denigration of the opposition as unbelievers. It is in this context of a deeply polarized society that women’s political trajectory after the downfall of Mubarak must be understood.

Egypt’s first post-Mubarak elections: the old and new interfaces with gender politics If at the time of the 2010 elections Egypt was on the brink of a volcanic eruption due to the extent of authoritarian repression exercised by the Mubarak regime, the context of the 2011 elections was equally unsettling. Youth revolutionary forces and several political parties had announced a boycott of the planned

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parliamentary elections in protest against the lack of a democratic environment and the burden of ongoing military rule. Even a couple of weeks before campaigning was due to begin, no one knew whether the elections were going to take place or not. A number of youth coalitions had called for the elections to be called off and had occupied Tahrir Square, seeking to avenge the blood of co-revolutionaries who had been killed in a confrontation with Ministry of Interior security forces in the infamous Mustapha Mahmoud incident of November 2011. In addition to the highly turbulent political environment that autumn, the security situation was lax. The police force was removed from the streets of Egypt, and acts of violence and assault were becoming very common; everyone was expecting more to come. The timing of the elections was controversial for another reason. In February 2011 SCAF had created a committee to amend some aspects of the constitution and set up a roadmap for Egypt’s transitional phase. The main dispute was whether a set of constitutional principles should precede the parliamentary elections, or whether the newly elected parliament should be delegated with full responsibility for drawing up the constitution. The plethora of non-Islamist political actors lobbied for a set of constitutional principles to be issued first, to safeguard the diversity and plurality of Egypt’s political, religious and cultural elements. The Brotherhood pushed for a constitution that would be written by elected MPs. The constitutional referendum under SCAF’s guidance reflected the Brotherhood preference. Both SCAF and the Muslim Brotherhood urged the Egyptian population to vote yes in the constitutional referendums, and the vote was in their favour. It is noteworthy that the committee appointed to draw up the first amendments to the constitution in March 2011 did not include a single woman, despite the fact that the deputy head of the Supreme Constitutional Court was a woman of high legal repute, Tahany el Gebaly. The constitutional amendments approved by the referendum had removed the women’s quota from the electoral law. Previously, in 2009, the former First

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Lady Suzanne Mubarak had instated a quota that allocated 64 additional seats to the 454-seat Parliament; for these only women candidates would compete. The Quota Law itself was full of major weaknesses and loopholes and, most important, it was tailored to accrue additional seats for the ruling National Democratic Party (Tadros 2010). However, during consultations with political parties and coalitions regarding the new electoral law for the first post-Mubarak elections, political forces effectively threw the baby out with the bathwater. Despite the strong disagreements on the content of the electoral law, they could nevertheless agree on one thing: scrap the Quota Law. Instead, political parties were required to put women on their proportional list, but nothing was said of their positioning on the list, nor were penalties incurred for non-compliance; as discussed in the previous section, it was merely an ‘indicative quota’. The elections were undertaken over three rounds according to geographical location between October 2011 and January 2012. The main contenders, despite the ideological differences between various parties, were two principal coalitions: the Islamists versus the non-Islamists. The Islamic bloc, called the ‘democratic coalition’, was composed of twelve political parties including the Freedom and Justice Party, El Karama (Arab Nasserite), Ghad el Thawra (liberal/right of centre), and a number of smaller political parties. The ‘Kotla’ coalition, representing the non-Islamist bloc, was comprised of three parties: the Free Egyptians, the Egyptian Social Democratic Party and the leftist Tagammu Party. The Salafi party, Al-Nour, had pulled out of the democratic coalition due to its disapproval of the list of nominees. Moreover, the socialist parties formed their own coalition, called Al Thawra Moustamera (The Revolution Continues). From protest squares to ballot boxes Despite the political turbulence in Tahrir Square, there was a great deal of hype, locally and internationally, that this would mark the first free and democratic elections in Egypt’s past sixty-year history. The country experienced an unprecedented interest in

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politics, with respect to the number of both voters and nominees. There were 10,251 candidates in the 2011–12 elections – twice the number of candidates in the 2005 and 2010 elections (5,177 and 5,411 respectively) (Rabi’e 2012a: 358). A mixed system was applied, combining party proportional lists and independents. One-third of the candidates were supposed to be running as independents for the individual seats, and two-thirds on the party proportional list. In practice, however, many parties fielded candidates for the independent seats. This created a legal conundrum, since the law clearly prohibits party affiliates from running for independent seats. As a consequence of the pressure from political parties, the law was changed to allow them to field candidates for the independent seats as well. In effect, this crowded out independent candidates who did not belong either to a coalition or to any particular political party. Between half and two-thirds of the candidates vying for the independent seats were fielded by political parties. Six months after Parliament was inaugurated, the electoral law governing the parliamentary elections was ruled unconstitutional by a lower court because it breached the principle of equality when it allowed party members to contest one-third of the seats set aside for independents – and the Supreme Constitutional Court ruled for its dissolution (Hendawi and Deeb 2012). The competition for independent seats reached 36.5 candidates per seat, while it was lower on the party proportional list, at 12.62 candidates per seat. Ironically, however, although political parties had lobbied for a single system based on a party proportional list, the situation was very different afterwards as they struggled to fill up the names (especially those at the bottom) of the list. In some instances, people were invited to join even though they did not have a genuine political affiliation to the party on whose list they were placed (Rabi’e 2012a: 359). Profile of women nominees The same dynamic of increased political activity characterized women’s quest for political representation. While in the 2010

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parliamentary elections we saw 449 women putting themselves forward for nomination, during the 2011–12 elections the number almost doubled to reach 984 (Rabi’e 2012b). Of these, 633 were nominated on the party proportional lists and 351 as independents (Abou el Komsan 2012: 7) This is a significant leap that was possibly driven by the belief that a democratic political environment would be more favourable to women’s representation, that individual women could draw on their revolutionary role to elicit support, and that the party proportional list system would encourage political parties to boost their profiles by endorsing promising women leaders. However, political parties, who enjoyed enormous powers as a consequence of their monopolization of both party proportional lists and independent seats, all pursued highly discriminatory practices vis-à-vis women’s selection as representatives. Although Al Thawra Moustamera had announced that it would voluntarily allocate 50 per cent of its seats to young people and women, they did not exceed 16 per cent. Women represented 15.8 per cent of the nominees for Al Kotla, and 13.7 per cent for El Wafd, 13.6 per cent for the Freedom and Justice Party and 13.2 per cent for the Al-Nour Party (Abou el Komsan 2012: 8). The detrimental impact of the political parties’ discriminatory behaviour can only be fully appreciated if one takes into account the blocking of women’s only other alternative: to run as independents. In view of the fact that political parties fielded candidates as independents, women could not escape from their stranglehold. Hence the profile of women who nominated themselves in the 2011–12 elections may indeed have been different in some ways in terms of a few more young women putting themselves forward and the disappearance of some female public figures associated with the old regime (such as Amal Osman). Yet there are signs that the Muslim Brotherhood women are increasingly assuming a political monopoly in the formal sphere that is very reminiscent of the former ruling party’s concentration of representational female power in the hands of a few elite women.

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Moreover, the profile of the women who nominated themselves in 2011–12 is much the same as that of women who engaged in previous parliamentary elections in terms of high educational attainment, professional standing and association with political families. It is important to note that women from political families fielding themselves is a general phenomenon witnessed across all Egypt – in other words, there is a member in the family who has been politically active in some way at some point, and it is most often a man: fathers, husbands, brothers, uncles. In many such instances, these members serve as the women’s campaign managers. Sanaa El Saeed, who was on the party list of the Social Democratic Party and won in the Upper Egyptian governorate of Asiut, explained that her father was one of the founders of the Tagammu leftist party in Asiut and the Secretary General of Asiut governorate. He was a seasoned politician. Her husband, Helal Abd el Hameed, is also a renowned political figure and he was her campaign manager, a factor which she believes was critical for her success. Mona Mohamed Rab’i Mokhtar, 49 years old, ran on the party proportional list of Kotla and is married to Mohamed Mokhtar Gom’aa, Secretary General of the Tagammu Party in Aswan. She talks about the centrality of the political support he provided, and attributes her interest in politics to him. These men in the family have often served to provide emotional, technical, financial and political support for women who run for election – in ways that have not always been fully acknowledged in the literature on women’s pathways to political power.

Different women for different eras? This section will examine: (1) What happened to the women who ran on the NDP (National Democratic Party) ticket? (2) What about the women who were active in the revolution and who nominated themselves? (3) Who filled the political vacuum with the marginalization of the ‘NDP women’? (4) The emergence of a new corps of ‘ghost women’ on the political scene.

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Exit the ‘NDP ladies’ The demonization of any women who ran under the former ruling NDP was one of the markers of the 2011–12 elections. On the face of it, it seems only fair that those who were part of a party that monopolized and abused power should be excluded from the electoral process. However, it is also important to note that some of the rank and file of the NDP had been recruited by the party only after they had developed a strong grassroots community constituency. That is, the NDP had invited them to become members in order to capitalize on their social standing in the community (which often had been established through service provision and problem solving, developed over the course of many years of community work, with the implication that these people tended to be in their mid-40s and above). The revolution may have led to the dissolution of the NDP, but its grassroots members had not lost their reputation in their communities because their status had not emanated from their association with the party. In other words, it was they who created a constituency for the former ruling party, not the other way round. This made the power configurations on the ground more complex with respect to the 2011–12 elections. Let us take the example of Hanan Mohammed Abd el Mohsen, a 46-yearold who has an undergraduate degree in media studies and is from Old Cairo. Her entry into politics was through community service. Hanan’s entry into community service 20 years earlier was facilitated through her father, who had migrated from Asiut, Upper Egypt and set up Kasr Hedar, an organization to transfer remittances from Cairo to members of his village back in Upper Egypt. Hanan became involved in community service while at secondary school. In 2001, she established her own NGO, El Fostat al Gedeeda, which worked with working children, street children and children with special needs. She was one of the very few women interviewed who had a particular issue that she championed associated with women’s rights – that of the marriage of under-age girls to Arab visitors. Her constituency, one might argue, was built on the shoulders of her father’s role in

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supporting community members and in helping them to acquire their rights. She built on that work and established a reputation for herself in the area. Hanan was in charge of the women’s committee of the former ruling NDP for her area for a while and then, disillusioned with the party, ran as an independent in 2005. In 2010, she was approached by the ruling party to run on the quota seat; she accepted, and was able to secure 64,000 votes – not an insignifi­ cant number by any means. From conversations with Hanan, it was clear that her running as an NDP candidate was not driven by any ideological or organizational commitment to the party, but by purely pragmatic considerations – namely, to be able to run for office without NDP harassment. Hanan ran on the party list of El Horreya Party (one of the newly formed parties) in the 2011–12 elections and regretted it miserably, since she was put in the second half of the list where her chances of winning were minimal. She realized she should have run as an independent on account of her longstanding reputation in the community, and believes her being tagged a foloul (remnant of the old regime) would not have weakened her support in the constituency she had already built. It is interesting to note that, out of the 40 women interviewed, 16 had nominated themselves for office during Mubarak’s era – mostly under the quota system. All of them, being from the opposition, had failed to acquire a seat in the 2011–12 elections – except for Sanaa el Saeed, who had won a seat in the 2005 elections as well. Enter the Muslim sisters The retreat of the upper-class ladies, handpicked by the First Lady and the ruling party, from a monopolization of key positions of political power (in and out of Parliament) created a political vacuum. The post-Mubarak order, however, spawned a new stratum of distinguished ladies who quickly filled the gap and assumed the same roles as their predecessors. These women may not have suffered from the class elitism of the previous regime’s

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women in power, but they formed an elite class of their own by virtue of belonging to the ruling Islamist political force, the Muslim Brotherhood. They represent a smaller corps of women than those associated with the previous regime. This new corps of Muslim Brotherhood women had won parliamentary seats on the Freedom and Justice Party’s proportional list and were later promoted to key positions as presidential aides, on the constituent assembly and on key committees. For example Dr Omaima Kamel was a parliamentary candidate, a member of the constituent committee delegated with the responsibility of drawing up the constitution, and a presidential aide to President Morsi. What is noteworthy about the Freedom and Justice women candidates (in particular all of those who became MPs) was that they were tied to the party not only politically but personally as well, since their husbands and fathers occupied key leading positions in the Muslim Brotherhood. For example, Dr Omaima Kamel’s husband and father were both leading members of the Muslim Brotherhood and her husband won a seat as an MP. In Omaima’s case, the Muslim Brotherhood fielded both husband and wife in the same electoral district, with the husband running for the independent seat and the wife running on the party proportional list. Exit the revolution’s female youth At the time of the elections, it was unclear whether the generational revolt that had partly characterized the revolution would alter the power configurations of electoral politics. A number of women stood as candidates for the first time, some of whom prided themselves on being women who had taken part in the revolution. They were keen to talk about their revolu­tionary credentials and how the experience had affected their own perceptions of themselves and their role in the ‘new’ Egypt. Unlike many other women who could boast of years spent in building a constituency, some could not lay claim to any outreach activities; their only engagement with people

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had been in protest situations. These interviewees, who were keen to distinguish themselves as candidates from the ladies (hawanim) of Mubarak’s era, premised their candidatures on a number of hopes and assumptions: that voters would believe in young people’s ability to bring about change; that they would ‘reward’ the youth for their role in liberating the country from a dictator by showing that they trusted them with positions of authority and power. They were disappointed. Votes were won by spending money (lots), having built a strong constituency, and conveying an image of authority and influence. It became clear that the revolution had not changed how elections are won, after all. It is worthwhile here to examine 25-year-old Samia Adel’s political pathway, which sheds light on some of these dynamics. Samia has a law degree, was running for office in Alexandria (El Raml, Montazah, Sidi Gaber district) and was the third-ranking candidate of Hizb al Tayar al Masry – a party, considered to be an offshoot from the Muslim Brotherhood, that had joined the Al Thawra Moustamera coalition. Samia has a history of having participated for several years prior to the ousting of President Mubarak in protests organized by the Muslim Brotherhood, the Enough Movement (Kefaya) and the 6th April Movement. On 25 January 2001 Samia said she joined 100 other people in El Raml Station in Alexandria (the city centre) in a protest and then joined the demonstrators in Port Said Square (close to the city centre). She presents her role in the revolution as that of printing material and keeping people’s spirits up. When asked whether she had a constituency base before nominating herself, she replied: ‘Of course not, people saw me as an ordinary protestor, I was not a known personality,’ adding that there was a clear bias in the media in its focus on the revolutionaries in Tahrir Square, while ignoring those living in the rest of the country. While it is true that the media’s focus was on Tahrir Square, it is doubtful that, had the media shed light on the revolutionaries of Alexandria, it would have made that much of a difference to her political chances. As she herself later points out, she did not have a constituency base, a situation which she contrasts to that of the

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Salafis who had 50,000–60,000 followers, built over the course of many years. Samia’s strategy was to seek to mobilize a youth constituency. She argued that as youth ‘We have been working for years, but people only began to give us attention when we instigated the revolution.’ She was hopeful that people would see the youth as those with a programme and a plan of action, and go beyond their perception of youth as simply demonstrators. This, unfortunately, did not happen in most cases. The youth revolutionaries were not able to build constituencies that would empower them in the ballot boxes. The politics of elections are very different from those of protest squares. The disconnect between the youth and the people was quite substantial. When Samia was asked why she would like to nominate herself again as MP, she replied ‘to fulfil the objectives of the incomplete revolution’. Enter the ‘ghost women’ The 2011 elections spawned the nomination of a group of women who had never been nominated before. They were put on party lists whilst professing that it is sinful for women to assume political representation in Parliament and while strongly advocating against women’s meddling in politics. This group of women were the women belonging to the Salafi movement, who were brought into the formal political sphere almost accidentally. The fact that the electoral law required all parties to put a woman on each list created a real dilemma for the Salafis, who had formed their own political party, Al-Nour, and had fielded candidates for the very first time. Before this, the Salafis’ position had been that democratic forms of accession to power, such as through elections, are antithetical to Islam. They may have shown flexibility on this one, but on the question of women there was greater tension. According to the Salafis, women should be hidden from the public gaze, their voices not heard, and they should certainly not under any circumstance assume leadership positions in the public sphere, especially if it involved assuming a leadership position over men. In order to accommodate the

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electoral law (although they ignored it in many instances and did not have any women for some of the electoral districts), the Salafis presented a number of ‘ghost’ women on the list. These women were relegated to the bottom of the electoral list. In campaign flyers showing the list of candidates for Al-Nour Party, their husbands’ names would be inscribed instead of theirs, and instead of their faces there would be a blank space or a rose. In some rare instances, their names would appear, but nothing else. Interviewing these women was very difficult, and the only way in the end was through a telephone interview. Mona Salah was on Al-Nour’s party list, ranked nine (out of ten) and running in the densely populated electoral district of Giza (combining suburbs and shanty towns such as Imbaba, Dokki, Agouza, Kit Kat, Mansheyet el Kanate, and El Wahat). Her placement at the bottom of the list made it almost impossible that she would win a seat. When asked what constrained her chances of winning, she answered, ‘Who said I lost? My party won therefore I won.’ She recognized that people have accused the party of having the women ‘at the tail’ of the list, and defended her party by arguing that they offered to put her in third place and she refused (the four top names on the party list, incidentally, made it to Parliament). Whether the party offered her a place at the top of the list or not is questionable, given its stance on women’s political leadership positions and their failure to field any woman in the top half of any of their lists. However, the reasons she mentioned for refusing to lead the list are interesting: Now, I have Eman and Ahmed whom should I vote for? God said the strong is the faithful. The woman is by her nature weak. I felt I could get weak but of course the man is stronger than the woman and because of this I refused to be placed as number 2 or 3 [on the party proportional list] because I would prefer to be at the tail of what is true than to be at the head of what is false.

Mona Salah’s testament is important in many ways. She and many other Salafi women are deeply engaged in society, providing emotional, spiritual and welfare assistance to thousands

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of families. The fact that she sees herself as weaker than men is indicative of her belief (or at least public espousal of ) the notion of gender identities and roles being driven by nature, where women are biologically weaker than men. It also shows a strong conviction in the gender hierarchy of the Salafi movement and its logic. This belief in women’s and men’s behaviour being shaped by their nature informs her own perception of herself. Mona spoke of Al-Nour’s favourable position on women’s employment in social services, in teaching and in health. Yet when she was asked whether the Al-Nour party approves of women becoming judges, she said that she could only speak for herself and not for the party: ‘If they make me a judge I will immediately declare the accused innocent if he cries because our nature [as women] is different from the nature of the men, who rule by their mind.’ This representation of her own weakness is at odds with the formidable role she pursues in public. She has a bachelor’s degree in social work, identifies herself as a journalist who writes for an Islamist publication, Al Mokhtar Al Islami, and is the director of an Islamist welfare NGO (Manaber al Nour al Khayriyya). She is also a preacher (a da’eya, someone who is involved in the da’wa, the proselytization of the Muslim faith).

A different pathway for each season? There was a marked variation in how women got into politics across the range of political orientations. Those with a leftist or left-leaning political ideology often spoke of university as the place through which they became active, through student movements. Others got involved through their professions (in particular those associated with public service such as teaching and medicine) and, for members of the Freedom and Justice Party and Al-Nour, it was through the Islamist movements to which they belonged. However, what became abundantly clear is that the main pathway for women building a constituency for winning an election continues to be predominantly that of service provision.

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Associational life and service provision The use of service provision as a pathway for constituency building represented a trend evident from the research undertaken during Mubarak’s term, and was very apparent in the 2011 elections (Tadros 2014). Many women cited service provision through NGOs as both the way through which they entered politics and a popular strategy in building a constituency. The factors relate to both context and agency, to demand and supply. From a contextual point of view, the level of poverty in Egypt is high and is likely to have been gradually increasing in the past five years, partly as a consequence of the food, fuel and finance crisis and partly as a consequence of the severe economic downturn that the country has experienced since the January Revolution (Tadros 2012). Faced with such a national predicament and a failing state, there is a demand for services and hand-outs. Service provision is one indirect, longer-term way of winning over potential voters. From an agency point of view, the Muslim Brotherhood have built up a strong constituency through service provision in the form of food and material hand-outs for vulnerable groups, the extension of low-fee health services and free religious education classes in the local mosques. One of the ways in which other candidates are seeking to win votes is to outdo the Muslim Brotherhood in certain geographical areas, using the same strategies. A further supply-side effect, as the economic situation becomes more dire, is that more petit-bourgeois, middle-class, and wealthy concerned citizens are directing their financial and in-kind resources to charities to distribute, and in some instances they are also donating their skills and time. They tend to direct these resources through the personal networks of people whom they know to be engaged directly in service provision. Hence women can draw on their personal repertoire of acquaintances, relatives, friends, neighbours and colleagues to generate the resources to run their own organizations – and this, in turn, paves the way for constituency building in the community. The advantage of this particular pathway of engaging politi­ cally is that it gives the potential candidate direct access to

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community members – their homes, their lives, and those surrounding them. It is also a culturally accepted role for women to be involved in service provision and charitable activities. And by tapping into forms of charity that fulfil a religious mandate (such as helping orphans), women are also able to conjure an image of compassion and piety that helps when their reputations are on the line in public places by virtue of their gender. Of the 40 women interviewed, the majority were involved in NGOs that provided direct charitable aid in finance and in-kind. A few exceptions included community awareness activities and citizen advice on how to access state welfare benefits. What is particularly noteworthy is that women tended to channel their community outreach through multiple associations, rather than a singular one. Mona Salah, the candidate for the Salafi Al-Nour Party, cited at least five different associations through which she engaged in helping the poor, ranging from associations that source direct medical intervention to those that provide hand-outs and lowcost services or those that bestow trousseaus enabling women to marry. Salah’s description of her involvement in these associations suggests that they are all nodes in a network managed by individuals joined by a common purpose (the Islamist project). Working through several organizations has several benefits: it expands outreach and provides a leader with several repertoires of social capital, enabling him/her to dip into several networks, and to use one network to support the activities of another. Interestingly, charitable and voluntary work is undertaken by women of different political orientations: not only those who belong to the Islamist movement, but also those who are leftleaning. Manar Abou el Hassan holds a degree in social work and joined the leftist Tagammu Party a year before the elections in which she ran for the Cairene electoral district (comprising El Basateen, Maadi, 15th May and Helwan). When asked how she got into politics, she cited her work via three NGOs, through which she has been engaged in charitable activities for the past fifteen years. Through these NGOs, Manar was engaged in orphan

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sponsorship, distribution of monthly hand-outs and medicine,5 and ‘rehabilitation of mothers and children through awareness raising training’. In the Nuba part of Egypt, Mona Mohamed Rab’i Mokhtar, 49, was another who traced her political engage­ ment through different associations (one professional, two local, one for heritage preservation), confirming that she built a constituency through her associational life. Even a candidate like Sanaa Saeed – whose constituency was built through the political connections of her family and her professional career (being an accountant in the agricultural bank that offers services to people) – was also involved in service provision through a local community development association. As a board member she was involved in several campaigns on issues such as female genital mutilation, informal (urfi) marriage and illiteracy. Yet building a constituency through service provision ultimately privileges wealthier women who can outdo those who have fewer resources and connections. Moreover, it also erodes the fundamental precepts of citizenship since it creates networks of patronage that encourage clientelist behaviour that is far removed from the claiming of entitlements. However, while this may be a valid critique, an alternative to service provision that has any significant success on the ground has yet to be found. To refuse to engage in service provision in a servicedeprived context such as Egypt is political suicide for women seeking office. This has been the secret success of the Muslim Brotherhood, including its Muslim Sisters. This is not to suggest that a track record in expansive service provision on its own was enough to secure women seats – it certainly helped, however, especially when coupled with the instrumental use of religion and plenty of capital.

Election results The 2011 elections produced a highly exclusionary Parliament in which women, youth and Christians were severely under­

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represented. In that sense it represented a replica of the previous Mubarak regime’s parliaments, in which socially marginalized groups were also excluded from power. The Islamist parties repre­sented a clear majority in Parliament, comprising 69.7 per cent of the total seats (Freedom and Justice Party, Al-Nour, Build­ ing (ben’a) and Development, Al Wassat, Al Assala). The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party won 42.7 per cent of the votes, Al-Nour 22.1 per cent, El Wafd 7.5 per cent, the Egyptian Social Democratic Party 3.4 per cent, the Free Egyptians 2.8 per cent, the Building (ben’a) and Development Party 2.4 per cent, El Wassat Party 2 per cent, the Reform and Development Party 1.8 per cent and the Socialist Populist coalition 1.4 per cent. Nine women won parliamentary seats (see Table 3.1). The majority were from the Islamist bloc: four were from the Freedom and Justice Party and one from the Reform and Development Party. The remaining seats were won by El Wafd (three) and the Egyptian Social Democratic Party (one). Two Coptic Christian women were appointed by the Supreme Council of Armed Forces and it was believed they were nominated by specific bishops in the Coptic Orthodox Church. How do women nominees account for the factors that undermined their own prospects of succeeding? The political affiliation of the women immensely affected the answers they gave. Non-Islamist candidates cited the three most inhibitive factors as being (1) the size of the electoral district; (2) the role of the Islamists; and (3) the economic resources needed to compete with other campaigns. The size of the electoral district represented a common complaint for Islamist and non-Islamist nominees alike, as, to a lesser extent, did the economic resources needed to compete. Islamist women, however, were less likely to complain about the role of non-Islamists in tarnishing their image than vice versa. Some women belonging to the Kotla and the Socialist coalition named the role of Islamist parties as the most detrimental factor undermining their campaign, citing the smear campaign against the Kotla as being comprised of unbelievers and Christians.

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Table 3.1 Egyptian Women in Parliament, 1979–2012 Year

Number of women elected

Number of women appointed by the President*

Total % in Parliament

4

2

1.6

1979 (23 June–20 March 1984)

33

2

9.7

1984–1987

35

1

7.8

1987–1990

14

4

3.9

1990–1995

7

3

2.2

1995–2000

9

4

2

2000–2005

7

4

2.4

2005–2010

4

5

2

65

1

13

9

2

2.2

1979 (11 Nov.– 21 April

2010 2011–12

*Appointments in 2011–12 were made by SCAF, as there was then no elected President. Source: Compiled from data presented in Al Sawi (2008: 87), Rabi’e (2012a) and Ezzabawy (2011).

Their narratives suggested that the Islamist assault was not on the gender of the candidates but was ideological, pitting the pious Muslims against the enemies of Islam; a few women, however, among them Manar Talaat Abou el Mahasen, spoke of how the Islamists’ discourse of ‘women’s place is at home’ was being used to undermine women candidates such as herself. Non-Islamist female contenders were more likely to report that the position of the female contender in the party proportional list was critical. Many women said that when they signed on to a party they were not aware of the implications (for their winning chances) of being positioned further down on the proportional list. Nadia Saad, 58, a diploma holder, was number six on the

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Tahalof al Ishteraki (socialist coalition) for El Beheira governorate in the Delta. She says that had she known how her position on the party list would affect her chances of winning, she would not have joined. She will nominate herself for elections next time, but she won’t join any party proportional list as this involves sacrificing her efforts to someone else’s success. Her sense of disappointment and resentment is widely shared in the wake of the 2011–12 elections, in particular since previously there were no party lists and people fought for individual seats. Hanan Mohamed argued that her 2010 and 2011–12 experiences of running for office were not substantially different. The concept of the dominance of a single party has not changed: in 2010, it was the dominance of the ruling NDP; in 2011– 12 it was the dominance of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hanan’s experience is that in both instances there was vote rigging. She said that she spotted a process involving the removal of empty voter forms and their replacement with ones marked in favour of the Freedom and Justice Party: ‘At the end of the day we have not moved forwards; society has even gone backwards: instead of glorifying the National Democratic Party all the time, we are now glorifying the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis.’

Conclusions Analysis of the nature and process of women’s candidature for parliamentary seats in the elections of 2011–12 challenges conventional political thinking on gender and politics in several ways. This chapter has reviewed the fortunes of women in politics amid Egypt’s years of turmoil in relation to three main themes: (1) the rupture in the political order; (2) pathways for women engaging politically; and (3) electoral policies. Political order: change and no change Authoritarianism cannot be exclusively blamed for women’s poor representation in Parliament, though it has been used by the opposition as an excuse. The failure to nominate women in the

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top half of the political party lists in the 2011–12 elections exposes the party leaders, who pay only lip service to a commitment to women’s political leadership. In 2010 Islamists and leftists alike emphasized that if only the shackles of Mubarak’s authoritarian rule were removed, women would enjoy a genuine opportunity to contribute to political leadership (Tadros 2010). This has proved to be a pragmatic deception – serving to cover up for the gender bias within their parties, or to postpone dealing with the issue altogether. This chapter has challenged claims that the ousting of President Mubarak paved the way for the gradual emergence of an inclusive democratic order. In the case of Egypt, we have witnessed the replacement of one authoritarian regime with another. Manar argued that during Mubarak’s reign no women other than those belonging to the ruling party had an opportunity to win, even with the introduction of the quota system. Others have argued that the old and new political regimes were equally inhibitive. Sanaa el Saeed, who won both under the Mubarak regime (2005 and 2010 parliamentary elections) and in the first post-Mubarak election (2011–12) compared the two experiences: ‘In the 2005 and 2010 [elections] they would leave you to do your publicity as you wished and the results were predetermined in favour of the National [ruling] Party, but in 2011–12 the religious parties influenced your publicity by tahreem and takfeer’ (criticizing her for promoting the violation of religious precepts and thus unbelief ). Another message emanating from the context of the first elections after Mubarak is that a woman (or man’s) ability to successfully appeal to and mobilize a crowd in the context of a revolution cannot be considered a measure of his/her ability to mobilize a constituency in electoral politics. Revolutionary and electoral politics are not two sides of the same coin; they are very different in their dynamics and processes. Whereas during the uprising people showed a willingness to follow leaders across class and gender, electoral politics continues to be guided by more elitist dynamics. Class, wealth and the profession of the

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candidate influence the voter’s choice. When Islamists are able to instrumentalize religion in support of their political ascendancy, those who historically have had the weakest political say in society tend to suffer most – be they women, religious minorities or the youth. In the 2011–12 elections, the same dynamics of exclusionary politics were in play as in previous elections. One political faction replaced another (the Islamists in lieu of the former ruling party) and the power of capital continued to nominate. Pathways of politics In broad outline the individual profiles of women who won the elections represented a microcosm of the macro-political picture: the majority of female seats previously held by women affiliated to the former ruling NDP were turned over to the women affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood, the new ruling party. A novel feature, however, was the new cohort of women who joined the electoral race: the Salafi women. It was unusual, at the time of Mubarak, for a woman to nominate herself while professing that women should not become MPs on account of their gender. Yet in 2011–12 the women who were put on AlNour’s party lists believed that they should not be in political office and, accordingly, had a ‘ghostly’ presence. Here their political pathway instrumentalized their social activism for the endorsement of the political party to which they belonged. The mobilization of a constituency was to win a seat not for themselves but for their political party. However, this does not necessarily suggest that women do not expect recognition within the Salafi movement for their efforts, or that the power they yield in the community is not used to bargain for certain privileges. Regrettably, it was not possible to explore these questions in view of the closed nature of these communities. It is important to note that some non-Salafi women also enter electoral processes while having no expectation of winning: the difference is that they, at least, had aspirations of winning political office, if not in 2011–12. For example, some non-Islamist women

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ventured into the elections as independent candidates – knowing they did not stand a chance of winning against some renowned public figures – because they believed this was an opportunity to make themselves known, learn from the experience, and gear themselves up for future elections. In one sense, venturing into the elections was one stepping stone along their political trajectory. Another important difference offered by the 2011 elections compared to previous ones was the high proportion of young women participating, in particular those who had also participated in the revolution. As mentioned above, they quickly realized that mobilizing against a common enemy is very different than mobilizing for political ascendancy to power. Irrespective of variations in candidate profiles, common features were that many women came from political families, were white-collar workers, and for the most part were highly educated. Elite status, whether based on class or wealth, continued to be a strong determinant of who runs. While pathways of doing politics varied, this study has shown the critical centrality of service provision and channels for supporting access to services. For left-leaning women, it was universities and unions that served as the incubators of learning politics. But for the majority of women, engaging in formal or informal forms of service provision were the channels through which they became politically engaged and built constituencies. Service provision involves more than a once-a-year intervention and requires long and sustained interaction and responsiveness to people’s varied needs. While service provision provides women with an opportunity to build bridges with people in the community, it can also serve to reproduce patron–client relationships sustained by people’s poverty and deprivation. Electoral policies The case of Egypt shows that it is not only the weighting of the quota that counts, but its detailed design. The failure to implement a compulsory quota (Ballington 2010) was not due to

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an absence of technical knowledge on how to make quotas work for gender-equitable party lists, but a deliberate political omission intended to deprive the quota of any influence. According to Abou el Komsan (2012), several women’s organizations had pressed the authorities to require the placement of women in the top half of the list, but this request was rejected. A political will existed to disregard failures by the Islamist parties to comply with electoral law. According to Abou el Komsan (ibid.: 10), Article 2 of Decree Number 21 (2001) issued by the Supreme Electoral Commission to regulate the Election Campaigns Law prohibits the use of campaigning activities that are discriminatory on the basis of considerations such as gender, creed and language. The Supreme Electoral Commission was completely silent on the outright failure of some Islamist parties to place women on lists, and did not penalize Al-Nour Party for replacing women’s faces with the party’s logo or a picture of a rose in their campaigning publicity. The same silence greeted the instrumentalization of religion by the Islamists to denigrate candidates of non-Islamist parties as unbelievers and enemies of Islam. While this was not the conclusive factor, it certainly privileged the Muslim Brotherhood women’s pathways to winning political office ahead of the other women contenders. The uprising led by the Egyptian citizens on 30 June 2013, followed by the ousting of President Morsi by General el Sissi, the Minister of Defence, will lead once again to a new configuration of power. In the new roadmap, Egypt is set to have parliamentary and presidential elections in 2014, and undoubtedly its electoral law will be amended. It remains to be seen whether affirmative action will be re-introduced, and if so, which women it will bring to power.

Notes 1 The full list of women’s names was not available. 2 While hundreds of protests had been instigated during the last ten years of Mubarak’s reign, the significance of the demonstrations that

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were sparked by the church bombing was that they were led by the Christian minority in Egypt, which conventionally has refrained from involvement in contentious politics on such a large scale (demons­ trations involved hundreds of citizens). 3 Based on DfID’s definition of a political settlement. 4 An Islamist movement comprised of several subgroups that advocate a revival of the teachings and way of life of the first companions and followers of the Prophet Muhammed and a return to the fundamentals of faith in governing politics and society. The movement is ultraconservative and quite rigid in its interpretation of religious precepts. 5 Manar used to collect left-over medicine and distribute it to the poor according to need.

References Abou el Komsan, N. (2012) The 2012 Parliament: What Did Women Lose and What Did Egypt Lose? (in Arabic), Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights, Cairo. Al Sawi, A. (2008) Political Empowerment for the Arab Woman: A Study of the Role of Parliament in Egypt, Jordan and Bahrain (in Arabic), UNIFEM, Jordan. Ballington, J. (2010) ‘Implementing Affirmative Action: Global Trends’, IDS Bulletin, Vol. 41, No. 5, pp. 11–16. Brunnbauer, U. (2000) ‘From Equality without Democracy to Democracy without Equality? Women and Transition in Southeast Europe’, SouthEast Europe Review, S. 3, pp. 151–68. Dahlerup, D. (2005) ‘Increasing Women’s Political Representation: New Trends in Gender Quotas’, in J. Ballington and A. Karam (eds), Women in Parliament: Beyond Numbers (revised edition), International IDEA, Stockholm. DfID (2010) ‘Building Peaceful States and Societies’, www.dfid.gov.uk/.../ Building-peaceful-states-and-societies (accessed 13 November 2012). Ezzabawy, Y. (2011) ‘Women’s Quota in the 2011 Elections’, in A. Rabi’e (ed.), Parliamentary Elections (in Arabic), Al Ahram Centre for Strategic and Political Studies, Cairo. Hendawi, A. and S. Deeb (2012) ‘Egypt’s Parliament Dissolved by Court, Electoral Law Ruled Unconstitutional’, http://www.huffingtonpost. com/2012/06/14/egypts-parliament-dissolv_n_1596609.html (accessed 18 June 2012). Rabi’e, A. (ed.) (2012a) A Directory of the Egyptian Parliamentary Elite 2012 (in Arabic), Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, Cairo.

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—— (ed.) (2012b) The 2011/2012 Elections (in Arabic), Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, Cairo. Tadros, M. (2010) ‘Quotas: A Highway to Power in Egypt … but for Which Women?’, IDS Bulletin, Vol. 41, No. 5, pp. 88–99. —— (2012) The Muslim Brotherhood in Contemporary Egypt: Democracy Re­ defined or Confined?, Routledge, London. —— (2014) ‘Feminist Voices and the Regulation, Islamization and Quango­ ization of Women’s Activisms in Mubarak’s Egypt’, in S. Nazneen and M. Sultan (eds), Voicing Demands: Feminist Activism in Transitional Contexts, Zed Books, London. Viterna, J. and K. Fallon (2008) ‘Democratization, Women’s Movements and Gender Equitable States: A Framework for Comparison’, American Sociological Review, Vol. 73, pp. 668–89. Waylen, G. (1994) ‘Women and Democratization, Conceptualizing Gender Relations in Transition Politics’, World Politics, Vol. 46, No. 3, pp. 327–35.

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4 Local Power and Women’s Empowerment in a Conflict Context Palestinian Women Contesting Power in Chaos Islah Jad This chapter examines what it means for women to claim political representation in the highly complex context of Palestine, one characterized by Israeli occupation and a deep rift over political agendas and means of liberation. Exploring how volatile political and socio-economic dynamics influence women’s agency in politics, it addresses the challenges faced by women who seek to enter politics; the factors that enable and hinder them; and the processes that mediate different political forces. It argues that while direct political involvement of women in the national struggle was an important medium for women’s collective empowerment, the call for affirmative action needs to be analysed, with particular attention to the nuances of its context. In the Palestinian case, where political instability and the violence of occupation persist, the call for affirmative action for women might not be the most effective pathway to women’s empowerment. This is especially so since the politically chaotic situation has served to fragment women’s power and their ability to act as a collective. Moreover, while historically Palestinian women have been politically active and have sought to integrate a concern with issues of gender equality into struggles for national liberation and social emancipation for all, external engineering of the quest for more gender-equitable political representation raises some serious questions with respect to its democratic credentials. The interplay of foreign and local dynamics and their implications for Palestinians will be discussed at length. 135

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The analysis in this chapter relies on a national survey, conducted by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in 2008– 9, that included all women elected in local councils in the West Bank in 2004–5. It covered 341 elected women in 185 councils. Indicators used to measure the women’s empowerment in their new context included female councillors’ active participation within the councils, and their impact within their new posts and on their communities – taking into consideration factors such as education level, political affiliation, party support, family support, number of children (reproductive role), council meeting attendance, and participation in council committees. The results are shown in the tables included in this chapter. The chapter also draws on findings from more than 90 focus group discussions, organized by the Gender Unit in the Ministry of Local Governments and conducted in 2009, that involved all elected and nominated women in local councils and municipalities in the West Bank, as well as life stories from a selected number of the elected women.

Contextual background: politics and agency in disarray Affirmative action for women is highly contextual in its dynamics and implications. Quotas might increase the number of women in public office, but the ability of these women to effect a change in political culture and in gender power relations – in terms of ensuring women’s needs and interests are included within the political agenda – depends on the stability and dynamics of the political context. In the case of Palestine, the introduction of quotas needs to be set against a backdrop of persistent insecurity. The Oslo Agreement between the Israeli government and the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1993 triggered an illusionary process of ‘state building’, without leading to peace or political stability. The Agreement was born, not out of the strength of the local or international position of the PLO vis-à-vis Israel, but out of desperation felt by particular elites within the diaspora, and it led

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to what became known as the ‘self-rule’ areas of the Palestinian Authority (PA). According to the agreement, the PA controls its population but does not have true sovereignty, especially rights over land, resources and external security. Bishara has argued that ‘autonomy – self-rule – is a form of Israeli control in which Palestinians agree to define and police themselves as non-citizens’ (Parker 1999: xii). The PA was given authority over the self-rule areas for an interim period of five years, heavily dependent on donor aid and tightly constrained by Israeli ‘security’ measures and sanctions. The Palestinian economy became the hostage of an Israeli embargo – an economic siege – that has sent unemployment rates soaring to 60 per cent in some refugee camps in Gaza (Usher 1999: 15). Unemployment is still a persistent feature of the Palestinian economy, particularly among educated women, for whom the figure is as high as 40 per cent (Labour Force Survey 2011, PCBS 2011). When the Palestinian leadership took power after the Oslo Agreement in 1993, Yasser Arafat refused to organize new local elections, fearing the takeover of power by the Islamic movement Hamas, his strong opponent. It seems that Arafat had foreseen the political impasse that might face the Palestinians once Hamas arrived in power. It is important to stress here that elections were requested by the Americans and donors, in an attempt to establish a new basis for political legitimacy in the Palestinian political system, which had been reliant up to that point on what used to be called the ‘national consensus’ (tawafoq watani in Arabic). National consensus meant that major decisions affecting the Palestinian national struggle were taken within the PLO structure and involved all Palestinian political groups involved in the struggle for national liberation. National consensus was based on the mediation of the charismatic character of Yasser Arafat and his influence on other political groups under the PLO. National consensus was used instead of public elections (Hilal 1999). However, the Islamists and the Palestinian Communist Party were excluded from the national consensus: the Palestinian

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Communist Party because it does not agree with military struggle as the path to Palestinian liberation, and the Islamists because at the creation of the PLO in 1995 they neither existed as a national movement nor as a political party.1 As of now, the Islamists still insist on their request to be included within the PLO structure and to be recognized as part of the national consensus. After Yasser Arafat’s death in August 2004, and under political pressure from the Bush administration, the first local elections were organized in stages that began in December 2004 and ran until December 2005. The Islamists’ sweeping victory in the first Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006 forced the PA to halt the final round of local elections, fearing Hamas’s control of the remaining local councils. By refusing to fund any local council or municipality controlled by the Hamas Islamists, Israeli and Western governments were refusing to acknowledge the election results. This has hampered all attempts to form a national unity government or any form of government with Hamas in power up until the present. A wave of assassinations, imprisonment and torture by the PA targeted the Islamic movements’ members and leaders in Gaza and the West Bank. The Hamas takeover of Gaza in mid-June 2007 led to a complete rift between the PA, led by the political organization Fateh, and the Hamas movement. The elections fragmented Palestinian polity and society, and contributed to the marginalization of social and political movements that used to support women’s rights and emancipation – such as women’s movements, students’ movements and leftist parties. The rising power of the Islamists posed some challenges within the Palestinian political polity. The Islamists called for all levels of leadership within the PLO to be elected, a request that had been refused by the historical leadership of the PLO chaired by Arafat. So, instead, the Islamists asked for a quota that would represent their political weight among Palestinians, suggesting it should be not less than 40 per cent of the memberhsip of the National Council, considered to be the Palestinian Parliament and which nominally elects the executive committee, the highest authority

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endowed with decision-making power in Palestine. However, the executive committee was never elected, but again followed the national consensus mechanism. The Islamists’ request was again refused. The Islamists used the local (2004–5) and legislative elections (2006) as opportunities to show their power, emerging from the elections in a very favourable position (they won 56 per cent of parliamentary seats), which did not prove helpful in establishing a new source of legitimacy in the Palestinian context, nor in arriving at an alternative national consensus. Islamist participation, for the first time after the Oslo Agreement, in the local elections of 2004–5 and the legislative elections of 2006 encouraged a huge number of women to vote (69 per cent of all women, representing 49 per cent of all voters) (PCBS 2010a). The election results led to the division of the Palestinian political system, a move backed and supported by the international donor community. This was aggravated by Hamas taking power in Gaza on 15 June 2007, which led the PA, based in Ramallah, to denounce the Hamas government as illegal. The political split led to the paralysis of almost all ‘state’ institutions, including the legislative council, the judiciary and the executive branch. Thus, parallel ‘state’ institutions were created to represent the Hamas authority in Gaza and the PLO authority in the West Bank. Consequently, all legal reforms have been suspended, and carrying out policies on a national level is severely impeded. This political split, coupled with the occupation, has incapaci­ tated existing forms and institutions of governance in Gaza. A total siege imposed by the Israelis, and at times the Egyptian authorities, has blocked the Hamas government from having access to financial resources, whether of a local or Western nature. This has led to the paralysis of almost all the local councils that were won by the Islamists. Western donors have refused to fund any project for councils run by the Islamists. The PA has attacked some of these councils, arresting some of their members and replacing them with members loyal to themselves. This policy was coupled with a similar Israeli measure that targeted the heads of many Islamist-run local councils to put them in

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prison. This continuous harassment by the PA and the Israelis led many elected members, including women affiliated to Hamas, to resign after realizing that it was becoming difficult to function in a normal way. There have been many attempts, by local and regional political forces, to bring the two separate authorities in the West Bank and Gaza together. However, up until now, all attempts have failed and the local elections were one of the factors that enforced this split. The PA leader in the West Bank, Mahmoud Abbas, declared at a press conference on 8 September 2012 that unless the Central Committee for Elections is allowed to function in Gaza to organize new local elections in parallel with the West Bank, there would be no reconciliation. However, the Hamas government in Gaza insists that national consensus should precede any election in order to guarantee that the results are respected by both the PA and its allies (the Western donor community). It also insists on the release of its political prisoners in Palestinian jails to enable a democratic environment for free elections in all local and civil society organizations in the West Bank. The persistence of high-level unemployment as a consequence of the occupation – limiting the capacity of the Palestinian labour market to accommodate new entrants – impedes the capacity of local councils to undertake development initiatives. Most of these councils work, if they have the resources, to provide temporary part-time jobs. The spread of checkpoints in the West Bank and the siege of Gaza (air, sea and land) further entrenches poverty, unemployment, and economic and political instability. Before the establishment of the PA, Palestinians in the Occupied Territories used to have a vibrant civil society with a very active engagement of political parties, unions, social movements, charitable societies, students’ councils and women’s organizations (Hanafi and Tabar 2005). Almost all forms of organization used to arrange regular elections with a high level of participation. With the establishment of the PA, many forms of social organization were targeted by the Palestinian security forces, especially Islamist organizations. This has led to a noticeable level of demobilization

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(Jad 2008). It is against this backdrop that the use of affirmative action policies to enhance the proportion of women in political office needs to be understood.

Affirmative action in Palestine: feminist aspirations between past and present realities Reading the history of Palestinian women’s activism teaches us that direct action and involvement in the Palestinian national movement were important and empowering routes for women. Through their involvement in the national struggle and politics, women established themselves as a movement and gained important access to the public space through a troubled relationship with and against their national leadership. Women’s power in the ‘revolutionary’ era was developed through their collective action in the national movement and against its patriarchal structure. Thus, women affirmed themselves through their own activism. From its inception, the PLO was never much concerned with issues of women’s empowerment, gender or gender relations (Peteet 1991). The absence of a well-worked-out commitment places a big burden on the women’s movement to articulate and formulate the gender interests of women in their different social positions. Fateh policy has consistently held that struggles other than that for national liberation are of a secondary nature, thus denying an intimate relationship between polity and society (Peteet 1991). One of Fateh’s leaders, Mounir Shafiq, saw that ‘throughout the different phases of the national struggle, women did not separate themselves from the cause of their people’ (Mounir Shafiq, cited in Al-Ghounimi 1981: 201). While Shafiq sees that women’s role is crucial in the ‘people’s war’ and objects to those who seek to spare women the ‘trouble of taking part in the struggle’ (ibid.: 206), he nonetheless maintains that women should not challenge ‘traditions’ reflected in prevailing gender roles, in particular in caring for their families and children (ibid.: 224).

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This vision was contested by women in Samed (the Palestine Martyrs Works Society), Fateh, and the General Union of Pales­ tinian Women (Mai Sayigh, cited in Al-Ghounimi 1981: 125). Women started to pressure the leadership for a clear position on the gender order. This pressure led to a series of activities and debates, fed by some books and papers on women’s role in the ‘revolution’ (Abu Ali 1975; Al-Khalili 1977; Shafiq 1977; AlAmad 1981). In one of these debates, the head of the Union, Mai Sayigh, stressed that women in the revolution, and even in the military, are still used as a propaganda façade for the political organization; [but] women are still far from playing a real role in the revolution [which is] seen as the preserve of different organizations in political competition and rivalry. (Mai Sayigh, cited in Al-Ghounimi 1981: 125)

Influenced by Marxist women, the head of the Union went on to articulate the three forms of oppression of women as ‘the enslavement of women to men; to the society and to the Occupation’ (Essam Abdel Hadi, cited in Al-Ghounimi 1981: 123). The ‘progressive’ ideology of the Marxist-Leninist organiza­tions in the PLO made them more receptive to women’s pressures, but did not alter their classical Marxist stand on gender: women are oppressed but first the national and class struggle must rid the people of colonialism and then of capitalist exploitation. They encouraged women to play an active role, equal to that of men, in these struggles. All avoided confrontation with the prevailing gender order. Marxists, like most Arab male leftist nationalists, often strongly distinguished between women’s liberation in the public sphere and their sexual/bodily freedom, the latter being viewed as superficial, bourgeois and individualistic (Hasso 1997). The decline in secular left ideology, coupled with a decline in women’s power and activism in the national movement, reduced the achievements women’s movements might realize. This is the conjuncture in which the Islamists’ power started to grow and the secular nationalists’ power went into decline after 1993, as

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the results of the national survey showed. The PA has neither gender vision nor a political project for social change. Yet, being donor-dependent, weak and fragmented, it has shown some positive reactions to pressure from women’s collective action. The quota is one outcome. Affirmative action in Palestine: a pathway for collective empowerment? Affirmative action in Palestine has been introduced at two levels, national and local. On a national level, a policy has been introduced of reserving 20 per cent of seats in Parliament for women. The first legislative elections took place in 1996, with no quota for women. Five women out of 88 members won parliamentary seats, representing a mere 5.6 per cent. Activist women and leaders had refused to call for a quota, thinking that they could gain more seats without it. They had assumed that, based on their pivotal role in the national liberation struggles and their participation in national politics, people would vote for women as readily as for men. After this defeat, women lobbied to introduce a quota into electoral law. They formed an impressive coalition and organized a national campaign aimed at securing the quota. The coalition was led by the General Union of Palestinian Women, with active participation from other women’s organizations such as the Women’s Affairs Technical Committee (WATC), the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH)2 and the Working Women Society. What triggered the coalition was women’s lack of faith in their political parties and groups to field women or to support their candidature. The Islamists were not part of the coalition. They were not asked to join and neither did they seek to do so. The coalition’s leadership by renowned Fateh figure Khadija Habashneh – who was also part of the old PLO structure – gave women easy access to toplevel leadership and to the media. And women proved influential in lobbying politicians to legislate for a quota of 20 per cent. The quota for local councils was introduced in stages. At the

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beginning, in 1998, the Minister of Local Government asked for one woman, at least, to be added to each council. By 2000, the number of women in local councils reached 63 out of 3,535 members, representing 1.7 per cent. The district system, with no quota for women, proved to be hostile to women’s participation, even while conforming to a system of full proportional repre­ sentation – one that has proved conducive to increased levels of representation of women in other contexts (Ballington 2010). In 2005, the local election law was amended to introduce a 20 per cent quota for women. In the local elections that took place in 2004–5, a significant increase in women’s representation was observed: 537 women out of 2,732 members in local councils, representing 19 per cent. Women made up 30 per cent of candidates and 50 per cent participated in the voting (Ministry of Local Government 2009). Thus, the introduction of a quota was crucial to increasing the number of women in local councils. Yet the levels of political representation by women continue to disappoint Palestinian activists, who had hoped for more progress towards parity, given the significance of women’s role in the national struggle. Efforts are under way to press for raising the quota threshold to 30 per cent and for quotas to be applied to other parts of the electoral system, such as the district elections – where its absence compounds historical hostility towards women’s participation and very low levels of female representation. However, the quota proved insufficient to sustain women’s presence in public office. Amid a chaotic political context and the political split that led to a mass nomination policy in the councils run by Islamists, the percentage of women decreased to 13 per cent. Total membership of local authority councils almost doubled in 2010 to reach 4,214 (PCBS 2010b), up from 2,732 in 2005; there are now 3,651 male members (2,195 in 2005), an increase of 31.9 per cent; and females number 563 (537 in 2005), an increase of only 4.8 per cent. Of the 79 councils with nominated ‘steering committees’, 26 (or 33 per cent) did not include any female members at all (Ministry of

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Local Government 2012). Thus the quota is tied to the political co­ nt­ext in which it is applied; in a weak democracy with politi­cal instability, the quota is used as a facelift for a political authority that pays lip service to women calling for more political participation. That is why many women’s organizations were critical of the Ministry of Local Government’s failure to perform its duty in monitoring the application of the quota: five villages had refused to apply the quota and have no women in their councils (Ramoun, Nuba al Rihia, Mokhmas, Kufr Dan and Al Meghayer) (Ministry of Local Government, Gender Unit 2009).

Kinship and family ties: pathways to political office? Most literature on the Middle East sees the family as a social and political obstruction to women’s emancipation (UNDP 2005; Nazal 2006). The Arab family is usually depicted as patriarchal, conservative, male-biased and opposed to women being active in the public sphere. Similarly, in a workshop held on 14 May 2009 by the Gender Unit of the Ministry of Local Government to evaluate the local elections from a gender perspective, one of the issues mentioned was the growing power of close and extended family at the expense of political parties. Growing ties between local elections and family power were seen as a threat to women’s affiliation with political parties, and an enforcement of the ties between the individual and the family at the expense of full citizenship and political ties. Thus, female candidates’ family ties are seen as a negative trend. This view might essentialize the family as a unit of analysis, ignoring the general context in which the roles of political parties and the family need to be related. Many studies show that, in the face of economic and political instability and the move to a more repressive and authoritarian regime – a case in point being the Occupied Palestinian Territories – the family can become the central refuge for the person (MAS 2008; Hilal and Malki 1998; Hilal 2002).

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180

7

187

No

Total

No.

%

3.7

96.3

Fateh

Yes

Did you get family support?

58

3

55

No.

5.2

94.8

%

Hamas

21

0

21

No.

%

0 144

7

137

No.

4.9

95.1

%

Independent

Political affiliation

100

Leftist

Table 4.1 Family support by political affiliation

8

0

8

No.

%

0

100

Other

418

17

401

No.

4.1

95.9

As % of total respondents

Total

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187

3

Not applicable

Total

1

Other

160

8

Political

Moral and organizational

15

No.

%

1.6 57

0

2

49

85.6

0.5

3

3

No.

0

3.5

86.0

5.3

5.3

%

Hamas

4.3

8.0

Fateh

Financial

What is the main type of family support you receive?

21

0

0

18

0

3

No.

0

0

85.7

0

14.3

%

144

2

3

120

1

18

No.

1.4

2.1

83.3

0.7

12.5

%

Independent

Political affiliation Leftist

Table 4.2 Type of family support by political affiliation

8

0

0

5

0

3

No.

%

0

0

62.5

0

37.5

Other

417

5

6

352

12

42

No.

1.2

1.4

84.4

2.9

10.1

As % of total respondents

Total

148

women in politics

The results of the survey conducted for this study seem to defy the prevailing public wisdom and assert the importance of family support for women candidates. In Tables 4.1 and 4.2 we can see that virtually all women, irrespective of their political affiliation, got family support: 96.3 per cent of women representing Fateh, 94.8 per cent from Hamas, 100 per cent from the leftist parties, and 95.1 per cent of women running as independent candidates. This result also seems to contradict the general belief that leftist parties rely more on ‘modern’ ties such as the political party than on ‘traditional’ ones such as the family. The role of the family was central in giving moral and organizational support, which was cited as the main type of familial backing across all political affiliations: 85.6 per cent of Fatah candidates, 86 per cent of Hamas candidates, 85.7 per cent of leftist candidates, 83.3 per cent of independents, and 62.5 per cent of those belonging to other political ideologies. Thus the family provides important human resources – free of charge – which are crucial for election campaigns and advocacy. Focus groups and interviews showed that without the support women candidates got from their husbands, children and relatives, they would not have been able to secure election to the local council. For example, consider the case of Hanan Abu Mashaikh in Al Maghazi (Gaza): Hanan did not consider running for public office but her party and her husband persuaded her, and her family and community gave her strong support. She had some training from a women’s NGO on the local election, which was very useful in giving her self-confidence and some important information on her role as a council member. She organized a successful campaign, relying on home visits and personal contacts, ‘to replace the absence of media coverage, but the campaign was so very tiring that I lost my eight-month pregnancy’. Her loss was compensated in part by her victory: ‘It was a big day and I promised my voters that I will never let them down, I had high hopes and was full [of ] energy to do many things to change women’s lives, but the siege on Gaza crippled us from doing anything.’ (Mohamad 2008: 169–70)

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Many interviewees praised the role played by their husbands and children as important in persuading, encouraging, supporting, lobbying, and mobilizing the community to support their wives and female relatives. The survey results confirmed the same trend, with around 96 per cent of the women surveyed, from all political affiliations, stating that they got support and encouragement from their immediate families, while around 87 per cent stated that they got support from their extended families. In addition, 84 per cent stated that they got moral and organizational support from their families, while 10 per cent reported that they also got some financial support. It is worth noting that the majority of these women came from families with exposure to political life through their husbands or some of their relatives. Family support played a crucial role in ‘protecting’ women when political disputes erupted between the two major parties, Hamas and Fateh. The survey revealed that more women from Hamas – around 37 per cent compared with 27 per cent from Fateh – asked for family support. In contrast, 65 per cent of Fateh women and only 6 per cent of Hamas women asked for the support of their political party (PCBS 2009). However, where male members were determined to run, family ties played a negative role in pressurizing women to stand down. One of the interviewees stated that her husband’s clan pressured him to ‘divorce her’ if she insisted in running against another male candidate chosen by the clan. Survey results revealed another controversial point related to women’s fertility and their ability to stand in elections. It has been suggested that the reproductive role might stand in the way of the political one (Moser 1996). It is interesting to note, however, that women with a large number of children were remarkably active in their councils, as shown in Table 4.3. Women who had more than three children represented around 52 per cent of those who indicated that they were present at the council three or four times per week. Women’s presence in the councils increased along with the number of children they had, which seems to indicate that women’s reproductive roles are internally

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women in politics

redistributed among older daughters and perhaps also sons. This may be confirmed by the low percentage of women with 1–2 children who were able to attend council meetings. Fewer children could be linked to the onset of the reproductive cycle of women, which put more pressure on the time they could devote to public office. Table 4.3 Number of children compared with attendance at council meetings How Number of children often 0 1–2 3–5 6 plus do you attend No. % No. % No. % No. % council meetings? Always

Total As a % of No. total res­ pondents

15 78.9 31 67.4 108 61.0 55 55.0 209

61.1

Often

3 15.8 13 28.3 41 23.2 27 27.0

84

24.6

Rarely

1

5.3

1

2.2 19 10.7

7.0

28

8.2

Never

0

0

1

2.2

5.1 11 11.0

21

6.1

Total

19

46

9 177

7

100

342

The age factor could confirm the above trend, too: it was noticed that women aged 35–54 represented the majority (71.5 per cent) of women elected, whether through the quota (27 per cent), general election (39 per cent), or nomination. As for those less than 35 years old, 7.4 per cent of them came through the quota and 11 per cent through general elections. In general, we can conclude that family and husband support, number of children, and older age are all important factors for women planning to make headway into political office at the local level.

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151

Party politics and women’s pathways to public office With the weakening of political parties, especially the leftist parties, after the Oslo Agreement it is to be expected that family and kinship relations would play a more important role in elections, as was shown above. Does this mean women can rely mainly on their families and relatives instead of their political parties? Although weakened, parties can still play a role in women’s political empowerment. Historically speaking, leftist parties were in the lead in terms of women’s political participation within the party structure, followed by the Fateh party, and they were all part of the PLO. Hamas followed the same path of pushing women into a political career, since the quota encouraged them to field women to increase their own political representation and influence. Fateh, like Hamas, possibly used the quota to increase its representation, rather than because it was pursuing an articulated feminist agenda. Women used this chance, however, by organizing themselves, shifting the political agenda their way, and asking for more power and ‘real’ representation (Jad 2008). Women in the focus groups confirmed the crucial role party membership played in their political training: ‘before the local council meetings, we were used to the party meetings’. While their families afforded them moral and organizational support, Table 4.4 shows that most women relied on political and financial support from their political parties: 73 per cent indicated that they received support from a political party; while 21 per cent received no party support – financial, political, moral or organizational (PCBS 2009). However, parties could play controversial roles in women’s route to political power. Some parties preferred to nominate men rather than women. Many women – in particular those in educational roles such as school teachers and school directors – ran in elections against the will of their political parties, as they felt empowered by their community and family support: Our Fateh party told us you are already active in the women’s committees, give the chance for others to run for the elections. You

TADROS_02.indd 151

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19

1

0

No, but it did not obstruct me from participating

No, and it did obstruct me from participating

Refuse to answer

187

167

Yes

Total

No.

%

0

0.5

10.2

89.3

Fateh

Did you get support from your political party?

58

0

0

7

51

No.

%

0

0

12.1

87.9

Hamas

21

0

0

1

20

%

0

0

4.8

144

18

2

60

64

No.

12.5

1.4

41.7

44.4

%

Independent

Political affiliation

95.2

Leftist No.

Table 4.4 Party support by political affiliation

8

3

1

1

3

No.

%

37.5

12.5

12.5

37.5

Other

418

21

4

88

305

No.

5.0

1.0

21.1

73.0

As % of total respondents

Total

women’s empowerment in a conflict context

153

are already active in something else. But we did not listen, we kept dragging to gain time till the quota was approved on 9 December 2004, and we ran against the party will and we won. (Focus Group, Al Bireh, 21 October 2012)3

In the loaded political context, party affiliation could cause huge psychological pressure and expose members to defeat. Once elected, many Islamist members and heads of councils were targeted and arrested by the Israeli occupation forces. Similarly, all development agencies boycotted and sanctioned all councils headed by Islamists in an attempt to force their communities to turn against them – crippling the local councils and obstructing their attempts to serve their communities and implement develop­ment projects. Women could also pay the price when their political parties failed to demonstrate accountability. For instance, if the party became infamously corrupt, or its constituency was eroded by leadership-level failures, women candidates bore the brunt of its declining legitimacy or popularity. The Fateh party, and also some leftist parties, are examples of this. Many women revealed that they preferred to run as independents as they are not considered as ‘factional’: ‘I wanted to be seen as serving all my community and not only my party.’ One woman revealed that ‘my party was a liability in my community and I convinced them to let me run as an independent’. Some women opted to run as independents to avoid the political polarization in society, and relied on the strength of their community outreach to build a political constituency instead of party support. This was particularly true when the party was seen as corrupt or lacking in accountability. For example, Aisha Yassine from Assirah Ashamalieh (North), Laila Shreime from Jenin (North), Sireen Abu Muaisse from Al Lemghaire and Hanan Abu Mashaikh from Al Maghazi in Gaza all affirmed the importance of circumventing the political divisions in society. Aisha Yassine from Assirah Ashamalieh (North) exemplifies women who may not need a political party affiliation as they are well known in their communities for their work in offering service and care. Aisha finished high school and worked for a long time

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as an art teacher in many Palestinian communities. Married with children, she ran for election as an independent and refused to be part of any party list. Her list (mainly consisting of independents) got the first four seats without the aid of a quota. She attributes her success to her social and community work before election, proving that if women are well-organized and well-known in their community they don’t need party support or quotas to win elections – they get there by building their own constituencies. She quickly proved herself in the local council and gained support from both her family and her community. She believes that a husband’s support is very crucial to a woman’s success. Once I put my feet in the council for the first time, I felt intimidated, but quickly I learned and put myself on many committees. I helped a lot of women to get good training, good services and to apply to many projects offered by the local council. (Mohamad 2008: 78)

Aisha received some training before the election from women’s and civil society organizations – MIFTAH and WATC in par­ ticular. She is considering standing again for the next round of local elections. It is also worth noting that women, in an effort to transcend party divides and factionalism, sometimes contribute more to the party than the party contributes to them. Laila Shreime, council member for Jenin (North) is an example. She is married with children. Her husband and children did not encourage her to nominate herself in the local council, but supported her later on in her campaign. Her party (Fateh) encouraged her to nominate herself. She used to be very active in her community, working for many civil society organizations and as an active unionist. When I started my first days in the local council, I told the Hamas leader and the other members: ‘Gone are the days of the political rivalry, we are all now here to serve our city, Jenin!’ (Mohamad 2008: 69)

Well-respected and welcomed by all other members, she is active on many council committees: coordinator of the cultural, social and women’s committees; a member of the external rela­

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tions and human resource committees. She complains about the siege that was mounted against their council because it is headed by Hamas: I appeal to our President and to the whole world to work to lift the political siege imposed on our local councils. We want to serve our people. We have many important projects we work hard to imple­ ment, like a public slaughter house, three girls’ schools, a garden, a sewage system. Besides, we have more than 1,250 employ­ees, who all need support.

She, too, is considering standing again in the coming local elections. As mentioned earlier, in an unstable political context like the West Bank, women can be sanctioned and pay a high price for being candidates of a political party whose power is contested by the Israeli occupation authority or by the rival party (Fateh). Most women who won on the Hamas list were forced to resign and cede their places to nominated members. It was revealed that 79 local councils were unseated and replaced by ‘steering committees’. Of these councils 26 did not nominate any women (33 per cent) (Ministry of Local Government 2012). This shows that affirmative action was weakened when elected women council members were replaced by nominees. The women who were nominated demonstrated their vulner­ ability vis-à-vis their political party. Of 22 women nominated after the removal or withdrawal of Hamas members, not one indicated her willingness to run again for political office. Most of them said that ‘The party told us that we had had our chance and we should give the chance to someone else.’ Others were paying the price for the lack of accountability shown by their party (Fateh, in most cases). We will not run again. People in our community think we are in the office for our own benefit. We will cede our places for others to come to see what we really did get out of this post. Let them go through our experience and tell us later what they got out of public office. (Focus Group, Al Bireh, 2012)

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Women making their way to political power: serving the community Life stories and focus groups showed that in local councils – where women are known at the local level, and active in public life in roles such as headmistresses, teachers and social activists – they fared well in elections, while those who had been chosen by their parties to fill the electoral quota requirement were, to some extent, marginalized by their political parties or the local councils after elections. In the Palestinian context, a political ethos valorizing ‘self sacrifice’ and ‘serving the nation’ (Schulz 1999) is a crucial medium for gaining the trust, respect and support of one’s community. Women interviewees and focus group participants showed great enthusiasm when talking about the respect and trust they gained from their communities. One interviewee put it like this: I worked for a long time as a nurse. I used to meet militants in hiding, and one day I said to myself, as these young men can sacrifice their lives for their people, me too, I can do the same. This is the moment I decided to serve my community.

Many of the women reported on the ways in which they were serving and caring for their communities: some were active in women’s local committees; others were running charitable societies to provide different kinds of services, such as vocational training, health services, social services, caring for the elderly or teaching. Empowered by the respect and recognition of their communities, some indicated that ‘it is not the level of your education, or your social status, it is rather how you care and give to your community’ (Focus Group, Al Bireh, 2012). They all demonstrated how community activism taught them leadership skills, self-assertiveness, team work, transparency and honesty; as one said, ‘You think people don’t watch you, they know all about you, this is a sacred country where you can hide no secret about yourself.’ The survey also showed that women’s chances of being elected increased according to their level of education,

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though this does not apply to those who came into public office through the quota. Life stories and focus groups also showed the same results. Many of the success stories from women in public office were from women educators or the well-educated, or those who had been active in their community prior to the election, as discussed previously. Prior community activism was also an empowering factor in the aftermath of the election. Once in the council, those who were well-known in and had been elected by their communities showed a greater ability to follow the daily work of the council and to be active in different committees. As one woman said, ‘They tried to put us in a women’s committee but I refused. I insisted on joining the urban planning and construction committee, where I can have a say in what they do in my community’ (Focus Group, Al Bireh, 2012). While, according to the survey results, the majority of these elected women are married (more than 75 per cent), a good percentage have never been married (more than 17 per cent). This result goes against some prevailing views, particularly among Islamist groups, who see single women as a social liability and as posing a ‘social problem’ that needs to be solved by encouraging married men to take them as additional wives ( Jad 2009). Recent studies have shown that this perception of single women as a social liability does not conform to how single women perceive themselves, or what they actually do for their communities. As Johnson has shown, these women are highly respected by their communities and very active in serving them. They have played, and are still playing, a crucial role in establishing social institutions that provide all kinds of assistance and support to their communities ( Johnson 2010).

Women constituting their leadership: serving the nation Political leadership is relational – it places people in relation to others inside and outside movements, institutions and organizations simultaneously (Rai et al. 2007) and therefore requires different

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skills of communication, networking and leading in different contexts and in different ways. While cultural norms can get in the way of asserting leadership, women do succeed in developing their own leadership styles: ‘We try to benefit our people more than men. We managed to bring important funding for many projects to our council; donors listen to us more than men; this gives us more authority’ (Focus Group, Al Bireh, October 2012). Thus, working harder and bringing more resources in are very crucial for women’s leadership and power. Others see that accessibility to your community and always being at their service are the best ways to prove one’s ability. Education was an important factor, as the national survey shows: demonstrating commitment to public office responsibilities, women with a higher education were more regular in attending council meetings compared to those with a basic level of education (87 per cent compared to 35 per cent). However, women have not often been able to challenge the gendered models of leadership; they have had to work with these to show their abilities to access the public sphere and survive in it. This, as our interviews reveal, often leads to extra pressure on women to prove their abilities in a male world – through working longer hours, practising self-censorship, and having a modest appearance (mostly with a head covering). However, competing with male members over leading positions was not an easy task. Only 1 per cent of women councillors are deputy heads, and only 5.7 per cent of women are heads of committees within their councils (PCBS 2012). The complex issues – selfimage, having to prove oneself constantly to male counterparts, managing simultaneously on several fronts – are evident from Sireen Abou Muaisse’s account. She comes from Al Lemghaire (North). Sireen finished high school and was active in her community and as a member of the General Union of Palestinian Women. Her husband and family encouraged her to run for election. Her main support came from the former head of the local council who was from her family, but who supported her because she is educated. In her first days

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on the council, she was afraid and felt insecure, but later on it became ‘normal’. She does not think of running for the head of the council: This is too much, too far to reach and men could be better in this post, they could achieve better since they can reach further places than women. Besides, with the mentality of our men this might not be easy; if our men change, I will change too.

Sireen and the other female members of the local council were able to get approval from Care International to build 25 water wells: When we got this project, men attributed this to themselves, but my colleague refused and insisted on claiming our success. She went and put on the mosque’s door a paper congratulating us by name for securing the construction of the 25 water wells.

Sireen’s experience in the council taught her to call upon women to consult with their daughters, to give them freedom, to trust them. They have to have strong characters. A strong character for a girl is equally as important as education, this is what I learned from my experience in the council. (Mohamad 2008: 91–2)

Women’s organization and women’s power Women’s movements and NGOs played an important technical role in training and equipping women for political office. WATC and MIFTAH were both crucial in training women candidates on how to run an election campaign, how to fundraise for it, how to mobilize support, how to mobilize a constituency, how to deal with the media, and how to understand the role of the local councils, election law and the quota. Both organizations worked on issues relating to leadership skills and self-assertiveness. But once women were in political office, the role of NGOs in supporting them and equipping them for their new role was minimal. While NGOs can support women candidates, they are

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no substitute for the role of political parties in supporting women politicians. NGOs, relying on a limited project cycle for funding, cannot sustain their support over the period when women are in political office. The Ministry of Local Government realized this gap and worked to bridge it.

Mainstreaming gender in the public office: role of the Local Government Ministry The national survey showed that a majority of women in local councils have no relation with any coalition to support and develop their work within the council; independent women and women in Hamas represent the highest percentage of women councillors (65.3 per cent and 56.9 per cent respectively). This lack of a coalition relationship may reflect a lack of trust by Islamists, in general, in women’s coalitions and unions, or the lack of interest by coalitions in attracting women who are seen as ‘different’. There were, however, some attempts to bring elected women in local councils together to exchange experiences and mobilize support. The Ministry of Local Government, in cooperation with women’s NGOs, is working to bridge the gap in reaching women candidates once they are in office. A national coordinating committee was established in 2010 and discussed some ideas for empowering women after election. Most of the ideas were technical, dealing with building women’s capacity, urging heads of councils to consider women’s participation, and so on. Whether this new instrument will reach all women, irrespective of political affiliation, is a challenge for the future. In response to this initiative, the Gender Unit in the Local Government Ministry issued its ‘Gender Charter’ for women in local councils, in which the head of each council must agree to adhere to the mainstreaming of gender in his/her council and to apply gender equality principles (Ministry of Local Government, Gender Unit, no date). Another important attempt to support women

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elected to local councils, promoted by the German development organization GTZ, was the Gender Forum for Women in Local Councils, through which the Gender Unit aims to enhance ties between elected members, to pool resources, and to empower elected members to access these resources, including the media. When political rivalry prevailed, however, the Gender Unit showed a limited ability or an unwillingness to withstand the PA campaign to remove elected Islamists, men and women, from office.

Conclusion Having secured 20 per cent of the total seats in Parliament and local councils, Palestinian women are faring far better in terms of participation in political institutions than many of their Middle Eastern counterparts, who are neither living in conditions of occupation nor under a government in extreme disarray. Even so, the current situation falls short of Palestinian women’s expectations. The initial focus of the women’s struggle was not on the quota. Believing that voters would reject gender bias because women had been politically active as partners in a liberation struggle, the Palestinian women’s movement had decided that the full political representation of women would be compromised rather than enhanced by a quota. Yet the disappointing results in the parliamentary elections suggested otherwise: the coalition for a quota was in a sense a call for recognition of women’s political voice and presence – a call that society, unprompted by a quota, had failed to make. The low political representation of women in district level elections (where a quota was not implemented) as opposed to local council elections (where it was instituted via a proportional party list system) illustrates the importance of affirmative action, and of focusing on the minutest details of its implementation. The fact that the Islamists did not participate in the coalition in favour of a quota did not stop them from utilizing it to field female members who would then increase Islamist presence and

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clout. How far women’s and men’s political participation will continue in the political process following the October 2012 elections remains to be seen. However, the primary results of the 2012 elections showed that women’s participation in local councils increased from 19 per cent at the 2004–5 elections to reach 20.9 per cent in 2012, an increase that might indicate a steady rise in women’s power in local government. A closer look at this percentage, however, might lead us to different conclusions. In the 2004–5 elections, 56.5 per cent of women were directly elected to public office, 37.3 per cent won by quota, and only 6.2 per cent were nominated. This made the combined total number of women who won elections through either the quota or nomination 43.5 per cent. In the 2012 elections, 12.1 per cent of women won through the quota and 64.4 per cent were nominated without election since there was no real competition between rival parties. This means the total number of women who won without direct election rose to 76.6 per cent. This high percentage of women winning seats without being elected means, once again, that they will be subject to the political will of their parties and will definitely be lacking in important political training. It can therefore be concluded that affirmative action cannot be separated from the general political context in which it is applied. The quota was enacted in a very disabling, fragmented and disempowering context. The life histories of women shared above show that the quota was crucial in triggering momentum for some women to enter public office. Family support has been an important factor in enabling these women, married or unmarried, to embark on their political careers. Political parties, too, were an important medium. They ‘chose’ some candidates and persuaded them to run for election. Some of those chosen – particularly by Hamas – might be difficult to imagine as candidates in public elections without the quota. Gaining people’s trust through social activism was another important factor behind the success of some candidates. However, while the quota created a conducive environment for these women to be in decision-

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making positions, the words of Laila Shreime from Jenin show the dilemma of women ‘empowered’ by affirmative action: ‘I appeal to you, lift the political siege imposed on our local councils, we want to serve our people’ (Mohamad 2008: 72). The election process proved to be highly divisive, and external intervention did not help. The deep polarization between the PLO and Hamas had an impact on women’s ability to overcome political and ideological differences and work towards a common agenda. Furthermore, the occupation and siege have meant that, in some contexts, there is no system of governance in place. Hence we are left with an ironic situation in which the quota has brought women into a political office that is in effect drained of any real political power to implement policies and lead change. In such a context, the question becomes: what kind of political leadership can women exercise, and how – if the mechanisms for enforcing decisions or initiating policies are stalled? Much negotiation will be required in the next phase: the district quota; the divisions in political society; the role of civil society in the political process; the differences in the women’s agendas of Hamas and the PLO; finding the capacity to make political agency meaningful – these are some of the matters over which activists will be wrestling.

Notes 1 Palestinian Islamists emerged as a religious group within the mosques from the mid-1970s and they emerged as a political group in the first Palestinian Uprising in 1988. 2 The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH) was established in 1998 as a nongovernmental, non-partisan Jerusalem-based institution dedicated to fostering democracy and good governance within Palestinian society; www.webgaza.net/palestine/ngo_profiles/Miftah.htm (accessed 2 July 2010). 3 Focus group with nominated women in local councils from 14 areas held in Al Bireh, 21 October 2012.

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References Abu Ali, K. (1975) mokademat hawla waki’ al-marah wa tajrobateha fi al-thawra al-falastineyya (Introduction to Women’s Reality and Their Experience in the Palestinian Revolution), General Union of Palestinian Women (GUPW), Beirut. Al-Amad, S. (1981) molahathat hawla waqi’a al-marah fil thawra al-falastineyya (Observations on Women’s Status in the Palestinian Revolution) Sho’oun Falastineyya (Palestine Affairs), No. 113 (April), pp. 9–20. Al-Ghounimi, Z. (1981) halaqa derasseya hawla awda’ al-marah al-falastineyya (A Workshop on the Status of Palestinian Women, Beirut, 23–25 March 1981), Sho’oun Falastineyya (Palestine Affairs) No. 114, pp. 123–8. Al-Khalili, G. (1977) al-marah al-falastineyya wal-thawra (Palestinian Woman and the Revolution), marqaz al-abhath wal-derassat al-falastineyya (Institute of Palestine Studies), Beirut. Ballington, J. (2010) ‘Implementing Affirmative Action: Global Trends’, IDS Bulletin, Vol. 41, No. 5, pp. 11–16. Hanafi, S. and L. Tabar (2005) The Emergence of a Palestinian Globalized Elite: Donors, International Organizations and Local NGOs, Institute of Jerusalem Study and Muwatin (The Palestinian Institute for the Study of Democracy), Jerusalem, Palestine. Hasso, F. S. (1997) ‘Paradoxes of Gender/Politics: Nationalism, Feminism, and Modernity in Contemporary Palestine’, PhD thesis, University of Michigan. Hilal, J. (1999) al-mojtam’ al-falastini wa iskaleyat al-dimocrateya (Palestinian Society and Democracy Problems), Centre for Palestine Research and Studies, Nablus. —— (2002) National Report on Participatory Poverty Assessment (Voices of the Palestinian Poor), July, Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation (MOPIC) in cooperation with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Ramallah and Jerusalem. Hilal, J. and Malki, M. (1998) Towards a Social Security System in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS), Ramallah. Jad, I. (2008) ‘Women at the Crossroads: The Palestinian Women’s Move­ ment between Nationalism, Secularism and Islamism’, The Palestinian Institute for the Study of Democracy (MUWATIN), Ramallah. —— (2009) ‘The Politics of Group Weddings in Palestine: Political and Gender Tension’, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 36–53. Johnson, P. (2010) ‘Unmarried in Palestine: Embodiment and (Dis)-

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Empowerment in the Lives of Single Palestinian Women’, IDS Bulletin, Vol. 41. No. 2, pp. 106–15. MAS (Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute) (2008) ‘Social Protection in the West Bank and Gaza Strip 2006–2007’, Working Paper Series, January, MAS and Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Ramallah. Ministry of Local Government (2009) ‘Supporting Women’s Participation in Local Elections: Voter and Candidate’, PowerPoint presentation, unpublished document, Ramallah, Palestine. —— (2012) ‘Data on Local Councils’, unpublished document, Ramallah, Palestine. Ministry of Local Government, Gender Unit (2009) ‘Evaluating Women’s Participation in Local Councils’, unpublished proceedings of a workshop held 14 May 2009, Red Crescent Building, Ramallah, Palestine. —— (no date) ‘Gender Charter’, unpublished document, Ramallah, Palestine. Mohamad, Z. (2008) Reyah al Taghieer (Winds of Change), Nissa min baladi series (Women from my Country), Women’s Affairs Technical Committee, Ramallah, Palestine. Moser, C. (1996) ‘Seeing the Invisible: Women, Gender and Urban Development’, in R. Stren (ed.), Urban Research in the Developing World, Vol. 4: Thematic Issues, University of Toronto, Centre for Urban and Community Studies, Toronto. Nazal, R. K. (2006) ‘Women and Local Elections, Success Stories’, The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH), Jerusalem. Parker, C. (1999) Resignation or Revolt? Socio-Political Development and the Challenges of Peace in Palestine, I. B. Tauris Publishers, London. PCBS (2009) National Survey: Women in Local Councils, Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics and Women’s Studies Institute, unpublished report, Ramallah, Palestine. —— (2010a) ‘Registered and Voters in 2004–2005 Local Election by Sex’, Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, unpublished data, Ramallah, Palestine. —— (2010b) ‘Unpublished Data on Women in Local Councils’, Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Ramallah, Palestine. —— (2011) Labour Force Survey, Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Ramallah, Palestine. —— (2012) ‘Unpublished Data on Women in Local Elections of 2012’, Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Ramallah, Palestine. Peteet, J. (1991) Gender in Crisis: Women and the Palestinian Resistance

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Movement, Columbia University Press, New York, NY. Rai, S., N. Shah and A. Ayaz (2007) Achieving Gender Equality in Public Offices in Pakistan, UNDP, Islamabad. Schulz, H. L. (1999). The Reconstruction of Palestinian Nationalism: Between Revolution and Statehood, Manchester University Press, Manchester. Shafiq, M. (1977) mawdo’at hawla nidal al-marah (Issues on Women’s Struggle). Sho’oun Falastineyya (Palestine Affairs), No. 62 (January), pp. 200–27. UNDP (2005) ‘Good Governance – 2005 Elections: Presidential, Legis­la­tive, Municipal’, Focus, Vol. 1, United Nations Development Pro­gramme, Jerusalem. Usher, G. (1999) Dispatches from Palestine: The Rise and Fall of the Oslo Peace Process, Pluto Press, London.

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5 Pathways to Political Power in Sudan Sara Abbas

Sudan is a country with a particularly tumultuous political history, one that has deeply shaped Sudanese women’s political lives and been shaped by them in turn. Legislative quotas, including those for women, have been in operation in the country in one form or another for decades. Women’s access to Parliament has remained weak, however, and they have struggled to find ways to break through the historical patterns of male dominance that have largely excluded them from power, and kept them on the receiving end of laws and policies that frequently marginalized them. This chapter argues that the Sudan experience puts into question the quota as a pathway for political power. It also argues that an explicit concern with numbers, and by extension quotas, can lead to unexpected pitfalls, since centralized and authoritarian regimes (and parties) can readily impose quotas from the top down. Quotas do not by default widen or transform political opportunities for women who come from diverse backgrounds and who carry with them complex identities. In fact, quotas can serve to consolidate the status quo – both at the level of party politics and in regard to patriarchal conceptions of women’s place. Examining women’s alternative trajectories in politics as non-quota political candidates reveals the diverse ways in which women are apprenticed into politics, and the ways in which they negotiate their place in it, both vis-à-vis one another, and in relation to men. The chapter also suggests that the focus on 167

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a technical ‘fix’ to enhance women’s opportunities for political engagement can blind development actors to other issues that can make a pronounced difference in women’s political journeys, namely the relationships that women build on multiple levels and their ability to tap into different social and political repertoires at various points. It is through the latter that constituencies are often built, and political apprenticeship is developed. It is worth noting here the parameters and limitations of this study. It relies for the most part on around 15 first-hand, semistructured interviews conducted by me in Khartoum between 2010 and 2011. Though not every interview is referred to in the chapter, they were all important in informing it. The interviewees were all women who self-identified as ‘political’, the majority members of political parties who ranged in age from their mid 20s to late 50s. Several pointed to regions outside Khartoum as their hometowns, but all resided in Khartoum at the time of interview, and most had called it home for much, if not all, of their lives. The interviewees were by and large well-educated and professional women, possessing at a minimum a high school degree and more typically a university degree. Needless to say, there is room, and a tremendous need, for more research on the trajectories of women in politics in Sudan, and on the varying and varied experiences of women living in rural and semi-rural areas as well as those in urban centres, not to mention the ways in which class, ethnicity, education and family situation influence women’s political pathways. Limited as this study is, I hope to draw attention through it to the richness of women’s political histories in Sudan, and to the value of exploring their experiences and trajectories beyond numbers in office.

Background: authoritarianism as the norm The domination of Sudanese politics by what scholars have termed ‘sectarian’ or ‘traditional’ parties has been well documented (Niblock 1987). Two parties in particular have been at the forefront since the country’s independence in 1956: the National

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Umma Party and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).1 The former is the political wing of the Ansar Sufi sect, led by the powerful El-Mahdi family, and the latter is the political wing of the Khatmiyya Sufi sect, led by the El-Mirghani family. A critical difference between the two parties in their early years was their stance on Sudan’s independence. As their name suggests, the Unionists favoured unity with Egypt, while the Umma Party advocated for independence from both Britain and Egypt. The two parties are frequently described as centrist and Islamist in their leanings, and have tended to be rivals throughout Sudan’s modern history, taking turns ruling the country in times of multiparty democracy and acting as opposition to government in times of military dictatorship. The latter has mainly been their role: since independence, an elected, multi-party government has only ruled for about 11 of the 58 years.2 Multi-party elections usually only followed a major political upheaval – the First Democracy (1956–8) followed independence, the Second Democracy (1964–9) followed the popular uprising known as the October Revolution, and the Third Democracy followed the Intifada of 1985, which toppled the military regime of Jaafar Nimeiri. The multi-party coalition established in 1986 was, as had been the case with its predecessors throughout Sudan’s modern history, short-lived. The 1980s had seen the rise of a new force on the Sudanese political scene – the National Islamic Front (NIF) – a modern Islamist movement known previously as the Islamic Charter Front and descended from the Ikhwan ElMuslemeen (the Muslim Brotherhood). In 1989, the NIF staged a successful coup in collaboration with elements in the military, bringing the current regime of Omar Al-Bashir to power. The coup makers called their coup Thawret El-Inkaz, ‘The Salvation Revolution’. Like the Nimeiri regime before them, the Inkaz nurtured ambitions to radically alter the social reality of the country, and went about immediately imposing its vision – a homogenized Arab-Muslim identity – on the country. While the southernbased Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) was alone in

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the 1980s in armed insurrection, several other armed movements began forming in the 1990s. Resistance to the regime came in other forms as well. The NIF’s social re-engineering attempts, which it termed the ‘civilization project’, extended to women, who became one of the project’s main targets for civilizing. The NIF’s banning of political parties, trade unions, professional associations, and student groups accompanied restrictions on women’s lives under a conservative interpretation of sharia law. Amna Dirar, a political activist from eastern Sudan, sketched for me in 2007 the situation of women: During the period of the Inkaz the first to collide with the govern­ ment were women – they were the primary targets of the regime, through different laws, regulations, and restrictions. The feeling of suffocation that women felt as result of this made them try to find ways out of the situation … the more you are pressured, the more your awareness grows, of your problems and of the reasons that lead others to try and pressure you. So you find your loopholes. (Cited in Abbas 2007: 23)

One day the quota would seem like the perfect loophole.

The quota pathway leads to a familiar stop: one-party rule The quota had been an issue that surfaced in the 1990s fleetingly, propelled by Sudanese women’s participation in the Beijing summit. For its part, Al-Bashir’s ruling party, the National Congress Party (NCP),3 pressured from the inside, had introduced a women’s quota in 1998, prompting women’s representation in Parliament to reach 10 per cent, but the quota had little legitimacy outside of the NCP. The signing of the Machakos Protocol in 2002 between the NCP4 and the SPLM, followed three years later by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), ushered the country into a new phase in its history. At the time, the CPA not only seemed to put an end to Africa’s longest-running civil war, but also set the stage for a return to multi-party elections, which had

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eluded the country for nearly two decades. Opposition parties, long repressed, began mobilizing in public once more. Three preceding decades had taught women a painful lesson in gender politics: women’s representation rises under dictatorship, and collapses to almost nothing following multi-party, competitive elections – reflecting for the most part a reluctance of political parties to nominate women in the first place (see Abbas 2010). Mindful of that lesson, women activists, many of them party activists as well, began lobbying for a legislative quota, convinced that a mechanism was needed to ensure women’s representation in significant numbers in the anticipated elections. Though there was agreement on the need for a quota, fissures between women in the opposition and those in the ruling party soon grew as activists faced pressure to define what form the quota would take in the anticipated electoral law. Samia AlHashimi (2008) reflects on this period: The strong conflict that occurred between women groups on the way in which women should be included in the laws was an important moment in the history of Sudanese women. The government’s vision and that of women affiliated to it was of a separate women’s list, while the vision of the rest of women was to include women on the same lists as their parties.

When the National Elections Act was finally signed into law in July 2008, it reflected for the most part the vision of the NCP. Out of 450 seats in the National Assembly: • 270 (60 per cent) were to be filled by simple majority to represent the geographical districts in every state. • 112 (25 per cent) were to be filled through separate and closed women’s lists, whereby voters have the right to vote for one women’s list of their choice. A women’s list must clear the 4 per cent threshold for that party to qualify for accessing seats reserved for women, using proportional representation. • 68 (15 per cent) were to be filled from party lists based on proportional representation. (Republic of Sudan National Elections Act 2008, articles 29–33)

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Though the number of seats varied in state assemblies, the same formulae (60/25/15) would be employed. The victory was bittersweet. On the one hand, it was a historic achievement: for the first time, 25 per cent of seats at national and state level would be occupied by women. On the other hand, the insistence on separate lists was seen by many activists as isolating women within their parties, giving the latter few incentives to nominate women in ‘core’ geographical constituencies or even on party lists. Some women in the opposition began mockingly referring to the quota as hoesh al-niswaan (the women’s yard), in reference to the traditional division of space in the Sudanese home where women have their own confined area in the house. A major fear of activists from the opposition was that the form the quota took would do little to challenge women’s exclusion by political parties, and would pit women against one another as they competed within their parties to be placed higher on the list, and as various quota lists competed against one another. The first competitive, multi-party elections in 24 years took place in April 2010, amid much political turmoil, accusations of fraud directed at the NCP, and a political crisis that resulted in the boycotting of the elections (at the very last minute) by most major opposition parties. Many of the fears of opposition women activists regarding the form the quota took not only proved true, but were surpassed. The NCP won 72 per cent of all seats in the National Assembly (IPU 2012) and a slightly higher share of the quota seats, winning 82 of 112.5 The ruling party in the south, the SPLM, won a further 22 per cent of the assembly seats, as well as every single quota seat in southern Sudan.6 This left other parties with four quota seats. The state legislative assemblies reflected a similar reality; for example, the NCP secured 20 of the 21 quota seats in the Khartoum Legislative Assembly.7 Not a single woman won a seat to the National Assembly through a geographical constituency or a party list in the north, and only two women secured non-quota seats in the south, reflecting to a large extent the weak representation of women in the non-quota nomination lists to begin with.

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With the independence of South Sudan in July 2011, NCP dominance of the National Assembly has only grown. The termina­tion of the mandate of SPLM MPs representing southern states has left the NCP with 82 of the 88 remaining quota seats.8 The quota road, it seemed, had led to a familiar stop – a Parliament dominated by the ruling party.9

The quota: a pathway to empowerment or to the ‘women’s yard’? It is difficult to divorce the lives of women in political parties from the realities of their parties. The many years spent by Sudanese political parties in the opposition have had a dramatic (and traumatic) impact on the parties’ development. The 1990s were particularly trying for Sudan’s opposition, which spent those years banned, unable or unwilling to participate in elections, underfunded, disconnected from its traditional constituencies, and with its leadership jailed or exiled. Though most of the exiled leadership felt able to return after 2000, they found themselves facing a landscape radically altered from the one they had left behind a decade before. Not only was political power concentrated in the hands of the ruling party, but economic power was as well. The NCP used this double power effectively. While parties were allowed to operate in the open post-2000, the regime worked to undermine them, harassing them at times, and attempting to co-opt disgruntled elements within them at others, thus encouraging fragmentation. The latter efforts met with considerable success, fuelled by the NCP’s incentive system (offers of political posts and/or funding), but underpinned by real and long-standing grievances regarding the centralization of power within Sudanese political parties.10 Assailed by other pressures, such as the continuous state of war in which the country finds itself, and until recently the threat (now reality) of the South’s independence, the parties exist in a constant state of emergency, whereby issues like gender equality

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are typically relegated to the bottom of their priority list. As Nazik Osman wrote in 2004, at the height of the fever surrounding the peace agreement and the possibility of elections: Men still dominate parties and their decisions due to their effective presence in the parties’ central committees. Perhaps the weak presence of women, particularly in Sudan, goes back to the lack of stability of democratic structures, and to the absence of transparency and freedom of thought, which would allow parties to build their internal structures with freedom and flexibility.

In such a context, the separate women’s lists introduced by the quota provision of the 2008 Elections Act served as ‘women’s yards’ of sorts, reinforcing the isolation of women within their parties, and their vulnerability to powerful male brokers. In turn, as several women in legislative structures complain, loyalty goes first and foremost to the party, with little space to form alliances with other women. ‘You come by the quota system,’ says Najah Ibrahim Ahmed, a Popular Congress Party (PCP) MP from South Darfur,11 and: the quota system is based on the party’s evaluation of you. It decides who gets nominated, and the same goes for men as it does for women. Parties are factories of decision making, they have agendas they want to implement, and they look for tools through which they can implement them. If you’re them, you’ll look for the person that doesn’t have the understanding to question you … problem is, if this quota brings a person who can’t make a decision, then it’s a failure. My assessment is that this quota system has meant that men sit around and decide which woman gets nominated, and which shouldn’t be because she’ll be a real nuisance.12

Najah, like many other veterans of political parties, regards the separate lists as an extension of the idea of the ‘women’s divisions’, or ‘women’s secretariats’ in parties, which were achieved by the Sudanese women’s movement in the 1970s and 1980s, but have come to be regarded by many as an isolating and ineffective tool for the promotion of women’s empowerment. ‘Any party that gives women their own office, kills them,’ says Najah, who is

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vehemently critical of the quota. ‘Women’s divisions make women chase their own tails, while men are making the decisions far away. They do not serve women’s cause.’ The story of Aisha Abbaker Taha, a school teacher and single mother from Nyala, South Darfur, is a poignant example of the ways in which the quota can too easily become an extension of that history of ‘women’s divisions’, and one that illustrates that the focus on the quota can obscure rich experiences, histories and struggles. Aisha is one of only five women currently in opposition in the National Assembly, representing the PCP (a party headed by El-Turabi, the theoretician behind the NIF, who lost a power feud to Al-Bashir in 1998). Aisha recounts the story of her initiation into the Islamist movement as a high school student in the early 1980s. ‘There were two girls in my school,’ says Aisha, ‘and they wore conservative clothing. I liked the way they were always busy cleaning and hanging things on the billboards, et cetera. What attracted me to them was that they seemed different from the others, in their interactions and behaviour.’ Aisha came from a home where she and her sisters were expected to dress modestly, so it was not hard for her to accept the idea of hijab, or veiling. The father of a classmate of hers, Kawther, was a Muslim Brother, and along with Kawther Aisha started to attend the Brothers’ seminars. The talks focused mostly on religion, and that helped Aisha win the acceptance of her family for her newfound interest in politics, since they felt it was having a good effect on her. The women were encouraged by the party to speak to other women, and to go round their neighbourhoods teaching other women the Quran. ‘The hardest part for us was changing women’s perception of how to dress,’ she recalls. Her first direct political action was to join the 1982 protests against the government’s decision to appoint a politician from outside Darfur as governor of the state.13 That same year, Aisha was appointed as a teacher and dorm supervisor of a girl’s school in a small town in northern Darfur. There, she tried to spread some ideas about Islam amongst the girls, and feels she set a good

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example for them by confronting the school’s corrupt principal regarding the theft of humanitarian relief flour intended for the students (the infamous famine of the 1980s had a particularly severe impact on Darfur). Following that confrontation, she was transferred to Nyala, a city in South Darfur. There, she began actively, and successfully, recruiting amongst the students, which won her and her colleagues recognition from the party’s local leadership. We became well known and started being trained in speaking, debating – we became politicians. The party explained to us the political situation, and showed us the basis of the Muslim Brothers’ political organization,14 its goals and its history. We knew little about other parties … training was simple back then, and for the basics, we had local trainers. But for the bigger topics, they sent trainers from outside the state. How to write reports, make a speech, and so on were a part of it. The Islamist movement focused on the idea of women having a role [in society], and a strong one, way before the quota came … they had a feeling that women will change reality in the future.

During that period, in the early 1980s, says Aisha, and in the lead-up to the Intifada, women were starting to have a real presence in the party. The women’s division of the party underwent a change, from being headed by a man to being headed by women. The women’s choice of which male colleagues to involve in the division were pragmatic, says Aisha. ‘We picked the ones we could deal with,’ she says, ‘the ones who could give us a push.’ She emphasizes that in her experience, it is often not the lack of training that is an impediment to women’s political work, but seemingly simple things, such as having no means of transport. ‘All the men had cars,’ she recalls. ‘When we had a programme we wanted to implement, we would have to beg for a lift. But when the guy with the car was a member of the women’s office with us, well, it helped.’ Despite working diligently for the party, ‘we didn’t think to seek nomination [in the 1986 elections] because there was no accep­ tance of the idea that one woman [a voter] could give her voice

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to another [a candidate]. The feeling was that women in power couldn’t achieve anything, and we also didn’t think women could win. Women cadres were also few at the time.’ Can­vassing for the party during the 1986 campaign was a real political apprenticeship for Aisha, and it taught her and her female colleagues an important lesson. ‘We realized that women vote more than men, that they pay more attention to elections than men.’15 Aisha puts this down partly to women’s social and economic suffering, which, she believes, in the context of Sudan, draws them to anything that presents a possibility for change. But she warns that it’s not always political consciousness that’s the main motivator for voting: It’s more like duty-doing, especially in Darfur. When you go to the [community’s] roots, you find that women come to each other, gather together in someone’s house, chat for a bit, drink sharbat or coffee, then go and vote. Underlying relationships have more to do with this than political awareness.… I think if it was straightforward awareness, I would just take my papers alone, and go vote. But as a woman, you come, whether of your own will or pushed by another. Even if by cheating and fraud [that is, if you are tricked by another person] you are brought to the point of voting.

Aisha’s second political apprenticeship came after the 1989 coup, when her party, the NIF, seized power. The NIF’s mechanism for changing (and as the opposition saw it, controlling) communities was to form state and local-level ‘popular committees’. Aisha and a few others landed in the Darfur Popular Committee. The exclusion of women at that time was so acute, however, that it took on a spatial form. This was the first experience for us [women], and it was very difficult … we always sat in the back, you’d never find us in the front or the middle. They put us there, and we questioned that, told them we couldn’t hear. It was really hard. The second issue was with the men themselves. There was not much integration, if you sat in a seat somewhere, no man would come and sit there. It’s hard to say what the problem was: some sort of aversion, a feeling of distance, or just not wanting any contact.

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Since most if not all of the men in these committees were also affiliated with the NIF, and therefore identified with a conservative form of Islam, their reluctance to sit close to the women most likely had its origin, at least partly, in the belief that Islam discourages mixing of the sexes. For Aisha, the most difficult period she spent during her political apprenticeship came when she served as a member of the basic services committee. When it was time for a working session, the male members would sit in a circle, leaving the women members outside it. Rather than being discouraged, Aisha credits the attempts at excluding her for making her realize that women can speak up and debate. Having struggled in the Islamist movement from a young age and having helped it reach power, she did not like being excluded, and felt that she should be heard, so insisted on it at times. She feels that her perseverance and that of women pioneers like herself changed the political culture of Darfur, and entrenched the idea that women must be represented as a matter of course in all councils and committees, including at neighbourhood level. But the biggest challenge was yet to come. The divisions between women in the Islamist movement came after 1991–2, and they happened for a simple reason. In all the years we had worked, there was nothing for them [the party] to give us. They would come to you at home and say we want you to travel to this and that place, and you just get in the car and go. You may not have a penny in your pocket, but you go … they took care of your housing and food, and you felt safe. We did it because just as the men were there, we wanted to be there too.… In 1997 we began building the Sudanese Women’s General Union (SWGU), and we travelled village to village to build it from the bottom up. But after it was established, and following a struggle on our part, it was assigned its own budget. There began to be daily allowances for travelling et cetera, and competition between the women started to become the norm. Though I had risen to the head of the SWGU in South Darfur and had built it through hard work, I stepped down, feeling betrayed by the Islamist movement. Our values had changed.

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Despite having built a very strong base of support through her work with the SWGU, Aisha walked away from her party, and would only re-enter politics ten years later, this time as a member of the PCP. Two years after her re-entry, the quota became law, and by late 2009, the party was putting its nominee lists together. Like all parties, the PCP had two women’s lists in every state to contend with – one for the state legislative council and one for the National Assembly. In South Darfur, this meant providing 24 names in total. When asked by the state party leadership to help identify candidates for the women’s list, Aisha was sceptical. ‘I said that we have been disconnected from our people outside Nyala [the state capital] for a long time – we can’t know who they are.’ But she was told that the party would ask its male cadres in various parts of the state to help, and tell them that ‘if they have women cadres, they can bring them [i.e. put them forward for consideration]’. Aisha recalls the haphazardness of the process: ‘Any woman we knew was PCP, we put on the list, it was you and your luck whether you ended up on the National Assembly list or the state one. There was no study.’ When enough names had been gathered, the women forwarded the lists to the party’s Shura or Consultative Council, which according to Aisha included some women, and which was busy at the time putting together ‘the men’s lists’ (Aisha’s words! By them she means the party lists, as well as the nominations for the geographical constituencies. Of course, the law never designated those seats as exclusively male but her terminology reveals the extent to which the various types of nominations had become gendered.) The Consultative Council’s rearrangement of the women’s lists would prove controversial. ‘When we had picked the list initially, we’d chosen someone specific for the top spot, but she had been relegated to number four.’ Instead, Aisha, who was initially at the bottom of the list, found herself at the top spot, with the leadership deciding that her name recognition and support base would be an asset. The reordering caused anger amongst those relegated, who felt that the men had made the decision unilaterally, but Aisha convinced

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them to let the issue go for the sake of party harmony. Though she was not interested at all in running, she did not worry too much. ‘I never had a feeling the list could win,’ she says. ‘We [women] thought the elections are an experience that we’ll gain from; we didn’t anticipate success.’ The list did win, managing to secure three PCP quota seats to the National Assembly, in addition to the top candidate from the [all-male] party list in the same state. The three women thus found themselves in the position of being not only instant MPs but a sizable proportion of the opposition in Parliament. Ask Aisha about her feelings on being a member of the National Assembly thus far, and the word ‘regret’ comes up. She is dismissive of the potential for a women’s alliance there, insisting that the dominance of the NCP makes it impossible to conduct any sort of dialogue, not just amongst women, but with anyone. She maintains that the only issues that women in the Assembly agree on, whether NCP or opposition, are the need for further training, and the need for more development projects in their communities. ‘The politics is where we disagree,’ she says – and the politics, it seems, is paramount. When it comes to possibilities for apprenticeship, Aisha, puts the emphasis not on formal training but on membership, or the opportunity to learn by doing: One can receive training, and then there’s training that you get from doing the work [participating in committees, drawing up bills, et cetera]. Sometimes the latter is stronger than what you’re taught. Despite the quota, we are still not finding opportunities, whether internal or external, to ready us as cadres. We want our participation to be on a wide scale, for example in the [National Assembly] committees. If there are opportunities there, we want to have the right, as women, to benefit from them too.

What women in the Assembly lack most, she points out, is acknowledgement: Yes, we have the 25 per cent, but there is an incredible belittling that takes place in our day-to-day life. Men see the quota women

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not so much as completing the Assembly – that would at least be a benefit – but more as an add-on, something stuck on that they don’t need. Men have still not admitted that women have something to offer. Those things have to come from within, not because the quota pressured them.

It may be tempting, given the issues outlined above, to advocate for voluntary quotas as a surer pathway, if not to power, then at the very least to integration and apprenticeship within political parties. However, voluntary quotas can have their own, often unanticipated, pitfalls. The National Umma Party is considered relatively advanced among the parties in Sudan when it comes to its concern with women’s political empowerment internally. As El-Battahani (2002) notes, during the 1986 elections the party’s leader, ElSadiq El-Mahdi, adopted an ‘Islamic Awakening’ message as part of his campaign platform, putting Islam at the centre of his political project in Sudan, but a version of it – in contrast to the latter years of the Nimeiri regime – that was supportive of the rights of non-Muslim minorities, tolerant of varied interpretations of the religion, and careful to promote, at least ideologically, women’s political rights. The latter centred on a ‘recognition of the status of women in society and politics by proposing women constituencies as part of the “modern forces” of politics’ (ibid.: 262). This was prompted in part by the critical role women played in the lead-up to the Intifada, both within his own party and outside it, when many of the male leaders were imprisoned or closely watched. El-Mahdi’s idea was not adopted, but his party won the biggest share of parliamentary seats that year, and he assumed the post of Prime Minister soon after. Since then, a quota for women of some sort or another has operated in the Umma Party. By 2003, the party boasted a few high-level women in its leadership, including Sarah Nugdallah, then the first female party spokesperson and currently the chairperson of the party’s political bureau, and El-Mahdi’s own daughter, Mariam. That same year, the Umma leadership committed to a 20 per cent

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quota, a commitment that would be tested almost immediately at the party’s sixth general conference, which brought together party membership from all over the country. Eman El-Khawad (2008), of the party’s women’s division, describes what happened: Despite the efforts of the women’s development sector [inside the party] and the general conference’s membership committee to make the 20 per cent a reality, and despite careful monitoring, the party’s base did not completely comply with this rule, especially in rural areas, so women’s representation in the general conference came under the 20 per cent. The Women’s Development Sector did not stand by idly in the face of this reality, but worked to salvage the situation, speaking to the Membership Committee about this matter. It was then agreed to create a ‘College to deal with issues relating to women’, which gave women 100 seats [at the conference]. Despite the fact that this measure increased the number of women delegated to the conference, it did not yield the required percentage, because the increase was in the membership of the conference as a whole, and not from the share of men’s seats!

As El-Khawad writes, one of the factors that led to the above change was the need to achieve a regional and ethnic balance in the party’s ranks. This was seen as a high priority (as it is in most major political parties in Sudan) and was achieved partly ‘at the expense of women’s share’. Another factor she mentions is that some of the mahaliyat, the local districts, had a very small share of seats at the conference, with some having only one, and it would have been unthinkable from their perspective for their lone representative to be a woman. Where the central level of the party could directly elect whomever it wanted, as was the case with 25 per cent of political bureau seats, the leadership was successful in securing, or almost securing, the 20 per cent (in the above case giving 4 of the 22 seats to women). As El-Khawad points out, however, even the leadership’s understanding was that the 20 per cent was a fixed share – that it should not be exceeded. In fact, El-Khawad argues that some of the women chosen to fill the four seats had a base of support independent of the leadership, and could have won one

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of the other seats (from the 75 per cent) with ease, thus potentially raising women’s share above the mandated 20 per cent. The failure to see it that way confirmed once again that affirmative action measures are welcome and encouraged by parties, as long as they don’t cut into ‘standard’ (that is, male) seats. El-Khawad also points to an interesting contradiction. On the one hand the Umma has sought to decentralize decision making to district level, in an effort to democratize and to rebuild its base; but, on the other hand, this has made it more difficult to fulfil the quota, and thus to increase women’s representation in party structures: the shift in the Umma party to decentralization has been a negative for women, since women active at the centre [that is, at party headquarters level in Khartoum] – and they are more numerous – have no chance of being delegated.… Giving the Mahaliyat this responsibility [of delegation] was a big gamble with women’s opportunities, given our social and cultural reality when it comes to women. It would have been better to work out a system of delegation from the centre to guarantee the largest number of women, and that’s what was done later at the conference via the ‘Women’s Remediation College’.

El-Khawad’s proposal begs the question, however: if these women are nominated at the centre and serve there, where does this leave women outside Khartoum? To what extent will those women at the centre have a real constituency, and whom do they represent? Furthermore, given the history of higher women’s representation during dictatorships – when power is more centralized – does the Umma experience not further suggest that a more centralized, authoritarian leadership can impose quotas if it so desires, while decentralization and democratization do not ‘pay off’ if numbers are the main concern? Eman Jalal, a 30-year-old Umma party member,16 argues against an explicit focus on numbers, stressing that the leadership’s commitment to the voluntary quota only changes reality for a few select women at the centre, with the base of the party and its regional branches remaining largely untouched. For these regional branches and mahaliyat, Eman argues, the quota becomes

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simply a numbers issue: they know that they have to fulfil the 20 per cent somehow, and that ‘if you don’t bring women from your area, they [will] bring some for you from anywhere’. Eman acknowledges that the quota can open doors for women, herself included, but feels that it is not necessarily sensible to walk through them. When the 2010 elections came around, Eman was approached by the Sennar state branch of the party, who knew her vaguely since her family had roots in the area. ‘They wanted me for the national quota list,’ she says, ‘but I told them I didn’t want to be nominated. Of course as a politician, I have to enter government eventually in order to fulfil my goals, but at this point, I don’t feel that I am ready to represent a whole state.’ When asked what would make her feel ready, Eman replied simply: money. ‘Our parties don’t have money,’ she adds. ‘I would have to promise things, some of which must be achieved to keep my credibility in the area I’m running.’ Eman’s concern with building and keeping a base of support, a constituency so to speak, has led her to conclude that she must build an independent source of financing first before going through an election battle. In the meantime, she prefers focusing her energies in a space where she feels she is getting a better apprenticeship than in her party: civil society organizations, particularly human rights organizations, where she is learning about Sudanese and international law. Hawa Hussein, an MP in the National Assembly from the quota list of the Federal Umma Party, a splinter group of the (National) Umma Party that is allied with the NCP, affirms the sentiment that civil society can play a critical role in apprenticeship from her own experience. She notes that there is very little training in her party, and that there was very little even before, when the Umma party was unified. ‘How did I get trained?’ says Hawa. I was a teacher and member of the teachers’ union in Darfur. And I am the head of a voluntary organization [in her area in Darfur]. I was trained at a high level, but not by my party, rather through civil society organizations. The party can tell you about its policies, but to understand yourself as a power, that came mostly with the help of civil society.

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Eman sees quota measures of the sort that brought Hawa and others to power as more problematic than beneficial. ‘Today I go on a march,’ she says, ‘I get beat up just like the boys, they put me in jail just like them. Whenever you work with the opposite sex in the struggle, you evolve. If you limit yourself to one place, you don’t grow.’ As she sees it, the only advantage of the quota is that it guards women’s right to be represented, but she still feels that ‘if there are strong women, there would be no need for the quota’. Internal affirmative action measures have not been without their problems, even in the NCP, which is rumoured to have the highest rate of female membership of any party in Sudan. Particularly noteworthy is the extent to which women’s representation in the party’s leadership structures does not even begin to reflect the extent to which the party relies on women, organizationally and tactically. Fatima Hamad, an NCP quota MP in the Khartoum Legislative Assembly, feels that as far as her party is concerned, the prime lesson of the 2010 elections has been the extent to which the 25 per cent quota underestimated women’s importance to the party: we [women] administered the whole elections. We had the asharat [tens] system, whereby every one of our women had to reach at least ten individuals in her neighbourhood, people she trains on how to vote, what to do at the polling station, how to mark the ballots, and even on the law and the constitution. The woman also guarantees [to the party] that these people will show up on the day of the election, that they are registered.... When we asked the NCP head [almost always male] in any neighbourhood to bring us the list of the ‘tens’ in his area, we always found only women’s names on it. And even when the ‘tens’ were men, their recruiter was always a woman, who had identified them, got their registration numbers fixed if they were lost, trained them and got them there.

What Fatima did not mention were persistent complaints from the opposition that the party’s organ, the SWGU, ran a system of patronage in poor neighbourhoods, whereby women received ‘help’, such as sugar and other food items, in exchange

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for access to them by the NCP’s local representatives. Whether by trickery, persuasion, or a mix of both, there is no doubt that the NCP’s campaigning power at the grassroots owed its success to women. Fatima notes that her apprenticeship and that of many other women who consider themselves veterans of the party was at its most intense in the late 1980s, when famine still gripped the country. ‘The [El-Mahdi elected] government was completely absent from the camps then, and we [women] filled the vacuum. There were no CSOs at the time.’ The value of the NCP’s female network of information gathering and mobilization became more apparent, according to Fatima, not only to the NCP’s women, but to its men as well in the 2010 elections. This has strengthened, according to her, women’s position within the party. Since then, they have lobbied to extend the quota informally to other arenas beyond the elections, for example making it standard practice now for women to be assigned as deputies to the chairmen of the National Assembly, state legislative councils, and committees within the party. If we had wanted to turn around the table on the men in the party and get 75 per cent instead of 25 per cent, we could have; we had so much power during the elections that we could have acted on that. But we have a commitment to the party, and didn’t get greedy.... If the party leadership does not nominate me in a geographic district, as a committed party member I would not nominate myself despite them … and if I run as an independent I would be leaving my party. But if women had done that [run as independents], we would have won.

Fatima says that although women’s lobbying power had become stronger following the elections, it was always there, and she credits it for the party’s adoption of the 25 per cent quota. A few years back, at the party’s national conference, the women got together and coordinated an action. When the quota was up for discussion, we left the committees we were assigned to and entered the legal committee session where the quota was being decided. All of us were there, and we were successful in influencing the decision.

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NCP women have also been pressuring their leadership to follow in the footsteps of the SPLM and extend the quota to the executive branch, which in Sudan’s authoritarian context holds much more power than the legislative. As Magda Naseem, the Deputy Head of the Khartoum Legislative Assembly, notes: [NCP] Women took a strong stance about having a woman as a deputy in the assemblies. They said this is an issue for all Sudanese women, not just a party issue … women are constantly talking to the leadership. Just yesterday we had a meeting with the leadership where women said to them that the 25 per cent you gave us is in the legislative [branch] only, and we want 25 per cent of the executive branch and in local councils. This is a principle we are trying to integrate into the party. Women are even talking to them about train­ ing, saying that opportunities shouldn’t only go to high-level men. They said, ‘You took men to Malaysia for training, why not us?’

Alternative pathways to political empowerment: relationships matter In Sudan, the reluctance of political parties to nominate women in geographical districts or on party lists has left many women with only two choices: run on a quota seat or run as an independent, with all the challenges that poses. The story of Areej Ali Abbasher, an unemployed doctor and mother with no background in politics, illustrates both the challenges and the opportunities of an independent. Areej had once worked in the local hospital in El-Kalakla, a marginalized area of Khartoum, an experience that exposed her to the suffering of the area’s residents. When the 2010 election period began, she decided to run as an independent candidate for the Khartoum Legislative Council in one of El-Kalakla’s electoral districts. She described her campaign to me a few weeks before the election: Once I had registered as a candidate [for the Khartoum State Assembly], I printed some posters and about a thousand copies of

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my programme, which focused on elevating the standard of life in the area [by improving health services, promoting microfinance and small loans, reducing unnecessary fees and taxes by local government, and encouraging the Khalawi – religious education schools for children].… I also went to speak to a man from the area who had an organization that administered microfinance loans, and spoke to him about my plans.… We agreed that I would promote microfinance, which many people in the area did not know about, and he would support me with his connections and base.... My family had expressed a lot of fear about my plans to run, but I was determined. I decided that my only way forward, with the limited resources that I had, was to go door to door and introduce myself.... Our family had ties to the area, but they were weak compared to the men that I was running against.... My father, despite his belief that the election was fixed, was supporting me, and helped me to rent a loudspeaker and a taxi, and to pay someone to ride in it and read out my programme. For my part, I went to the market, spoke to the tea ladies on the street, went into the restaurants, and to people’s homes.… I also thought about organizing political [seminar] evenings, as I had heard that speaking two to one was more effective than one to one, which was my tactic up to that point. But when I sat down to work out the cost, it turned out to be enormous: renting out the chairs, a water cooler and a band or something fun that would attract people. I stuck to my door-to-door campaign, and decided to intensify my presence in the streets, which I am doing now. It’s hard because I leave my baby son at home in the morning when he is sleeping, and I come back at the end of the day when he is asleep for the night… People from the NCP have been coming to my father to pressure him to advise me to step down, supposedly to spare me (and him) the embarrassment of defeat. They know him because he was one of the old guard of the Islamist movement in the 1970s, though he had a falling out with them years ago, but he is still well-known to them.

Areej did not withdraw, in fact, and fought her campaign to the end. Predictably, the NCP candidate won, but she secured 1401 votes, gaining third place, ahead of 11 male candidates.17 Given the doubts cast on the elections’ credibility, it is hard to judge the extent to which the result reflects the reality of votes

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cast, but Areej’s campaign was talked about far beyond her district. Though rife with challenges and pitfalls, the fact that she contested a geographical district gave Areej an opportunity to interact intensively with potential voters, and to build a name for herself, and a constituency in the process. In contrast to this, running on a quota seat means running at the level of the whole state (rather than in a district), in a country where some states are the size of small countries. Although women running on quota lists may at times have relatively more resources and a level of protection at their disposal (since they are backed in theory by their parties), they also face an uphill struggle reaching their constituents. Not only do party power brokers frequently play a key role in deciding who gets onto the lists and in what order, but the fact that the quota is at state level means that there is a high degree of reliance on the party for campaigning. Furthermore, most parties planned out their party lists and quota list campaigns by tagging them on to those of candidates running at district level. This allowed the parties, many of which are underfunded, to maximize their (often meagre) resources, and it may have been planned with the intention of leveraging the name recognition of geographical constituency candidates for the benefit of quota and party list candidates. But it also meant that there were few opportunities for a woman candidate not already well-known to distinguish herself from another, and to build her own following. The resulting lack of a constituency on the ground in many cases begs the question: who, exactly, do women elected through the quota serve? While women running as independents in geographical constituencies, such as Areej, may have built a base that serves them well in the future, few of them were elected to state assemblies, and none to the National Assembly. All the women MPs in the latter are quota MPs. Since parties played such a powerful role in bringing them to the assembly, are they not more indebted to those parties than to the communities they are meant to serve? Here again, Najah, the PCP MP, herself elected through the quota, is pessimistic. ‘The quota women are brought

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to power by the parties’ technical committees, not by votes. So that’s where they get their instructions.’ (Note that Najah uses the third person, ‘they’, instead of the first person, ‘us’, when she is in fact a quota MP herself.) Like Areej, the independent candidate, Kagee Roman, a 26-year-old18 medical doctor, went down an alternative path to power. Kagee lost her uncle, a captain in the SPLM, during the civil war; though she was a child at the time, his death affected her deeply. He had lived with her family, and ‘was one of the finest men [she] had ever seen’. She was particularly disturbed by the fact that the family could not, given the political climate at the time, hold a funeral for him in Khartoum. The experience contributed to her interest in the SPLM and the work it was doing. She tried her hand in politics prior to 2005 (when the CPA was signed), but informally. For a time, she worked as a member of the New Sudan Women’s Association, a civil society group affiliated with the SPLM. It was not until the signature of the peace agreement in 2005 that Kagee entered politics formally, joining the organization in the midst of its transformation from an armed movement to a political party and co-ruler. Kagee was not yet 20 at the time. As soon as the peace agreement was signed, the SPLM began readying itself for the arrival of its leader, Dr John Garang de Mabior, to the capital, where he would join the government. There was one small problem. however: two underground SPLM cells had formed in Khartoum during the war years, and thus two rival branches emerged with claims to represent the party. The two groups were summoned to the SPLM’s headquarters in the south of the country to plead their case. Kagee recounts being telephoned by a leader of one of the cells, who explained to her that he had been asked to bring four individuals with him to the meeting. ‘He said to me, I choose you to be a part of the four, because in the SPLM there is the 25 per cent for women, and I think for our negotiation to be stronger than the other group, I should show them that I’m concerned about all the various groups, including women.’ She

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objected at first, telling him she had been away from political work for at least six months, and did not know the group’s issues. The leader convinced her, however, giving her other reasons for choosing her: that she was the most qualified, knew both Arabic and English, and had a convincing personality. The endorsement by her father, who told her not to miss such a historic opportunity to meet Dr Garang, swayed her in favour of going. The choice to take Kagee along was not easily accepted amongst the other women in the group, some of whom had worked diligently for years in the movement. In particular, the choice to send her instead of the head of the New Sudan Women’s Association created tension between the two women. Kagee explained to her colleague that ‘There were only four seats, and they needed a woman as well as an Equatorian’ (from the Equatoria region of South Sudan). Since the other woman came from the same region as the group’s leader, it would reflect better for the cell to take Kagee along instead, since she ticked both the gender and ethnicity boxes. Though Kagee’s entry into politics was almost coincidental, she would soon exhibit remarkable political skills, which, coupled with fierce loyalty to the party, caught the attention of the SPLM’s leadership, including Dr Garang himself. She insists that her apprenticeship came not from formal training but through inclusion in the work of the party by being assigned responsibility beyond her years. This allowed her to learn practical skills, and, more important, to understand how the party, and politics in general, was best practised: Dr Garang put me on the ‘committee of ten’ charged with picking SPLM MPs in the north [for the appointed parliament of 2005]. I was picked because I came from Central Equatoria, was a woman, a quick learner, and a perfectionist.… At the time, everything was happening [politically] all at once. The SPLM was transforming from a liberation movement in the bush to a political movement … and forming a government was a priority in order to meet the CPA timeline. I learned on the job.… I disagreed with one of the top SPLM leaders about a guy they wanted to pick for Parliament. I

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thought he was irresponsible and an opportunist, and said this at a meeting with the man himself present.... I put rules for myself then. I don’t speak, don’t criticize, except in [official] party meetings. Other than that, I defend my party everywhere … what happens in our meetings I never discuss outside them.

Kagee’s rise in the party was meteoric. She soon gained a place within the SPLM in northern Sudan, where she worked as assistant in the youth and students division, then in the research and training secretariat, and finally, at the time of interview, as the Secretary of Culture, Media and Information, an important appointed position and a surprising promotion for such a young person, of any gender, in Sudan. Though the quota was an important gain for SPLM women, and helped Kagee herself get started in the party, she does not pay much attention to it. For Kagee, what is important to a woman’s political career is not so much instruments like the quota, but learning how to navigate the internal politics of the party, two key components of which are networks and information. This, she maintains, requires at times stepping into spaces women are traditionally excluded from. As she puts it: You have to have your own personal network, the people you know who know you; where you can get your information. It’s not just about the party, the office, a meeting that you attend and leave. You have to know in the evening who you need to hang out with. This is why politics works for men in Sudan more than women. The focus for us [women] is things we attend and leave. At night, with men, this one goes to that one, they discuss things. I used to go and sit with them in these sessions … their women were worried at first and then they realized I had no ulterior agenda.

Asked about the role her family has played in her political career, she speaks about her father. I have trust from him. He never questions me when I tell him that I am travelling. He doesn’t give me a feeling of doubt. If I come [home] at 2 or 3 a.m., it’s fine. Sometimes I take someone from the family with me [to political activities], so they get a sense of what I do. Family is a big, big source of support.

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Welaa Salah El-Deen is another young woman who has charted an alternative path for herself in politics. A graduate student in her mid 20s, Welaa is studying law at the University of Khartoum. She was raised by a mother active in advocating for women’s rights, and both her parents were left-leaning and politically active, though they hid the bulk of their political activities from their children when Welaa was growing up. Welaa first became involved in politics in secondary school, but since political work is strictly forbidden in Sudanese schools, her work was tentative and sought to attract as little attention as possible. Rather, she focused on opening up conversation with other students through social and cultural activities. While she argues that she had few political skills coming into university, she does credit her work at secondary school for giving her an organizational edge compared to her peers, since she was particularly good at building structures: putting together committees assigned with various tasks and figuring out how to organize them to be effective. For Welaa, university was a steep learning curve. The Univer­sity of Khartoum is known as an important terrain for the apprenticeship of young people into politics. Historically, the Islamists and communists have used it as a staging ground for the recruitment of new members, and to apprentice their cadres in political work. Political organizing at the University of Khartoum has proved decisive in changing the course of events at key historical junctures, most notably in the lead-up to and during the 1985 Intifada that brought down the Nimeiri regime. Direct confrontation and ideological battles between the two ‘radical’ rivals on campus – the leftists and the Islamists – are known to be intense, and have turned violent on more than one occasion under this regime. Soon after beginning her first year at university, Welaa joined the Democratic Front (DF) – the coalition of leftist students that fields candidates for the student union. According to Welaa, the DF runs training programmes for its members on everything from public speaking to self-defence, and makes books available

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to them. ‘You get judged on your practice,’ says Welaa when explaining the criteria used by the DF’s leadership in selecting from amongst the organization’s membership for various tasks. If the DF has something that needs doing, you work in your college, but at the same time you work in the arena that you’re interested in. If the leadership evaluates you to be good at something, let’s say public speaking, you get trained in that. In fact, public speaking is the team that typically has the most girls in it.

In the early days, Welaa noticed that women students were not attending many of the trainings, debates and activities that the DF ran on campus, and which attracted non-affiliated students as well as DF members. The time that I got the most immersion in mass political work, I feel, was the time I spent in the girls’ dormitory. There were problems at all levels. First off, political activities at the university start late, and the dorms place restrictions on the movement of women students after 9 p.m., so the girls don’t attend the evening seminars [organized by the DF and others].… Even though there are more women students than male students at the university, the women’s actual participation, other than during union elections, is limited. They vote, but they are not active in the politics of the university as a whole. We [herself and other DF women activists] started working inside the dorms. We joined the dorm committees, the environmental committee and the health committee – which we understood first and foremost as pressure groups [for change]. The DF had certain activities they ran each week – a cultural seminar, a debate corner and so on. So we recreated these activities inside the dorm, sometimes focusing on the same topics, at other times picking issues of more relevance to female students. The response was immense. Our debates went on till 4 a.m. at times.… We went through some difficult times then, because the Sanduuq [Sanduuq Da’em el-Tulab – the University’s Student Support Fund, controlled by the NCP] was not comfortable with what we were doing, and there was violence directed against us, not just us but unaffiliated students. We were beaten up, and our room was set on fire by other women … we immediately went to the main campus in our ‘house clothes’ to show everyone what had been done to us. We organized

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a sit-in in the main avenue outside the university gates and got media attention. That was a case where we went against our organization [the DF], whose feeling was that we should calm down, but we felt we had to make a point that we had no security in our residence. This action unified the women students so much that they started demanding their rights – housing, security and the freedom to hold activities in the dorm.

Welaa feels that the DF is a progressive organization when it comes to women, because it does not separate them out into a ‘women’s division’. ‘We are in the cells together, in the committees together, in the central office and the secretariats together,’ she says. However, she still admits that women’s presence in the leadership is low. As she puts it, ‘there are equal opportunities, but not an equal chance to benefit from those opportunities’ – for example, because the meetings are held late, many women are precluded from attending. The other reason, she says, is ‘no matter how much we think we are in progressive organizations, views about women are not as advanced as they should be’. Welaa’s leadership in the dorm actions was recognized how­ ever. Though she was eventually banned from the dorms and had to sneak in whenever her political work required her to, she had helped build strong relationships that extended beyond her organization, and a popular base of support amongst female students. That, in combination with her work in DF committees, not only resulted in her eventually being fielded as the DF’s candidate for the student union elections, but in her victory – becoming the first female in the long history of the University of Khartoum to be elected president of the powerful student union. I interviewed Welaa at the beginning of 2011. Shortly after, young people began challenging the regime with bolder protests than before. In June and July 2012, the protests were reignited, small but numerous and sustained, spreading throughout the country. The spark that ignited them is widely credited to demon­st­rations by University of Khartoum female students in the women’s dorm. Though the events Welaa recounts had

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long passed, they attest to the fact that political consciousness and political skills are often built in spaces outside political party trainings and donor-funded governance workshops. Welaa remained active at the university and outside it, joining the Com­munist Party, and was imprisoned briefly during the 2012 protests.

Conclusions Quota advocates argue that quotas should be encouraged, since they have proved effective in increasing the number of women in government. This has certainly been true in the case of Sudan, since the introduction of the quota led to the highest representation for women compared to any Parliament in the country’s history. Though the quota was supported by international development actors, it was not externally imposed, but rather mobilized for by women in both the opposition and the ruling parties. A close look at the numbers following the 2010 elections, however, reveals that in a context of authoritarianism, the quota has also increased the dominance of the ruling party in legislative bodies, drowning out other voices completely, while allowing the regime to boast about its progressive gender credentials. Arguably, the main gain of the quota is the extent to which it mobilized women to enter politics, and in numbers that would have been unimaginable just ten years before. Research by Balghis Badri, a professor at Ahfad University for Women in Omdurman, shows that the number of state and national-level women candidates in the (then) 15 states of northern Sudan reached 2,872 (Badri 2010).19 As a political education, the experience was certainly an incredibly rich one. As a historical moment, it was also poignant, representing as it does the breaking of a historical barrier, and showing how far Sudanese women have come politically since the last multi-party elections in 1986, when only a handful of women ran for Parliament. Several women that I interviewed who were old enough to remember the 1986 elections, including women in the opposition who have become

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disillusioned with the CPA and the elections, spoke about the impact of the quota on the Sudanese psyche. The simple fact of so many women’s faces on display, openly, on campaign posters in the streets, was a radical break with the past. However, the Sudan experience also indicates that, although the quota may open doors, it is not always wise, from a gender perspective, to walk through them. In many ways, the quota further isolated women within their own parties (an isolation they carried with them into the legislature), and instead of uniting women candidates, it created divisions between them. Women’s experiences in the 2010 elections have also raised a range of issues beyond the quota that have had a critical impact on their candidacies, and have received much less attention. Some of them have proved difficult to surmount. These include an acute lack of funds for women in the opposition (particularly independents); limited access to the media; intimidation and harassment in some cases; and continued marginalization within party structures and processes in many others. More important perhaps, the quota did not address the critical challenge of Sudanese women’s political history – namely the patriarchal reluctance of parties to nominate women in standard geographical seats. As a top-down measure, the 2008 quota, as well as voluntary quotas like the National Umma Party’s, have not yet succeeded in changing mindsets regarding women, and women who gain seats through quotas often continue to be perceived by their male peers as by and large an ‘add-on’ – attached to the existing structure without altering it in any way. The stories of Aisha, Kagee, Welaa and others point to factors other than the quota that make a pronounced difference in women’s political pathways, namely the relationships that they build on multiple levels and their ability to tap into different social and political repertoires at various points of their trajec­ tories. It is through the latter that constituencies are built and political apprenticeship is developed. In my interviews with Wedad, Hawa and Eman, it became clear that a robust political apprenticeship can be had in civil society, a space that has allowed

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those three women to engage in ways that were sometimes closed to them in their parties. There, they were able to gain valuable information (on human rights, say, or relevant laws); build networks unmediated by party leadership; travel and see conditions in the country first hand; and engage in organizational and advocacy work that helped develop skills easily redeployed in the service of their political careers. Welaa cut her teeth politically in the women’s dorm. This suggests that programmes and spaces not specifically targeted at women seeking access to politics can be critical to women’s political pathways. The stories told in this chapter offer some tentative lessons to international donors and organizations, many of whom have spent sizable funds on women’s empowerment programmes. Donor-supported programmes have always functioned with some significant omissions and underlying assumptions – for example, not recognizing the role families play in women’s political lives, or assuming that this role is a negative one. The stories shared above suggest that, at least in the context of urban women in Sudan, family members are often an important inspiration for women in deciding to enter politics, and are frequently a critical source of support. Kagee’s father comes to mind; not only did he convince her to take the trip to South Sudan that changed her political trajectory, and by extension her whole life, but he continues to be a strong source of support in her life. Areej’s father, despite his reluctance regarding her decision to run for office, gave her financial support at key moments in her campaign and shielded her to the extent he could from political pressure. The women in Areej’s family have also been a key support to her, taking care of her baby while she was out knocking on doors. Aisha’s family did not stand in her way, even in the more conservative context of South Darfur. That family can at times be a positive force in women’s political lives, at least in urban areas, is supported by a survey conducted by the Sudanese Studies Centre for UNDP in 2006 (Ali et al. 2006): 102 mid-level party members were surveyed (51 of whom were women), and women cited party

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leaders as the biggest barrier to their progress, while none cited family and husbands as such. The experience of the quota as a pathway to power in Sudan should encourage donor organizations and civil society organizations – international and national – to question the idea that quotas should always be promoted, regardless of the context. The Sudan experience further problematizes the linear path that most of the UN assistance programmes follow: promote the quota, then train women candidates, then carry out capacity building for women MPs, then do it all again when the next elections come around. As most women interviewed have attested, training is important, but ‘membership’, networks, resources, interaction with male colleagues, and information are often more valuable than ‘a meeting that we attend and leave’, to use Kagee’s words.

Notes 1 The DUP came about as a result of a merger in the 1960s between the National Unionist Party (NUP) the party led by Sudan’s secular President at independence, Ismail Al-Azhari, and the Khatmiyya’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP). 2 There have also been times when the parties collaborated with military regimes, but those times tended to be short-lived. At the time of writing, the main branch of the DUP, led by El-Mirghani, is allied with the NCP government, but several other offshoots of the party, like the DUP-Unified, are in the opposition. 3 The ruling party emerged and was named the ‘National Congress Party’ following a leadership battle within the NIF in 1998, from which Al-Bashir emerged victorious. 4 Political openings only came after the above split occurred, which helped bring a new openness to other political forces in the country. 5 Personal communication from the Deputy of the National Assembly Women’s Caucus, January 2011. 6 Two further women were elected for the SPLM in the south in nonquota seats, making the number of women elected to the National Assembly following the 2010 elections 114 (out of a total of 450 seats). 7 Personal communication from the Deputy of the Khartoum State Assembly, January 2011. 8 There are several non-NCP quote seats: three from the PCP representing

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South Darfur, two from the SPLM (later renamed SPLM-North) repre­ senting South Kordofan and Blue Nile, and one from the Federal Umma Party, a splinter of the National Umma Party that allied with the NCP at the election (and is thus not counted as an opposition party). ­9 All personal details (job titles, ages, etc.) as well as figures related to par­ lia­mentary representation refer to the time of writing (August 2011). 10 Several prominent opposition party leaders have led their parties significantly longer than Al-Bashir’s reign. This includes not only the ‘sectarian’ parties – the Umma and the DUP – but also others, including the Sudan Communist Party, which was led by Mohamed Ibrahim Nugud for over 40 years, until his death in March 2012. 11 The PCP is an opposition party that was formed by Sheikh Hassan ElTurabi, former chief ideologue of the NIF, following the split in the NIF in the late 1990s. 12 All the interviews that follow were conducted in January and February 2011, with the exception of the interview with Areej Ali Abbasher, which was conducted in March 2010. 13 Darfur was one state then. Under the NCP, it was divided into three states. In 2012, it was re-divided into five states: Central Darfur, East Darfur, North Darfur, South Darfur and West Darfur. 14 The Muslim Brotherhood is today a small party separate from the NCP, but allied with the regime. The organization that Aisha speaks of is the precursor to the NIF. 15 Women generally do vote in larger proportions than men in Sudanese elections. See Abbas 2010. 16 At the time of interview, January 2011. 17 http://www.sunaelections.com/elections-result/khartoum-statevoting-results/state-congress-sudan-elections.html (accessed 7 Sep­ tem­ber 2012). 18 At the time of interview, January 2011. 19 At the time of the 2010 elections, there were 15 states in the north, and ten states in the south. After South Sudan declared independence in 2011, 15 states remained in the Republic of Sudan (formerly northern Sudan), but 2 new states were carved out of the Darfur region in 2012, bringing the total to 17 states.

References Abbas, S. (2007) ‘“Change will come, of that I am sure”: A Conversation with Dr Amna Dirar of the Eastern Front’, Transition, Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 18–32.

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—— (2010) ‘The Sudanese Women’s Movement and the Mobilisation for the 2008 Legislative Quota and Its Aftermath’, IDS Bulletin, Vol. 41, No. 5, pp. 62–71. Al-Hashimi, S. (2008) ‘Women’s Rights in Political Party Constitutions and Directives’, paper presented at the Women and Elections Workshop, organized by the Frederich Ebert Foundation and Sudanese Studies Centre, 19 and 20 August [in Arabic]. Ali, H. I. et al. (2006) ‘Study of Political Parties' Structure and Programs’, the Sudanese Studies Centre and the Good Governance and Equity in Political Participation Project (UNDP Sudan), Khartoum, unpublished. Badri, B. (2010) ‘The Impact of the Application of the Women Quota System in the Electoral Law of Sudan 2008’, paper presented at the conference on Sudanese Women Voice: Support and Elect Her, UNIFEM and the Political Parties Affairs Council (Sudan), 23–25 March, Khartoum. El-Battahani, A. (2002) ‘Multi-Party Elections and the Predicament of Northern Hegemony’, in M. Cowen and L. Laakso (eds), Multi-Party Elections in Africa, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. El-Khawad, E. A. (2008) ‘The Sudanese Woman and Elections’ in B. Badri (ed.), The Sudanese Woman: Her Present and Her Future, Ahfad University for Women, Institute for Women, Gender and Development Studies, Omdurman [in Arabic]. Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) (2012) PARLINE Database: Sudan (Majlis Watani), http://www.ipu.org/parline/, (accessed 7 December 2012). Niblock, T. (1987) Class and Power in Sudan: The Dynamics of Sudanese Politics, 1898–1985, State University of New York Press, New York, NY. Osman, N. E. M. (2004) ‘Sudanese Women’s Political Participation’, paper presented at the First Democratic Arab Women’s Forum, ‘Women’s Political Empowerment: A Necessary Step Towards Political Reform in the Arab World’, Sana’a, 11–13 December. Republic of Sudan National Elections Act 2008, Ministry of Justice, Sudanese Government.

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6 Crafting Political Pathways through the Exclusionary Mesh in India Kanchan Mathur

After becoming the vice-sarpanch my respect within my family and amongst my relatives has increased. My sons and daughters-in-law also look up to me. Today I play a far greater role in the decisionmaking process of the household. I am involved with decisions regarding the education and health of my family members. My decisions are also sought in agricultural activities. At the community level there is a shift in my social image. I am invited for public meetings. I am also leading many religious and community-based activities. (Fariman Bano, vice-sarpanch)

Men and women entering the public domain bring with them different histories, roles and responsibilities, and there is a need for structures to be sensitive to differential constraints. An unequal gender representation along with other intersecting variables of religion, caste, class and regional disparities affect the quality of governance. Historical subordination – coupled with lack of resource endowment and denial of entry into the sociopolitical milieu – distances women from the public arena and deter­mines their unequal status and participation in the process of governance. Women, particularly those belonging to the most marginalized groups, face greater violence and insecurity. Hence, women ‘more than any other group’ need state intervention to create spaces for their participation in the public sphere (Mukhopadhyay 2005). Three points are key to the argument for gendered repre­sen­ tation and gendered citizenship. First, on the grounds of justice, 50 202

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per cent of the population should have 50 per cent representation. Second, women’s and men’s different experiences need to be separately represented so that men’s are not taken as the norm and the basis for political decisions. Third, since women’s and men’s interests are different and often conflict, they should both be represented in decision-making bodies (Mukhopadhyay and Meer 2004). A gender-sensitive agenda is also seen as encompassing equal distribution of power and resources, more accountability to gender-equitable outcomes, and increased participation of women in the decisions affecting their lives, households and com­munities (Panda 2008). It has been argued that several issues pertaining to gender and power continue to be addressed only nominally as they arise in the processes of governance (Tambiah 2003: 59). Making gender equality a core concern in governing development would involve engagement with institutions of the household and the community – as well as the market and the state – to change norms, rules and practices. It would also mean working with the most marginalized women and men to develop their ‘voice’ and agency. The principle of gender equality is enshrined in the Indian constitution in its preamble and in sections on ‘fundamental rights’, ‘fundamental duties’ and ‘directive principles of state policy’. The constitution not only guarantees equality to women, but also empowers the state to adopt measures of positive discrimination in favour of women. The movements and struggles during emergency rule between 26 June 1975 and 21 March 1977,1 and also in the post-emergency period, led to further debates on women’s issues and renewed activity in favour of women. A pervasive aspect of the emergency was an interest in human rights that sprang from the denial of life and liberty as experienced by citizens during that period. It sensitized the articulate and vocal sections of society to human rights. Emergency rule was marked by detention without trial, news censorship, trespassing without legal sanction of private premises, telephone tapping, interception of letters, and constitutional amendments curtailing basic rights to

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life and freedom while civil liberties were violated in the name of national security (Patel 2010). The civil liberties movement was thus also a product of emergency rule. Post-emergency, there was a sharper focus on women in development in five-year plans VI and VII, the National Perspective Plan (NPP) for women, and the alternative perspective plan offered by the women’s movement. The National Commission for Women was set up by an act of Parliament in 1990 to safeguard the rights and legal entitlements of women. India also ratified various international conventions and human rights instruments committed to securing equal rights of women. Of key importance was the ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1993. In an effort to ensure equal representation, laws have also been instituted in India for a quota-based representation of women in political and public bodies. The 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act of 1992 aimed to empower women in rural local governments (panchayats) and the 74th amendment reserved seats for women in urban local bodies. Decentralized governance – through the panchayati raj system – and quotas for women, implemented since 24 April 1993, have brought over a million elected women into positions of responsibility, and has been hailed as a ‘silent revolution’ (GoI 2011). This significant achievement has come about through explicit affirmative action interventions in political institutions and processes to favour women’s participation. However, as Goetz argues, there is a difference between a numerical increase in women representatives, and the representation of women’s interests in government decision making. One does not automatically lead to the other, not just because individual women politicians cannot all be assumed to be concerned with gender equity, but also because of institutionalized resistance to gender equity within the apparatus of governance (Goetz 1998). This chapter aims to critically understand the ‘positionality’ of elected women representatives (EWRs) in India and more specifically in the state of Rajasthan at multiple levels – political,

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social, economic and personal – with the aim of analysing factors enabling and constraining women’s political pathways through the intersections of gender, caste, class and ethnicity. It analyses the spaces and places providing opportunities for women to assume leadership and the trade-offs inherent in political apprenticeship. It documents women’s experiences in their new political role, looking at processes of change and problems of participation. It considers the inherent potential of empowered women who enjoy the support of families, communities and other social collectives. The key question it attempts to answer is how women negotiate with the patriarchal structures and hegemonic institutions of society, seeking to overcome the exclusionary web that inhibits their participation. Drawing on women’s voices, it attempts to underscore what needs to be done at the policy level to create a more enabling environment for EWRs – moving beyond ‘blueprints and technical fixes’ designed without taking into consideration the differential positions of women cutting across caste and educational backgrounds. The chapter has the following structure. The next section discusses the historical evolution of decentralization in India, including the limited roles played by women within it. The main features of the decentralization reforms in the 1990s and debates on women’s participation in this new structure are reviewed. The chapter then focuses on selected EWRs in Rajasthan – a state swathed in patriarchal and feudal structures – to understand the obstacles and impediments women encounter in seeking routes to political participation, and the ways in which they negotiate with existing structures in attempting to challenge the hegemonic power centres. The concluding section of the chapter draws on women’s voices to arrive at policy implications. Data for this chapter came from a larger study conducted by a team of researchers at the Institute for Development Studies, Jaipur for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Indira Gandhi Panchayati Raj (IGPR) and Gramin Vikas Sansthan (GVS) in 2012. Women’s experiences were documented using both qualitative and quantitative data. Methodological tools

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included three separate questionnaires for assembly women within the three tiers of rural local governance – zila parishad (ZP), panchayat samiti (PS) and gram panchayat (GP).2 Focus group discussions (FGDs) were conducted at all three levels, and in-depth interviews were held with key stakeholders at state, district, block and GP levels. Life histories of selected women at each level were also documented. A multi-stage stratified random sampling design was adopted for the survey. Seven districts were selected, one from each of the seven divisions of the state where female zila pramukhs are in position. At the district level, the zila pramukh and two female members of the zila parishad were interviewed. Then, from each selected district, two panchayat samitis, headed by female pradhans, were chosen and the pradhan and two female panchayat samiti members were interviewed in each. From each panchayat samiti, two gram panchayats, headed by female sarpanches, were selected and the sarpanch and two female ward members were interviewed in each. Thus a total of 147 EWRs at all three levels were interviewed.

Gender and decentralized governance in India In India, panchayati raj institutions (PRIs) are the basic units of rural local governance, particularly since the inception of the 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments on 24 April 1993 and 1 June 1993. However, decentralized governance to strengthen democracy and to reach development at the grassroots level has been part of the government’s agenda even before the 1992 Panchayat Raj Act. The Balwant Rai Mehta Committee Report (1959) saw democratic decentralization as a way of making good the failure of community development programmes. This was followed by the recommendations of the Ashok Mehta Committee (1978), which emphasized the importance of PRIs for strengthening democracy and local development. Women’s representation was not mentioned in either report, however. India witnessed the world’s largest experiment in grassroots local

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democracy triggered by the 73rd and 74th amendments, which revived a clear mandate for democratically elected panchayats at the village, district and block levels with provisions for (1) regular elections, powers and resources, including the preparation of plans for economic development and social justice, and powers to impose taxes by, and funds for the panchayats; (2) representation of the hitherto socially and politically marginalized sections of scheduled castes (SC), scheduled tribes (ST) and women. Since 1995, four rounds of PRI elections have been held, with one-third of the seats reserved for women (increasing to 50 per cent in several states) – out of the total 2,800,000 elected panchayat representatives, around 1,000,000 are estimated to be women. With the amendment to Article 243 D of the constitution in 2009, which provides for a 50 per cent quota for women in seats and also in the role of chairperson in all three tiers of panchayats, the number of EWRs is expected to rise to more than 1,400,000 (GoI 2008). The quota applies not only to the total membership but also within those sections reserved for the SC and ST, thus providing for women’s reservation across castes and class. Hence, all panchayats at every level are authorized to have at least one-third women members (women can contest for other seats too), and at least one-third of panchayats at each level, district to village, will be headed by women chairpersons. According to Buch (2000) this mandated minimum one-third reservation has ensured entry of women, in a critical mass, into mainstream politics at the grassroots level. It is a major step towards ‘inclusive’ politics as it embraces the most marginalized groups and addresses their continued political marginality, and it has the potential to change existing gender relations. Decentralization and participatory planning were flagged in the mid-1990s as major instruments of extending social develop­ ment to ever greater sections of people, improving government delivery, and raising productivity through economic activities planned at the local level with people’s participation (Issac 2001). This has been seen as providing an opportunity to improve local-

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level development through people’s enhanced access to adequate information on local-level issues (Bardhan 2002; Chattopadhyay and Duflo 2004). One-third reservation of women in PRIs is also seen as giving women constitutional powers and responsibilities for a range of issues including resource management, family planning, education and health. With the participation of women in PRIs, inter-personal relations within their families have changed for the better and this political process has heightened women’s perceptions of their own capabilities. Even very marginalized women have become politically active despite constraints such as illiteracy, lack of experience, family responsibilities, restrictive social norms, lack of an enabling environment and violence (Singh 2012). Devaki Jain (2006) argues that ‘the success of the PRIs lies in the possibility of women transforming the state from within. The new arrangement provides the first step to converting grass­ roots leadership into state leadership.’ Here women are not just bene­ ficiaries from, but also contributors to the development processes. A major aspect of the 73rd and 74th amendments is the participation of women from lower socio-economic back­ grounds, whereas it was just the elite groups before (Buch 2000). It has also been argued that the participation of women in the public sphere has led to an increased articulation of their issues within the political and social spheres. Previously they were vulnerable in these spheres as they were not allowed to participate in meetings – or, if they had a token presence there, were not allowed to voice their opinions or concerns. The PRI experiences from different parts of India show that there is hope of greater equality in governance structures as women are asserting themselves on issues closer to their lives, such as drinking water, borewells, sanitation, loans from government credit institutions and so on (Narayanan 2002). Other studies have highlighted factors that enable women’s participation in institutions of local governance. Women’s collec­ tives such as self-help groups are found to play a catalytic role in enabling women to organize and articulate their interests better,

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engaging in decision making in the family and community. Accord­ing to one view, women belonging to such groups are more likely to undertake a leadership role and develop the skills, confi­dence and support base required for entering PRIs as elected repre­sentatives (Purushothaman et al. 2010; Sharma and Sudarshan 2010). But several questions have been raised on the nature and participation of women in local governance institutions, and women’s experience has been researched extensively by scholars to understand whether issues related to equity and empowerment have been addressed. They assert that the 33 per cent reservation for women has shown mixed results and though women’s representation has increased numerically, their experience in decision-making processes, especially at the local level, has been chequered. Exclusion is seen as the hallmark of the Indian system even several years after the instigation of village councils under Part IX of the constitution. Baviskar and Mathew (2009) assert that, considering Indian women’s long history under patriarchy, they now seem to be on the path to empowerment – albeit at a slow pace. It has also been posited that political representation of women through the quota provides them with recognition without ensuring the redistribution of resources, thereby limiting the transformative potential of this instrument (Rai 1999). Existing literature also reveals that enabling structures like the reservations for women in PRIs, although important, cannot on their own provide impetus for the exercise of engendered governance. Engendered governance means that elected representatives, both men and women, place the marginalization of women’s interests at centre stage when looking at the common good of the communities they represent (Mohan 2008). Governance has to be considered as a project of social construction which includes issues of inclusion, equity and equality in order to be meaningful to ordinary women and men (Mukhopadhyay 2003). Some political thinkers hold that although democratic decentral­ization has improved levels of public participation and

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service delivery, it has also given rise to elite politicians at the local level (Besley et al. 2007) and domination of local institutions by local elites (Crook and Manor 1998; Bastian and Luckham 2003). They argue that while the rural economy plays a crucial role in delivering development benefits, its characteristic features are hierarchy and male domination in the Indian context. Though there have been success stories of women and marginalized groups at the local level since decentralized governance came into being, its potential to articulate their issues in local-level institutions is yet to be realized. Others assert that promises of decentralized planning have not been transferred into practice, impeded by several factors that act as roadblocks to equality and justice. For instance, the women lack formal qualifications and face communication problems with officials in addressing the grievances of their constituents. Besides, women elected to local politics come under the moralistic gaze and become targets of character assassination (Tambiah 2003). Men often resort to violence and coercion to prevent them from engaging in political governance systems (Anandhi 2002; Devika and Kadoth 2001). Access to resources and participation by women in decisionmaking bodies are seen as key elements for women’s empower­ ment, but women are often excluded from ownership of capital, and this is one of the main ironies of India’s development (Harris 2001). Their increasing exclusion from access to resources, a tendency embedded in societal values and norms, leads to the material powerlessness of women. Available evidence suggests that in many places EWRs are a token presence and the actual power resides with husbands, sons or brothers. Expressions like pati panch or pati pradhan or proxy representatives, where the husband of the elected woman is the actual decision maker, are common parlance (ISST 2005). Studies have exposed important limitations on women’s participation in PRIs due to the continued existence of certain institutional and social barriers that propagate gender inequality. Jayal (2006) highlights inadequate devolution of functions, a lack

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of financial and planning autonomy, bureaucratic influence, and policy of seat rotation as some of the institutional barriers. She also identifies social barriers such as lack of education, oppressive patriarchal and caste structures, lack of respect for women in PRIs, physical violence in the public and domestic spheres, and local politics governed by caste/class/religious dynamics. Even where women occupy positions in elected office, the terms of inclusion, the role and influence of traditional authorities, the rules of decentralization, the gender-based division of labour, and other factors play a role in determining the nature and extent of their participation (Mukhopadhyay 2005). Training programmes are considered instrumental in helping EWRs understand their roles and responsibilities and developing their administrative, technical and financial knowledge to help them function more effectively (Sharma 2004). But according to a national-level study commissioned by the Ministry of Panchayati Raj (GoI 2008), 50 per cent of the EWRs in the country did not receive any training after being elected. Further, 45 per cent of female ex-pradhans did not contest second elections because they felt incompetent in executing their responsibilities and the work entailed was unsuitable for them. However, the situation varies from state to state. In Rajasthan state, Mayaram (2002) asserts that society’s attitude towards EWRs has not changed. In fact, opinion is firmly against the public appearance of women because it is still believed that women should be confined to the home. Violence against EWRs is an important factor in the context of Rajasthan, since it points to a particular kind of power structure within which these women are negotiating and creating their gendered spaces as a result of their own subjectivities originating from their caste, class and ethnic identities. The role of the state is also apparent in this regard, evident from policies like the ‘two-child norm’ under the population policy made applicable at the panchayat level by the state government. The provision of the two-child norm was introduced within the Panchayati Raj Act, which also introduced a cut-off date

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for implementation. Section 19 (1) of the Panchayat Act of Rajasthan debars and disqualifies a person from being a member of a panchayat if he/she has more than two living children, at least one of whom was born on or after 27 November 1995. The number of children produced before the cut-off date is immaterial and the law is not applicable in such cases. It is expected that the panches and sarpanches will maintain the norm of two children as an example to the public (Mathur 2008). A study conducted by the NGO Unnati on women’s par­tici­ pation in local governance in Rajasthan found that decentral­ized spaces, which are meant to promote inclusion of women in public spheres, are not gender-neutral. Women’s dependency on men to access and influence decision making is also evident. Masculine control in family and community limits the active participation of women in decision making within political spheres as well as institutions of the family (Unnati 2008). What follows is an exploration of the political engagement of EWRs in institutions of local governance in Rajasthan. I shall analyse the spaces and places providing opportunities for women to assume leadership, and the trade-offs inherent in political apprenticeship. The aim is a nuanced understanding of women’s experience in their new political role; of the processes of change; of inherent and potential problems; and of the roles of families, communities and other social collectives. The purpose is to decide whether this new presence and experience has had a positive and empowering effect on the lives of EWRs.

Women’s political participation in Rajasthan Women’s political participation in Rajasthan has to be viewed against a backdrop of feudal history, rigid gender norms and deep-rooted disadvantages that pervade all spheres of domestic and social life. Women in the state have less access and control than men over the crucial resources of health, education and employment. They live under the constant threat of violence; are discriminated against and exploited; and are denied the

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right to make informed choices over their bodies and sexuality. Societal control over and regulation of these spaces violates bodily integrity, rendering them powerless. In a deeply ingrained system of patriarchy, a woman’s identity and role continue to be defined through her (subordinated) relationship to men. Further, the power imbalance between women and men exacerbates many vulnerability factors for women; they tend to be poorer than men, for example, and have less spatial mobility. Gender relations are shaped not only by men’s power over women but also by gendered behaviour that is deeply embedded in social structures and institutions. Gender relations in Rajasthan display a different set of rules for men and women, which get translated into practices. For example, women are made to observe purdah;3 they are not allowed to join either a wedding procession or a funeral; and are made to observe fasts on behalf of male family members. They are also required to maintain a distance from men in public spaces. It is these institutional practices that have gained legitimacy and perpetuate women’s subordination while upholding male domination. Essentially, discrimination against women takes place in four contexts – the family, the community, the market (or workplace) and the state – and across this spectrum key social institutions fulfil critical and interactive functions in defining, legitimating and maintaining women’s subordinated status (Mathur 2004). The result is that women have always been on the fringe of political and social power. There was slow progress in agency to improve the condition of women in Rajasthan just after indepen­ dence. Mahila mandals (traditional local women’s organizations) were an important tool for women’s autonomy for about a decade after independence. However, women continued to be excluded from politics. Not a single woman candidate was elected in the 1952 Legislative Assembly elections. The representation of women was 4 per cent in 1967 and reached 8 per cent in 1985– 90. The average percentage of women in legislatures continued to be low at 5 per cent until 2004 (CSDS Data Unit 2010). The enforcement of the 73rd amendment mandated that at

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least one-third of elected representatives should be women, and was in direct contrast to the earlier token inclusion of one or two women nominated by government or co-opted by the predominantly influential, powerful male membership and leadership of the panchayats. In 2010, the reservation for women increased to 50 per cent in Rajasthan – enabling an even larger number of women to be elected for the first time and to engage in grassroots democracy as independent leaders in their own right. However, several critical issues emerge in the context of the state. Has the formal change brought in by the institutional intervention of quotas adequately addressed women’s marginality, or has it only increased their presence in numerical terms? Has the numerical presence transformed these structures and made them more receptive to women’s needs and concerns, or has patriarchy already succeeded in subverting the intentions of the amendment? Part of the answers to these questions lies in the experience of women who have entered the three levels of the panchayati raj system. Profiling the selected EWRs Of the 147 EWRs covered by the study, a large majority (62 per cent) were in the younger and middle-aged group of 21–45 years. They were energetic and have begun taking the initiative in influencing political decisions/agendas. This could lead to an expansion of spaces for younger women within local governance bodies. However, belonging to a younger age group involves a continuous struggle between roles in the domestic/private and public domains. Data also show that 13.6 per cent of EWRs belong to the over-60 age group. The reason for this could be that they do not have to bear the double burden that the younger EWRs face, of household responsibilities along with participation in PRI activities. In the current context of the state, ‘marriage is a must’ and there is tremendous social pressure on girls to get married, which is reflected in the marital status of the EWRs selected for study.

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The majority were married (88 per cent); the only two nevermarried EWRs were both zila parishad members. The number of widows in our sample participating in local governance was higher, at around 11 per cent. One of the reasons for the entry of widows is that the politically powerful elite often use them to continue their hold over local-level politics. A majority of the EWRs (57 per cent) were non-literate or had attained only functional literacy (unable to read and could write only their names). Around 22 per cent had educational qualifications up to primary/middle level, 14 per cent up to graduate, 7.5 per cent were postgraduates or held professional degrees (such as LLB, B.Ed or MBA). One of the EWRs was pursuing a PhD. Significant differences in educational status across positions were evident, with most of the EWRs within the district assemblies (zila parishad members/zila pramukhs) falling into the highly qualified category, whereas the majority of the EWRs on the lower rungs – pradhans, panchayat samiti members, sarpanches and ward panches – were non-literate or had attained only functional literacy. Interestingly, an increase in literacy levels had a positive impact on lowering social constraints due to factors such as purdah, inability to speak openly in the presence of village elders, and facing the moralistic gaze, and many EWRs were determined to educate their children, especially daughters, because of this. I suffered a lot and missed many opportunities in life because I am non-literate. I am sending all my children to school. I will make sure that my daughter is not made to drop out of school once she completes her primary education. (Kalli Devi, zila pramukh)

It is important to emphasize that the majority of the EWRs were not involved in individual economic activities. This would have helped us to assess their individual economic status. However, even those EWRs who had land in their own names assisted their family/husband in agricultural work. Therefore, it was impossible to ascertain their individual income from their land. For 39.5 per cent of EWRs, their family’s main occupation

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was agriculture and animal husbandry, and for 29 per cent their families were self-employed in trades like mining, stone cutting, contracting, or supplying auto parts. The service sector (both private and government) employed 17 per cent of EWR families, and around 7 per cent had families currently earning their livelihoods through agricultural and non-agricultural labour. Finally, around 5 per cent belonged to families with members who had retired from government service. The income levels of EWRs showed that the majority of the zila pramukhs, zila parishad members and pradhans fell within the higher-income group, whereas most of the panchayat samiti members, as well as sarpanches and ward panches, fell into the lower-income group. Thus, those with higher incomes and larger landholdings reached the upper echelons of local governance with relative ease. They also contested elections twice or more times, primarily because they had the money, power and political background, as well as the political experience, to do so. Paradoxical role of the family The familial/political background of the EWRs played an important role in both their entry into politics and their public performance. It was apparent that EWRs belonging to families with a political background/affiliation had an advantage over those not drawn from similar backgrounds. They did not have to struggle to enter politics; besides, they already had some exposure to the functioning of PRIs. In addition, many of them had high educational qualifications and belonged to better-off families. According to Rita Singh, from a politically influential family: I did not have to struggle to get an entry into politics; besides, the political background of the family had provided immense exposure to the working of local governance institutions. I was elected for two terms as a panchayat samiti member in the years 1995 and 2005 thanks to the positive image of my father-in-law and his hold over local politics. Gradually, I began interacting with the local community and became involved in panchayat samiti level meetings and implementation of development programmes along with my

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husband. Due to this my image and status improved among the community members. In 2010, I stood for the elections for the third time not as a veteran’s daughter-in-law but in my own identity, and was elected as a zila pramukh on a general seat reserved for women. (Rita Singh, zila pramukh, 45 years old)

We also came across zila pramukhs who had not been able to use their family’s political background to their advantage. Durga Devi, another zila pramukh, was 58 years old, belonged to the SC, and had passed Standard VIII. She won the general seat reserved for women. Durga Devi’s father and husband had been involved in party politics for a long time. Her father had been involved in politics since her childhood and was an ex-sarpanch. Her husband had been in politics for the past 12 years. Against the shared political background of her natal and marital families, her husband encouraged her to contest elections. However, once she won the election her husband and son began indirectly to perform all the PRI-related functions on her behalf, thus usurping and controlling her political space. She laments, ‘I was made to take a backseat and actively discouraged from taking any initiative in performing my PRI-related work on my own.’ It was also evident that many women had been forced to enter politics because of the political ambition of their marital family. My father-in-law has been involved with party politics for a long time and has been politically influential in the district. I never wanted to contest elections, but was compelled by my marital family to do so as they did not want to lose their stranglehold over local politics. The men in my family conduct all the PRI-related work on my behalf and take all political decisions. I have little knowledge about the functioning of the PRIs and have never been encouraged to learn more about political systems. (Reshma Choudhary, pradhan)

Dual responsibility of home and PRI-related activities It was evident that, though many of the EWRs had taken on nontraditional roles and entered the public arena of local politics, they continued to view themselves in stereotypical roles (as housewives

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or homemakers and care givers, for example). The women’s domestic lives have a considerable influence on their political efficacy. If they choose, however, to take on both the roles they accommodate both domestic and public commit­ments (Mathur and Sharma 2010). Men, on the other hand, usually coped by withdrawing from the family to pursue political ambitions. EWRs reported that the burden of domestic chores had increased for the female members of their family post-elections. However, the household-related workload on EWRs themselves seems to have decreased. Prior to the EWRs being elected, around 41 per cent of other female household members had been helping in domestic chores, whereas after elections this increased to around 50 per cent. A similar situation was apparent where their daughters are concerned. However, not much change was evident in the workload of male members pre- and postelections. Most EWRS stated that ‘involvement of male family members in household chores would definitely lead to reducing women’s work burden’. Why politics? Though the political trajectories of women entering rural local governance vary, reserved seats were cited as the main reason for entering politics by 85 per cent of the EWRs. Caste and voters’ support, prior political experience of the marital/natal family, and support and encouragement provided by the family were some of the other reasons. A few women, however, said that they had entered politics because they had a strong desire to raise women’s issues and rural development issues. Sunita said: My family has no political background or affiliation. Though I came into politics due to the reservation of seats for women candidates, it was not the only reason. I also had a strong desire to raise women’s concerns. I have succeeded in this task by taking up issues related to the education of girls, especially those belonging to the most marginalized communities, fought against dowry, and succeeded in enabling many women to get widow pension. (Sunita Ghathala, zila parishad member)

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Caste as a determining factor Interviews with EWRs revealed that caste is one of the main factors influencing differences in access, participation and influence of women in local politics in this state. Thus, in Rajasthan, caste evolves into an exclusive system of control to consolidate and perpetuate exclusion. Caste not only works in conjunction with patriarchy, but often becomes patriarchal itself. Distinctions along caste lines revealed that a larger number of EWRs belonged to the ‘other backward classes’ (OBC) and ST/ SC groups.4 Therefore, the mandatory provision of reservation based on caste had provided the space for disadvantaged groups to represent and participate in institutions of rural local governance. However, for the EWRs belonging to the lower castes, the struggle to create spaces within these institutions had become extremely challenging, as they bore the double burden of being women and belonging to lower castes. Proxy governance To ensure women’s active participation in meetings no male members of the EWR’s family are supposed to be present in the meetings, though they can accompany them to the venue. None of the EWRs admitted that male members of their families were present in meetings – but the presence of husbands, sons, brothers-in-law and fathers-in-law was often observed during field visits. Not surprisingly, no female members of the EWRs’ families were present in the meetings. Around 60 per cent of EWRs reported that their husbands helped them in their dayto-day PRI-related activities. Around 10 per cent of EWRs are assisted mostly by their sons and around 8 per cent by other male members of their families, while about 23 per cent of EWRs said that they mostly managed their own work with some assistance from others. The assistance of male members is more visible in the case of first-timers. However, the dependence on male members reduces as women are elected for a second or third time. There were mixed responses on the issue of proxy governance. Only 10 per cent of EWRs felt that the involvement of male

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family members in their PRI-related work was unnecessary. About 60 per cent of EWRs across the range of positions/levels felt that the presence of men was useful as they helped them to understand the different dimensions of their work. They said that men had greater knowledge and information related to government schemes and programmes and could guide them in taking decisions. Since many of the EWRs were first-timers, their dependence on male members was expected, as they need time to become totally confident regarding their roles and responsibilities. Overt and covert forms of violence against women During field visits, several EWRs, particularly those belonging to the disadvantaged groups, reported facing acute problems having to work among males who used sexual innuendo. Others reported being threatened, abused and harassed both during and after elections. About 8 per cent of EWRs reported that they had faced several forms of violence during elections. The majority of those facing violence belonged to the SC community and had low literacy levels. Around 5 per cent of EWRs also faced instances of booth capturing and proxy voting. I faced several forms of violence. Initially I was not allowed to sit in the meetings and people would address me as a chamaran (woman who removes the hide of dead animals for a livelihood). Men said a woman of low caste should not be allowed to enter politics. The present up-sarpanch and the gram sewak both belong to the Meena (ST) community. They do not share the minutes of the meetings of the gram panchayat with me or receive my phone calls. They often hurl abuse at me behind my back and try to create problems in my work. I worked hard to improve the sanitary conditions of my village, but my work was constantly inspected. Despite holding the position of a sarpanch for two and a half years, I continue to receive threats. I want to improve the infrastructure and sanitary conditions of my village. However, I feel helpless because of my caste and the patriarchal environment prevailing in my village. (Santoshi Devi, sarpanch)

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Violence is not always perpetrated by strangers. Some EWRs face covert forms of violence at the hands of family members. One case is that of Sangeeta Bai. Sangeeta is 25 years old and belongs to a Rajput family. Her political career began in 2010 when she was elected to the post of sarpanch. Her family has no prior political experience. She was not interested in entering politics but her husband forced her to contest the elections as the seat was reserved for an OBC woman candidate. Since Sangeeta is very young, she is not allowed to go out alone by her husband. Restricted social mobility and strict instructions to observe purdah have rendered Sangeeta ineffective. She rarely attends meetings, and when she does her participation is minimal. Other constraints Low educational levels were cited as a major constraint by many of the EWRs. A large majority of them thus faced problems in filing nominations. They expressed an inability to understand the technical language of the nomination forms. In addition, they had no prior experience of contesting elections and lacked supporters who could sign the nomination form on their behalf. Once elected, many of them were made to sign documents, cheques, or minutes of meetings without being told the contents. This exposed them to the danger of unwittingly being involved in financial irregularities. Many EWRs also faced problems due to the persistence of social customs and practices, including the prevalence of purdah, an inability to speak openly in the presence of village elders, and facing the moralistic gaze. Restricted social mobility also proved to be a problem for some of them. Some of the EWRs (14 per cent), especially first-time contestants, stated that they were unable to either frame or explain the election manifesto to voters. Around 35 per cent of EWRs also reported not receiving the support of women workers who could have helped them during campaigning. Around 26 per cent of EWRs could not garner votes during elections as they were unable to resort to conventional practices like the distribution of

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alcohol, cash and other bribes – a common electoral ploy used by male candidates. Devolution without transformation The study also shows that the constraints faced by EWRs are exacer­bated by a lack of response to issues raised by them. Many of them stated that no action was taken by the authorities on complaints or suggestions made by them. This led to frustration and bitterness. The devolution of power of various government departments has taken place only on paper. This is a mere formality as the actual trans­fer of power has not taken place. The funds, functions and functionaries have not been transferred and we have no freedom to implement the decisions taken at the panchat samiti and zila parishad level. Even if I suggest the transfer of functionaries, the actual implementation of the order is carried out not at the level of the zila parishad but at the level of the head of the department concerned. (Indu Choudhary, PS member) The biggest hurdle I face is at the hands of the functionaries of the transferred departments. They refuse to take me seriously and I am unable to take any action against them since it is not in my juris­ diction. (Madhu Mehta, zila pramukh)

Often EWRs end up being dependent on family members or government officials and other politically powerful people within the community for all PRI-related activities. They are, therefore, unable to take any independent decisions and end up becoming frustrated. As zila pramukh Shobha Singh asserts: The actual devolution of power to five departments of panchayati raj has not taken place. We are constantly dealing with the domination of the bureaucrats, who grossly undermine the importance of the PRIs. They are neither disbanded nor made accountable to the PRIs. The CEO does not feel accountable towards either the zila pramukh or the zila parishad. Many of the decisions taken by the zila parishad are not implemented because the CEO feels that he is the representative of the district collector.

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Another common problem expressed by all EWRs at the zila parishad and panchayat samiti level during the FGDs was the low budgets available for implementing development works. The zila pramukhs and zila parishad members were unanimous in protesting their allocation of only 3 per cent of the total budget. This was inadequate for implementing and monitoring the deve­ lop­ment programmes within the geographical area covered by them at district level. Besides, the zila parishad and panchayat samiti members stated that they do not receive any honorarium or sitting fee to participate in general meetings of these bodies. A new phenomenon emerging in rural politics is women challeng­ ing patriarchal notions about women’s leadership in a public space. They are expanding spaces by obtaining greater respect within the institutions of household and community, becom­ing more articulate and confident in handling issues with­ in local governance institutions, and learning to negotiate. Their increased mobility, even if they are accompanied by male mem­bers of the family, is bringing them closer to governance systems. This invariably problematizes the rejection of women as ‘proxy actors’. Shifts in status at the level of the household and community Interactions with the EWRs revealed that around 86 per cent of them felt that there was a distinct increase in their status at the household and community levels. About 78 per cent of the EWRs said their involvement in family decision making had increased after the elections. According to 69 per cent of the EWRs, their family members now consult them in decisions relating to the marriage of children, and 66 per cent reported being consulted on decisions relating to children’s education. Around 59 per cent of the EWRs stated that they were being involved in decision making over the purchase of household goods. More important, 57 per cent of the EWRs stated that the male heads of households have now begun involving them in the sale or purchase of household property, something that had never happened earlier. Where decisions related to family health are concerned, about 44 per cent of the

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EWRs reported playing a role. There is thus a clear increase in the EWRs’ involvement in decisions taken at the family level after their entering positions of power within local government. In addition, about 57 per cent of EWRs stated that they are now invited to religious meetings, whereas about 69 per cent were being invited to various functions/gatherings at the community level. However, it was also clear that the zila pramukhs, pradhans and sarpanches were more likely than the ordinary members to be invited as chief guests at social functions and on national days like 26 January (Republic Day) or 15 August (Independence Day). Around 36 per cent of the EWRs also stated that they now participated more frequently in caste organization meetings. It is clear that, once elected, the EWRs gain greater respect and honour at the household and community levels. Earlier my father-in-law and brother-in-law addressed me by my name. After I was elected as a pradhan they addressed me as Geetaji or Pradhanji.5 Before I was elected as a pradhan, when I visited my natal family on the occasion of a marriage or other ceremonies, my family members would make me sit at the entrance of the house and ignore me. I would be offered tea/water after a long time. Now things are different. My sisters-in-law (bhabhis) run and get a chair for me and ask where I would be most comfortable sitting. They really look after me and proudly say, the owner of the block has arrived. (Geeta Dayma, pradhan)

Enhanced mobility In Rajasthan women’s entry into political space has enhanced their mobility, though for many of them it is because the male members of their families accompany them. It needs to be emphasized that first-time contestants often experienced less mobility than second-time contestants. Some of the women at the zila parishad and panchayat samiti levels stated that they did not need male members to accompany them for their official or personal work. Participation in training and capacity development programmes, and visits to government offices, MPs, members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) and

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other political leaders have also enhanced their confidence levels. Earlier I could not travel anywhere alone, even when I visited my natal family someone accompanied me. After being elected as a pradhan I attend meetings both at the panchayat samiti as well as at the zila parishad level. However, travelling alone to Jaipur [the state capital] for the training programme and other meetings has given me the maximum sense of freedom. (Sangeeta Choudhary, pradhan) Today I have done away with male escorts and can travel freely. I visit the primary health centre, upper primary school, Anganwadi Centre as well as the bank on my own. (Reshma, pradhan)

Increase in confidence levels A key indicator of women’s empowerment is the level of confidence they display in public spaces. Over half (53 per cent) of the EWRs reported that their new roles had enabled them to raise issues with greater confidence within the community. Around 42 per cent stated that they were now raising social change issues at the community level. Around 33 per cent of the respondents felt confident about visiting the upper primary schools, while about 29 per cent had gained the confidence to talk to the headmaster and school teachers. About 25 to 30 per cent of the EWRs said they had also begun visiting the primary health centre, the auxiliary nurse and midwife (ANM) centre and the Anganwadi centre, and also regularly checked the records pertaining to women’s and children’s immunization. Within local government meetings, a high percentage of EWRs in our sample (70 per cent) stated they had made an effort to ensure access to drinking water for the local population. However, many of them stated that they had been unsuccessful in fighting corruption, with only around 14 per cent believing that they had succeeded in making some headway. Around 15 to 20 per cent of the EWRs stated that they raised issues related to women, including the immunization of women and children, institutional delivery,6 and violence against women. According to 23 to 30 per cent of the EWRs, they had made efforts to

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organize community meetings, increase girls’ enrolment, fight social evils such as dowry and early or child marriage, and help people access benefits from government schemes. About 40 per cent of the EWRs stated that they had fought their inhibitions and were making an effort to discuss issues with government officials. This demonstrates that many of the EWRs are now making an effort to raise issues and take on leadership roles in an attempt to create and expand spaces for themselves in institutions of local governance. Kiran Choudhary is a zila parishad member. Her family has no prior experience of politics and she contested the election from the seat reserved for an OBC woman candidate. Though her father encouraged her to contest elections, the main reason for her doing so was her own motivation to participate in politics. I make it a point to go well prepared for the meetings. I have learnt to negotiate and put forth my views strongly. Despite the maledominated environment of the meetings, I make sure that I am heard and that my points are included in the agendas and decisions of meetings. Life for most women in Rajasthan revolves around water, as we face frequent droughts. Women have to walk long distances to fetch it. I have therefore pushed for inclusion of issues of drinking water and women’s health.

Would they stand in elections again? Interestingly, despite the several constraints and challenges faced, 47 per cent of the EWRs stated that they would stand for election again if given the opportunity to do so, and provided that a more conducive environment is created for them by the state. Similar responses came forth during FGDs. According to them, ‘If women in government and other jobs can perform dual responsibilities by taking on “inside” as well as “outside” roles, we too can take on dual roles related to the “home” as well as PRIs.’ More negative responses were received from the lowest tier of PRIs – ward panches and sarpanches. The main reason given for their greater unwillingness was that the majority of

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them continue to be non-literate or have only functional literacy, belong to low-caste groups, and are members of families with no prior political experience.

Conclusion This chapter underscores that the 73rd constitutional amendment has provided substantive space for women, particularly those belonging to the most marginalized sections of society, to participate in politics. Today, EWRs in India are finding a place in local governance systems in hitherto unheard of numbers. They are learning to negotiate political power through democratic institutional mechanisms. In the context of Rajasthan, the chapter also confirms that exist­ ing social norms, cultural practices and societal power structures often result in the exclusion of EWRs from decisionmaking processes, despite affirmative action providing for women’s inclusion. However, many of the narratives of the current EWRs, in all three tiers of local governance, show that women are facing the various challenges confronting them within societal and governance structures with increasing boldness. They have gained greater confidence, and the ability to articulate and to expand spatial mobility. Their voices are slowly but steadily influencing political agendas and meetings. It is also evident that women have often contested elections at the behest of their family, caste or the powerful political elite who are in a position to force or manipulate them. Some women, however, have contested elections on their own initiative and joined politics because of their desire to change society and do ‘good work’. It needs to be highlighted that earlier notions of EWRs being mere proxies for male relatives have gradually led to a recognition that, given the opportunity to participate in the political system, they are as capable as their male counterparts. EWRs have also succeeded in using their office to fulfil some of the practical gender needs that have a special impact on the lives of women belonging to their communities – health, sanitation,

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early childhood care, education, and drinking water. This is an emerging positive trend in local politics. While policy prescriptions emphasize devolution of power to the five key departments in the state – Agriculture, Elementary Education, Women’s and Child Development, Health (including the National Rural Health Mission) and Social Justice – and empowerment of the PRIs at district level with ‘funds, functions and functionaries’ as per the XIth schedule of the constitution (October 2010), women’s narratives clearly communicate that this move has only taken place on paper as they do not have the freedom (the most important ingredient) to use these new powers. For any meaningful transformation to take place, there is a need to make devolution of powers a reality, enabling EWRs to exercise their powers and enhance their capacities in governance structures. Women’s trajectories underline that enabling and constraining factors in Rajasthan vary along intersections of gender, caste and educational levels. EWRs with higher incomes and larger landholdings are more easily able to reach higher levels of local governance. They also continue to contest elections on a regular basis, primarily because they have the money, power and political background – as well as the political experience – to do so. For some women, their family members have enabled their entry into politics but withdrawn support thereafter in order to usurp the power that the position in politics offers. This is particularly true of women with low educational levels. These women would need greater support by way of policy initiatives. However, this chapter also confirms that caste becomes one of the main factors influencing differences in access, participation and influence of women in local politics in the state. As remarked earlier, caste not only works in conjunction with patriarchy but often itself becomes patriarchal. Today a large number of women belonging to the most marginalized caste groups have been enabled to enter politics due to the mandatory provision of a reservation based on caste. However, EWRs belonging to these groups face multiple constraints and have to struggle to create spaces within local-

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level institutions – they bear the double burden of being women and belonging to the most marginalized groups. Formation of federa­tions of EWRs, networking among them, and systematic capacity building could strengthen their negotiating power within governance structures.

Notes 1 Emergency rule was declared under Indira Gandhi’s leadership in controversial circumstances of political instability; the reason given was that the security of India was threatened by internal disturbances. 2 The zila parishad is at the district level, the panchayat samiti at the block level, and the gram panchayat at the village level. At the village level the panchayat consists of elected representatives of the people; a chairperson is elected from among its members and is known as the sarpanch. The panchayat is accountable for all its actions to the gram sabha, the general body of villagers. The chairperson of the panchayat samiti is called a pradhan. The zila parishad, at the top level, is headed by the zila pramukh. 3 Purdah, a word of Persian origin, is traditionally used for a veil or curtain and has come to express a whole cultural attitude in India. It has come to stand for the dividing line between tradition and modernity. Purdah defines the limits of freedom; it demarcates the confines and outlines the margins that confer anonymity and erase women’s selfhood. 4 The framers of the constitution of India took note of the fact that various communities in the country were suffering from extreme social, educational and economic underdevelopment arising out of untouchability, primitive agricultural practices, lack of infrastructural facilities, and geographical isolation. In recognition of the fact that they needed special consideration to safeguard their identity and interests, these communities were identified as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes as per the provisions contained in Clause 1 of Articles 341 and 342 of the Constitution respectively. In addition to the SCs and STs, there is a third category to which reservations have been extended since the early 1990s. This group, known as the ‘other backward classes’ (OBC), while not burdened with the stigma of untouchability, were socially and educationally backward and suffered from a persistent lack of opportunity and poor socio‐economic outcomes (http://ncst.nic. in). 5 Suffixing ‘ji’ to the name is a mark of respect or recognition of hierarchy.

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6 Under the ‘Janani Suraksha Yojana’ (JSY), initiated since 2005, an effort is being made to encourage women by offering cash transfers to deliver babies in institutions with medical facilities, and to local community health workers if they facilitate such deliveries.

References Anandhi, S. (2002) ‘Interlocking Patriarchies and Women in Governance: A Case Study of Panchayati Raj Institutions in Tamil Nadu’, in K.  Kapadia (ed.), Violence of Development: The Politics of Identity, Gender and Social Inequalities in India, Kali for Women, New Delhi. Bardhan, P. (2002) ‘Decentralization of Governance and Development’, The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp. 185–205. Bastian, S. and R. Luckham (2003) Can Democracy Be Designed: The Politics of Institutional Choice in Conflict-Torn Society, Zed Books, London. Baviskar, B. S. and G. Mathew (2009) ‘Introduction’, in B. S. Baviskar and G. Mathew (eds), Inclusion and Exclusion in Local Governance: Field Studies from Rural India, Sage Publications, New Delhi. Besley, T., R. Pande and V. Rao (2007) ‘Political Economy of Panchayats in South India’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 42, No. 8, pp. 661–6. Buch, N. (2000) ‘Women’s Experience in New Panchayats: The Emerging Leadership of Rural Women’, Occasional Paper No. 35, Centre for Women’s Development Studies, New Delhi. Chattopadhyay, R. and E. Duflo (2004) ‘The Impact of Reservation in the Panchayati Raj: Evidence from a Nationwide Randomised Experiment’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 39, No. 9, pp. 979–86. Crook, R. and J. Manor (1998) Democracy and Decentralization in South Asia and West Africa: Participation, Accountability and Performance, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. CSDS Data Unit (2010) Centre for the Studies of Developing Societies, CSDS, New Delhi. Devika, J. and P. Kadoth (2001) ‘Sexual Violence and Predicament of Feminist Politics in Kerala’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 36, No. 33, pp. 3170–7. Goetz, A. (1998) ‘Fiddling with Democracy: Translating Women’s Partici­ pa­tion in Politics in Uganda and South Africa into Gender Equity in Development Practice’, in M. Robinson and G. White (eds), The Democratic Developmental State: Political and Institutional Design, Oxford University Press, London. GoI (Government of India) (2008) ‘Study on EWRs in Panchayati Raj Insti­ tu­tions’, Ministry of Panchayati Raj, Government of India, New Delhi.

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—— (2011) ‘Road Map for Panchayati Raj (2011–16): An All India Perspective’, February, Ministry of Panchayati Raj, Government of India, New Delhi. Harris, B. (2001) ‘A Note on Male Governance of South Indian Family Businesses and Its Implications for Women’, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 89–96. Issac, T. (2001) ‘Campaign for Democratic Decentralization in Kerala’, Social Scientist, Vol. 29, Nos 9/10, pp. 8–47. ISST (2005) ‘Women in Leadership Positions: A Scoping Paper’, Institute of Social Studies Trust, New Delhi. Jain, D. (2006) Panchayat Raj: Women Changing Governance, Gender in Development Monograph Series No. 5, UNDP, New York. Jayal, N. G. (2006) ‘Engendering Local Democracy: The Impact of Quotas for Women in India’s Panchayats’, Democratization, Vol. 13, pp. 15–35. Mathur, K. (2004) Countering Gender Violence: Initiatives Towards Collective Action in Rajasthan, Sage Publications, New Delhi. —— (2008) ‘Gender Hierarchies and Inequalities: Taking Stock of Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLIII, No. 49, pp. 54–61. Mathur, K. and R. Sharma (2010) ‘Engendering Rural Local Governance in Rajasthan’, Research Report No. RR 252, Institute of Development Studies, Jaipur. Mayaram, S. (2002) ‘New Modes of Violence: The Backlash against Women in the Panchayat System’, in K. Kapadia (ed.), The Violence of Development: The Politics of Identity, Gender and Social Inequality in India, Kali for Women, New Delhi. Mohan N. S (2008) ‘Engendering Governance in Panchayati Raj Institu­ tions: Insights from Karnataka’, in S. M. Panda (ed.), Engendering Governance Institutions: State, Market and Civil Society, Sage Publications, New Delhi. Mukhopadhyay, M. (2003) ‘Creating Citizens Who Demand Just Govern­ ance: Gender and Development in the Twenty-First Century’, Gender and Development, Vol. 11, No. 3, pp. 45–56. —— (2005) ‘Decentralization and Gender Equity in South Asia’, paper prepared for the Women’s Rights and Citizenship Programme of the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada. Mukhopadhyay, M. and S. Meer (2004) ‘Creating Voice and Carving Space – Redefining Governance from a Gender Perspective’, Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) – KIT Development Policy and Practice, Amsterdam. Narayanan, R. (2002) ‘Grassroots, Gender and Governance: Panchayati Raj Experiences from Mahila Samakhaya Karnataka’, in K. Kapadia (ed.), The Violence of Development: The Politics of Identity, Gender and

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Social Inequality in India, Kali for Women, New Delhi. Panda, S. M (ed.) (2008) Engendering Governance Institutions: State, Market and Civil Society, Sage Publications, New Delhi. Patel, V. (2010) ‘Human Rights Movements in India’, Social Change, Vol. 40, No. 4, pp. 459–77. Purushothaman, S., S. Silliman, S. Basu and S. Pillay (2010) Grassroots Women and Decentralized Governance: Change through Partnership, Huairou Commission, New York, NY. Rai, S. (1999) ‘Democratic Institutions, Political Representation and Women’s Empowerment: The Quota Debate in India’, Democratization, Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 84–9. Sharma, K. (2004) ‘From Representation to Presence : The Paradox of Power and Powerlessness of Women in PRIs’, in D. Bandhopadhyaya and A. Mukherjee (eds), New Issues in Panchayati Raj, Concept Pub­ lishing Company, New Delhi. Sharma, D. and R. M. Sudarshan (2010) ‘Towards a Politics of Collective Empower­ment: Learning from Hill Women in Rural Uttarakhand, India’, IDS Bulletin, Vol. 41, No. 5, pp. 43–51. Singh, R. K. (2012) ‘Elected Women Representatives in Panchayati Raj’, Social Action, Vol. 62, No. 1, pp. 45–63. Tambiah, Y. (2003) ‘The Impact of Gender Inequality on Governance’, in Essays on Gender and Governance, Human Development Research Centre (UNDP), New Delhi. Unnati (2008) ‘Making Space: An Enquiry into Women’s Participation in Local Politics in Rajasthan’, Azad Society, Ahmadabad.

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7 Independent Candidacy An Alternative Political Pathway for Women in Sierra Leone? Hussaina J. Abdullah Political party affiliation in Sierra Leone, as elsewhere around the world, is a dominant pathway to political empowerment. Despite this fact, independent candidacy as an alternative route to political power has been part of the country’s political landscape since the first general legislative election in 1951. This chapter examines the political pathway of women who choose to run as independent candidates, against all odds. It argues that while these women have many of the prerequisites to win, the stakes against them are high. A constellation of factors, described at length in this chapter, work against opting for independent candidacy as a pathway of engaging politically. Most notably, the party system is too deeply entrenched to allow independent candidates, running as individuals, to compete with power conglomerates that exercise political clout, have financial resources and, at times, do not shy away from using illegal means of influencing the political process. Some of the questions that the chapter broaches include: Who are Sierra Leone’s women independent candidates? How have they survived in a political culture entrenched in political party loyalties? Is independent candidacy a viable political option for engaging in politics? Is there a positive correlation between gender discrimination and the emergence of female independent candidacy? If there is, what are female politicians and other actors doing to ensure gender equity in the country’s political system? While this chapter focuses on female independent candidates in Sierra Leone’s post-conflict electoral process, I start the discussion 233

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with an overview of party politics that highlights the trend in independent candidacy over the years. While female candidacy has been negligible in both pre- and post-conflict electoral processes, I argue that the government’s post-war rhetoric on equal gender access to political representation and participation, and the emergence of women’s organizations and coalitions devoted to women’s political empowerment have resulted in an increase in their political participation.

Background Between 1957, when universal suffrage was established, and 1977, when multi-party politics was abolished, a total of 318 independent candidates including seven (2.2 per cent) women contested elections. While there were no independent candidates in the 1996 general election, the first after 18 years of one-party rule and military dictatorship, or in the post-war general elections of 2002 and 2007, independent candidacy emerged again in the 2004 and 2008 local government elections. The number of independent contestants in this period rose to 545 and included 47 women. In 2012 there were 52 female independent candidates running for local government election. This study’s focus on women independent candidates in the 2004 and 2008 local elections is of particular importance because of the phenomenal increase of over 700 per cent in their participation rate during this period – as well as being historic in quantitative terms, this was achieved through an alternative political pathway. Its significance is further increased in the light of the support given by women activists to prospective women independent candidates who were discriminated against in their own parties’ nomination processes; the epochal electoral victory of three independent aspirants during these elections; and new findings emerging from the most recent 2012 elections. A profile of two contestants, Fanta Alpha and Salamatu Kamara (successful and unsuccessful, respectively) provides insights into the gender dynamics of party politics in post-war Sierra Leone.

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Historical overview of party politics in Sierra Leone Political parties are the bedrock of all political systems because of their overarching responsibility for the recruitment and selection of candidates who participate in the political arena. They have been described as the ‘gatekeepers’ in politics because ‘they structure the national political processes and political contestation, engage in competitive electoral politics, nominate prospective public representatives and political leaders, and compete to run institutions of government’ (Ahikire 2009: 1). Political parties also have the ‘fundamental role of articulating, aggregating and legitimizing interests in government. They formulate strategies, goals and policies and promote the interests of their constituency’ (Vivian Roza 2010: 13). Given the centrality of political parties in determining who participates or does not participate in politics, feminist scholars such as Ballington (2002) argue that, despite the government’s rhetoric of parity in participation and representation of both genders in the political arena, the patriarchal character of political parties hinders gender equality in politics and public affairs, and makes it impossible to appoint or nominate women to leadership positions within parties, and build their capacities to contest and win elections. As the political parties play such a strategic role in deciding who gets to participate within the political sphere through their determination of party membership and their nomination and/ or appointment to elective or leadership positions, the growth of female independent candidacy in post-war Sierra Leone politics would indicate that women party members have not been accorded the same rights as their male colleagues in their parties’ nominations for political office. The formation of political party politics in Sierra Leone began in 1951 in readiness for the legislative elections in the same year. The National Council of Sierra Leone (NC), formerly the National Council of the Colony, and the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), the country’s oldest political party, were both established in 1951. The first election was only contested

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by men (Cartwright 1970; Denzer 1987); but the second, in 1957 – the first after universal suffrage – saw four women competing among a total of 121 candidates. Patience Richards and Constance Cummings-John were SLPP candidates, Ellen G. A. Caulker-Caulker was a United Sierra Leone People’s Party (UPP) contestant, while Mrs C. T. Williams was amongst the 43 independent candidates, and became Sierra Leone’s first female independent (Denzer 1987: 449; Scott 1960: 268). While Ellen Caulker-Caulker and Mrs Williams were unsuccessful in their bids, Constance Cummings-John and Patience Richards won their elections but couldn’t take up their seats in Parliament because electoral petitions were filed against them. An official complaint was made by their own party, the SLPP, stating that they violated electoral rules by entertaining supporters on election day. According to Peter Tucker,1 the background to the petition that led to their disqualification was that they supported Albert Margai as leader of the SLPP over his brother, Milton, the Chief Minister of the country (telephone interview with Dr Peter Tucker, 11 April 2011). The attitude of the SLPP leaders to the women’s independent activism buttresses Ballington’s argument (2002) that political parties determine women’s presence in or absence from legislative politics. The All People’s Congress (APC), the current ruling party, founded in 1960, became the official opposition to the governing SLPP between 1960 and 1967. The 1962 general election, Sierra Leone’s first election following independence in 1961, was contested by the SLPP, the APC, the UPP and the Sierra Leone Progressive Independent Movement (SLPIM). Sixtytwo parliamentary seats were contested by 116 independents (including a female contestant) and 104 party candidates. In the 1967 general election, 61 independents contested, including two female candidates – Yema Catherine Williams and Julie Keturah Kayode – together with 118 party candidates. Between the 1968 democratic restoration and 1978, when Sierra Leone officially became a one-party state, multi-party politics was virtually dead and the democratic process was stifled through

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a state of emergency, harassing and imprisoning of political oppon­ ents, politicizing the army, the police and civil service, adopting a republican constitution and imposing a one-party system of government. Elections under the APC were fraudulent, turbulent affairs involving escalating violence and thuggery.… This continued into the 1973 general elections which the SLPP boycotted out of fear for the lives of its candidates and in protest of the unprecedented level of violence unleashed by the APC government. (Kandeh 2000: 124)

The APC’s extreme violence against its opponents in the 1973 general election did not deter 15 independent candidates, however, including two women – Nancy Steele and Esther Lily Coker – from participating. The 1977 general election, the last multi-party election before the adoption of a one-party state in 1978, was contested by 41 independent candidates – including Nancy Steele, the sole female contestant. The 1996 general election, the first multi-party election in 18 years, was contested by 13 political parties, including the APC and the SLPP (Kandeh 2000: 133), but the field shrank in the 2002 general election, the country’s first post-conflict election, as only ten political parties competed. It dwindled further in the 2007 general election – with only seven parties, including of course the APC and the SLPP, competing for the 112 parliamentary seats. Ten political parties registered to contest the country’s third post-war elections at national and local levels in November 2012. They included the three parties then in Parliament, the APC, the SLPP and the People’s Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC), and seven smaller parties. Despite the crowded political field, Sierra Leonean politics, as we have shown above, is basically a two-party race between the current governing APC and the SLPP, the main opposition party. The APC predominates in the northern province; the SLPP is strongest in the eastern and southern provinces; while the western area and its environs, including the capital Freetown, is a mix – which historically the APC has won. This trend was overturned in the 2002 general

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election, maybe as a goodwill gesture by the electorate to the SLPP for successfully ending the country’s 11-year civil war. Whereas independent candidacy had been part of the country’s political landscape since the first legislative election in 1951, it totally disappeared in the general elections of 1996, 2002 and 2007 and then re-emerged in the local government elections of 2004 and 2008. While it is virtually impossible to explain the shift in aspirants’ political choice, perhaps the crowded political field at the national level between 1996 and 2008 gave possible independents a wider variety of party membership choice – and this, together with the fact that Sierra Leonean politics is not based on strict ideological differences (being primarily regional and ethnic in character, rather than strongly right or left), made it possible for candidates to opt for a political party platform rather than contesting as independents.

Independent candidacy in Sierra Leonean politics As indicated earlier, despite Sierra Leone’s chequered political history of one-party dictatorship, political violence, and military authoritarianism, the country has had a vibrant political party culture since 1951. This notwithstanding, independent candidacy has featured alongside citizens’ active participation in political parties. In general, independent candidates are politicians who contest elections without the backing of a political party. Sierra Leone’s independent candidates, be they men or women, are mainly aggrieved former members of political parties who, for one reason or another, seek an alternative route to political power. However, a few independent candidates have contested elections in the post-war era for other reasons. For instance, Edward Marrah, a councillor in the 2008–12 electoral cycle, opted to contest as an independent candidate after representing the SLPP in the 2004–8 cycle, to avoid being caught up in the political violence that characterized the 2008 local election. Another example is Cassandra Garber, a retired secondary school

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principal, who stood as an independent candidate in the 2004 local election because she had never been a card-carrying member of any political party. Although she wanted to participate in the country’s emerging democratic process, she felt that if she sought a political party nomination, she would have been favoured over registered members because of her respected status within her community, which she felt would have been unfair (interview 20 May 2011). In addition, internal rivalry within the SLPP party, particularly centred around Milton and Albert Margai, led to an increase in independent candidates between 1957 and 1967 due to conflicting positions between the factions over the nomination of party candidates. As Tucker (no date) notes, wherever a candidate selected by the executive was an Albertite, the Miltonians encouraged one of their number to contest as an independent, and vice versa.

Altogether, 34 SLPP members contested as independents in the 1957 election, but the general expectation was that an independent candidate who won would be received into the ranks of the SLPP parliamentarians (Tucker no date). This expectation was met, as all the SLPP independent candidates returned to the party’s fold after the election to continue supporting their factional leader and to enjoy the largesse doled out to them. The same occurred after the 1962 election. But the 1967 election, which resulted in the transfer of political power from the SLPP to the APC, was not only a bitter contest between the two arch rivals, but also a revolt within the SLPP against Sir Albert Margai’s appointment as Prime Minister after the death of his brother, Sir Milton Margai, in 1964. Consequently, four of the independents joined the APC,2 one stayed on in the SLPP,3 and one continued as an independent parliamentarian.4 None of the 41 independent contestants was successful in the 1977 general election. In the 2004 local government elections, 24 independent candidates won seats, and in 2008, 17 were successful.

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Table 7.1 Independent candidates in Sierra Leonean politics, 1957–2012 Election Number of year party candidates 1957 1962 1967 1973 1977 2004 2008 2012

74 99 214 122 169 1112 1126 2226

Number of independent candidates 43 116 61 15 41 347 198 111

Independents as a % of total candidates 36.75 53.95 22.18 10.95 19.52 23.78 14.95 4.99

Source: Compiled from various National Gazettes.

Female independent candidates, 1957–77 Lacking historical data on the gender dynamics in political parties between 1957 and 1967, we cannot argue that gender discrimination was a contributory factor in the emergence of female independent candidacy during that period – though the role of political parties as gatekeepers in the political process was highlighted by the annulment of the elections of Constance Cummings-John and Patience Richards by the male leaders of their political party. Certainly, gender discrimination was used by some of Nancy Steele’s sympathizers to rationalize her failure to be nominated as the APC’s official candidate for the Central One Constituency in the 1973 general election. Who was Nancy Steele? She was the indefatigable co-founder and national organizing secretary of the National Congress of Sierra Leone Women (Congress), the APC’s women’s wing, and councillor and alderman of Freetown City Council. According to Steady (1975), Nancy Steele’s role was not limited to mobilizing female

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support for the APC, but extended to her political ambitions: Like all politicians, Mrs Steele has ambitions of attaining high political office. She works hard for the party and is responsible for much of the mobilization of women to the party. Her efforts do not cease after elections but continue to ensure that the party is enlarged. Congress provides her with a means of mobilizing women, but in addition it also provides her with a platform to assert her political stature. This she achieves through speeches, rallies, conventions and inauguration of branches throughout the country. The backing of Congress provides her with enough support to attain her political goal, which is a seat in Parliament, and, if possible, a ministry.… Mrs Steele, once regarded as a dead certainty on the ticket, was not given a party symbol. She stood as an independent and lost. (Steady, 1975: 78)

Nancy Steele’s sympathizers explained her predicament in terms of gender discrimination: ‘Mrs. Steele was not given a ticket for the party. We cannot understand why. Poor woman, after all the work she did for the party. It must be because she is a woman’ (cited in Steady 1975: 78). But Steady, on the other hand, noted that: ‘My impression is that she was left out, not because she was a woman, but because she was becoming increasingly powerful and was expressing this power in an overtly militant way’ (ibid.: 79). While he seemed to agree with Steady’s viewpoint, Nancy Steele’s rival within the party, Alfred Akibo-Betts, was unable to profit from his judgement. He himself was later marginalized and disgraced by the APC after developing a powerful independent political base that threatened the party hierarchy. Yet it is difficult not to see Nancy Steele’s demise from a gender perspective because the other female independent contestant in the 1973 election, Esther Lily Coker, was a less powerful, non-controversial APC stalwart and also an alderman of Freetown City Council. Whatever the APC’s motive for awarding the party’s symbol to neither Nancy Steele nor Esther Lily Coker, it must be said that the fact that Nancy Steele’s demise was analysed from a gender perspective shows that while they provided unconditional support for their parties, party political women were also gender-

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conscious. This consciousness was displayed again during the 2008 local government election when some women who were discriminated against by the refusal to award them their political party nomination (referred to in Sierra Leone as ‘symbol’) chose to contest as independent candidates rather than accept their party’s decision. In the 1977 general election, Nancy Steele was the lone female independent contestant, and once again she lost the election. Table 7.2 Female independent candidates in Sierra Leone’s electoral processes Electoral year

Number of male independent candidates

Number of female independent candidates

Female independent candidates as % of total independents

1957

42

1

2.33

1962

115

1

0.86

1967

59

2

3.28

1973

13

2

13.3

1977

40

1

2.44

2004

347

18

4.93

2008

169

29

14.65

2012

106

4

3.77

Source: Compiled from various National Gazettes.

Gender discrimination and female independent candidates in the post-war electoral process: the 2004 and 2008 electoral cycles The number of female independent contestants rose significantly from pre-war levels of 1–2 candidates per electoral cycle to 18 and 29 respectively in the 2004 and 2008 post-war elections. The number of male candidates also rose significantly in 2004, as can be seen from Table 7.2, but their participation rate has traditionally

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Table 7.3 Successful independent candidates in Sierra Leone’s electoral process, 1957–2012 Electoral year

Number of independent candidates

1957

43

1962 1967

Successful male candidates

Successful female candidates

10

-

116

6

-

61

14

-

1973

15

1

-

1977

41

-

-

2004

347

23

1

2008

198

15

2

2012

111

4

0

Source: Compiled from various National Gazettes.

been higher. The rise in female candidates demonstrates an increase in political consciousness resulting from the brutalities of war and the government’s adoption of gender equality and women’s empowerment as a post-war reconstruction goal. Most important, women activists’ engagement in the nationwide consultation process on the Local Government Act 2004 energized women to contest as independent candidates. Although their demand for a 30 per cent quota in favour of women was rejected by the government, the inclusion of a gender equality clause in section 95 (2c) of the Act, which provides that within every district, the Ward Development Committees should pursue a statutory 50/50 gender balance in the election of its 10 members, must have given impetus to the participation of women not only as party candidates, but also as independents. Furthermore, the 50/50 Group (a national women’s organization advocating for equal gender representation in politics and public decision-making spaces) and Oxfam GB, through their Women in Leadership (WIL) project, provided training to women ‘to

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increase the quantity and quality of women in local council positions and to ensure that as leaders they would work towards the alleviation of poverty and gender inequality’ (Oxfam 2008: 2). The project trained 370 women, and 116 of these contested both as political party and independent candidates in the 2004 election, when Rosaline Yeabu Kamara of Kamaranks Ward 01 in Bombali District Council made history by becoming the first female independent candidate in Sierra Leone’s political history to win an election. Even though Rosaline Kamara had been living and working in her ward for over 25 years, she was not awarded the APC party symbol because she is not an indigene of the area. She moved to Bombali District from Port-Loko District after marriage. The APC symbol for her ward was awarded to Marie Kessebeh, an indigene residing in Freetown. With support from members of her ward who saw her as a bona fide resident and indigene, she contested the election and won. In 2008, she vied for the APC symbol and was nominated as the party’s candidate for the election. Rosaline Kamara shifted her political base from the local to the national level in the 2012 election by contesting in constituency 52, Sanda Mabolonto, Port Loko District – her place of birth – as an independent candidate (Interview, 30 June 2012). However, she was unsuccessful in her bid. As observed earlier, the number of female independent can­ di­dates rose from 18 in 2004 to 29 in 2008. It can be argued that this transformation was as a result of the change in the national political landscape and the increased awareness of the importance of local governance in the country’s political recon­ struction and decentralization processes. Unfortunately, the space created for women’s participation in the decentralized struc­ tures was determined by patriarchal ideology. Even though recommendations from the national consultation on the introduction of local governance in the country had favoured a 30 per cent quota for women, no reserved seats for paramount chiefs, and the election of candidates on a non-party basis, the government and political party leaders stoutly rejected these vital

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recommendations in order to ensure their dominance at all levels of governance. Consequently, elected female councillors were treated with disdain, starved of development funds, and confined to discussing women’s-only issues on women’s committees. Thus it can be argued that the decentralization process in Sierra Leone turned into a vicious scramble for power among political parties, alienating women in and from the political process through violence, intimidation and marginalization. The APC’s success in the 2007 presidential and parliamentary elections resulted in fierce political competition at the local level between the two political rivals. The APC wanted to repeat its national electoral success at the local level in 2008, while the SLPP intended to maintain its majority in the municipalities. Competition was intensified by the devolution of power to local authorities, giving them responsibility in service delivery areas such as health, water and sanitation, feeder road construction, and education – all of which meant political influence and resource control for the victorious party. This was in contrast to 2004, when local governance was only just being reintroduced after an absence of over 30 years: the devolution of power had not begun, and the APC was in no position to challenge the SLPP’s political dominance. The changes in the country’s political landscape by 2008 made local elections a do-or-die affair. The ferocity of the contest for dominance of the local political space in 2008 was a forward-looking strategy by political parties to position themselves in readiness for either recapturing or maintaining political power in the 2012 national elections. Political competition was no longer only an inter-party affair but also became an intra-party issue. Since Sierra Leonean politics is male-dominated, female politicians were easily sidelined in the nomination process. They were regarded as not politically viable because they lacked the necessary financial resources to compete, and the strength to endure the rough and tumble, intimidation, bribery, harassment and corruption that characterize Sierra Leonean politics. While this sidelining was partly due to the scramble to ensure more seats for their candidates, there is also

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clearly a cultural resistance to women’s political participation and the desire to ensure male monopoly of power in Sierra Leone’s political landscape. The following commentary from the Michigan Citizen (no date) underscores the situation of female aspirants in the 2008 local council elections: Rights monitoring groups say harassment and intimidation of female candidates before and during the polls by agents of the ruling All People’s Congress and the opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party prevented women from winning more seats. Across the country, a number of female candidates were refused the right to represent the parties they belonged to, thus forcing them to run as independent candidates. This deprived these women of campaign funds and other party backing, and their efforts were further hampered by threats and physical attacks that forced at least 30 women candidates to back out of the race.

In another instance, it was reported that: traditional leaders and local authorities in some provincial districts coerced female candidates to step aside. Juliet Conteh, an aspirant in the northern district of Koinadugu, said she was forced by the Paramount Chief in the area to step down for the candidate of the ruling party. ‘When I refused, I was harassed until I decided to contest as an independent candidate,’ she said. ‘Even then, the Chief warned that I hands-off the whole elections thing, which I did reluctantly.’ (Michigan Citizen no date).

The violence and intimidation aimed at female political aspirants were not limited to verbal and physical abuse. Sociocultural mores were employed by political parties and their supporters to ensure women’s capitulation. In some cases, male secret society masquerades – which by tradition cannot be seen by women, and are usually paraded at night in designated areas – were displayed without warning during the day to scare away female politicians and their supporters (Abdullah et al. 2009). In other instances, local metaphors and parables were used to illustrate that politics and public governance are out of bounds to women. For example, according to the Women’s Solidarity

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Support Group (WSSG), ‘A female candidate vividly recalled being told that “uman fol nor dae crow” (a hen does not crow). The message is simple: politics is not a female affair.… Such parables also suggest that local culture is immutable and change is impossible’ (WSSG 2008: 25). While all female aspirants and candidates were subjected to one form of abuse or another, independent candidates were specifically targeted by political parties for challenging their patriarchal decision to discriminate against them in the nomination process. As such, some female independent candidates were referred to as ‘bastards’. This particular name calling is extremely offensive in Sierra Leone. This is one of the deepest insults and social stigmas that a person can face in Sierra Leonean society. It implies that a person does not have legitimate social standing or recognition, because he or she is born out of wedlock and their father did not publicly or privately accept their paternity. When invoked in a political context, the party is regarded as the father who must recognize and accept a candidate for him or her to be legitimate. Without this father (or party), a candidate is not deemed legitimate or worthy of participating in the political process. (WSSG 2008: 25)

Women’s resistance and counter-mobilization It was the prevailing atmosphere of terror, and the victimization suffered by women candidates, that spurred women NGOs to establish the Women’s Solidarity Support Group (WSSG) in 2008, as a coalition between members of Search for Common Ground, the 50/50 Group, Gender Empowerment for Self-Reliance and the Campaign for Good Governance (CGG). These were the initial partners, but it was later expanded to include other national women’s organizations. The WSSG not only assisted potential female aspirants, but also advocated for a violence-free election and a safe and secure political environment during the electioneering period. They also went further and established a

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fund, the Women’s Solidarity Fund (WSF), by raising money from corporate sponsors and fund-raising activities, such as a walkathon and dinner and dance, to support all female aspirants, especially independents because of their vulnerability within the political system. The WSSG was well received by the public at large. In addition the 50/50 Group’s and Oxfam’s PACER (Promoting a Culture of Equal Representation) project supported women in Koinadugu5 and Kailahun6 districts in contesting the 2008 local council elections. In general, all women candidates were provided with technical assistance such as building their capacities in campaigning, communication, lobbying, advocacy, leadership and networking skills, training in governance and accountability, the workings of local councils, public speaking, fundraising and the relationship between citizens and elected officials. They were also provided with financial support in the form of payment of the nomination fee, printing of campaign posters and the provision of an entertainment allowance for supporters. Such measures were intended to increase their competitiveness in the election race. Female independent candidates were tutored on the National Electoral Commission’s (NEC) procedures for independent candidates, assisted in choosing their symbols, and empowered to resist political party pressure to withdraw their candidacy by reporting acts of violence to the WSSG coordinators, who publicized details of cases of violence and intimidation to shame the perpetrators. Salamatu Kamara, aged 42 and widowed with four children, is a primary school proprietor and a student at the Evangelical College of Theology. She is also the coordinator of Tamarameh Gender Development Group, a community-based organization focusing on providing micro-credit finance to improve women’s economic status, raising awareness on governance issues, and moni­tor­ing local councils’ accountability. Her organization is one of CGG’s grassroots partners, and based on her experience in grassroots mobilization and awareness raising on governance issues, she felt highly qualified to contest the 2008 local election. She was

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encouraged by the CGG and members of her organization. As a Temne, the second largest ethnic group that traditionally supports the APC, her initial pathway of engaging in politics was as a political party candidate. However, when electoral victory for the party’s nomination was overturned by the APC nominating committee at national level, she sought advice from the CGG and stood as an independent candidate in Ward 336, Waterloo Constituency, but sadly lost. She relates her story: Although I won the party nomination at the constituency level, my male competitor, Mustapha Maju Kanu, whom I was told bribed Rugiatu Kamara, our local APC constituency Chair, between Le 17m–20m (US$4000–5,000), was also given a nomination letter by the party to the National Election Commission (NEC). While my letter was the original, his was a duplicate in which my name had been whited out. With the help of our constituency representative and party officials at the party headquarters, NEC accepted him as the party’s official candidate. Since I did not want to disappoint my supporters, I partnered with the Campaign for Good Governance,7 with whom I had a good working relationship, to contest as an independent candidate. My decision to contest as an independent was seen as confrontational by the APC party hierarchy. Apart from the President and the Vice-President, the entire party executive tried to convince me not to contest as an independent candidate. When I refused, my supporters and the entire electorate were intimidated and told categorically that, if I won, our ward would not benefit from the government’s development initiatives. (Interview, 19 May 2011)

Fanta Alpha, 29 years old and married with a son, is uneducated and, like Salamatu, has multiple sources of livelihood. She is a hairdresser, farmer and trader. As a hairdresser, she was not interested in politics until the invasion by Guinean soldiers of Yenga, in her Kissi chiefdom. She is Kissi by ethnicity and her district, Kailahun, is part of the SLPP political stronghold. None of the three political parties focused on the issue of women’s safety and security in Yenga during the presidential campaigns. After attending the Oxfam GB and 50/50 PACER leadership

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and political training, she became conscious and understood the importance of having women in politics. Although she supported the APC, she was not interested in contesting as a party candidate because of the parties’ attitude towards gender issues in Yenga. Instead, she contested as an independent candidate against three male party candidates (APC, PMDC and SLPP) and a female independent candidate in Ward 10 in Kissi Chiefdom, Kailahun District. Unlike Salamatu, Fanta won. She tells the rest of her story: Even though I am an APC supporter, I chose to contest as an independent candidate because none of the political parties talked about women’s safety and security as part of their discourse on the Yenga8 issue. The town was vandalized, farmlands occupied and homes destroyed. Women in their roles as home managers and farmers suffered the most. My PACER training and support from the project coordinators emboldened me to contest. Five of us contested the election, two women and three men. The women were both independent candidates, while the men were party candidates. Although I am uneducated, I won because the people believed in me. I am a member of the gender and social welfare, agriculture, and water and sanitation committees.9 All the parties are wooing me to be their candidate in the next election. Although I love my independence, I will return to the APC fold because independent candidates have no support after winning an election. Even though Kailahun District is an SLPP stronghold, I can only be re-elected if I contest as an APC candidate, because the APC has pumped in a lot of money and implemented projects in my area. I have already declared my intention to contest under the APC. (Interviews, April 2010, 6 May 2011 and 28 June 2012)

Even though Salamatu Kamara is disappointed with the way her party treated her during the 2008 nomination process, she vied again for political office as an APC candidate in 2012, because ‘I can only win as an APC candidate because electioneering in Sierra Leone is not issue- but ethnic-based.’ For example, some voters in her constituency have stated that they will always vote for the APC ‘even if it’s a dog that is nominated as the candidate’

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(Interview, 19 May 2011). Her argument is justified because Sierra Leonean politics is based primarily on ethnic and regional identities and loyalties. As mentioned earlier, the northern region, dominated by the Temne and Limba ethnic groups, is controlled primarily by the APC, while the southern and eastern regions, mainly populated by the Mendes, the country’s largest ethnic group, are an SLPP stronghold. Freetown and its environs are a mix of all ethnic groups, especially the Creoles, and are less partisan, but traditionally have been won by the APC – except in the 2002 general election. As a result, third-party and/or independent candidates have made little or no headway in the country’s deeply divided political culture. Despite the resources, time and commitment expended by women’s groups, only two of the 29 female independent candidates won seats on local councils in 2008. While the women’s movement has not ruled out supporting female independent candidates, their main focus at the moment is on increasing women’s participation and representation within political party structures. Since the founding of the 50/50 Group in 2000, the women’s movement has engaged the state in demanding that it adopts a Gender Equality Bill with a minimum 30 per cent quota for women in the public arena, providing technical and financial support to female politicians, and assisting councillors in the formation of the cross-party alliances of the Women Councillors Organization and the Network of Women Ministers and Parliamentarians (NEWMAP). The movement was also instrumental in ensuring the enactment of the three gender acts on Domestic Violence, Registration of Customary Marriage, and the Devolution of Estates in 2007. The movement’s strategic emphasis is based on the fact that political party affiliation is the dominant pathway to political empowerment in Sierra Leone, but also recognizes that indepen­ dent candidacy is a tough sell to most women because of the brutalities involved in challenging the entrenched patriarchal mode of political organizing. Furthermore, the movement itself is not well placed to nurture and support female independent

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candidates throughout the electoral cycle, and that is why it has been advocating and campaigning vigorously for the adoption of a minimum 30 per cent gender quota in politics and governance in the country’s third electoral cycle.

Independent candidacy in the third electoral cycle 2012–17 The move towards increasing women’s participation and representation in Sierra Leone’s third post-war electoral process is in top gear. Both the country’s development partners and local NGOs, under the umbrella of the WSSG constituting about a dozen women’s groups – such as the 50/50 Group, the Women’s Forum, Grassroots Empowerment for Self-Reliance, the CGG, Mano River Women’s Peace Network (MARWOPNET), and the Search for Common Group, among others – are fully engaged in the process. As in 2008, their objectives are centred on the three Ps – participation, promotion and prevention.10 They want to increase the representation of women and create an enabling environment devoid of violence and intimidation to ensure women’s participation as candidates and as voters. They were notably encouraged by President Koroma’s promise in his 2010 address marking International Women’s Day (IWD) of instituting a gender quota in the 2012–17 electoral cycle (Abdullah 2010), a pledge which he reiterated during the IWD celebration in Magburaka in 2011. The President advised that the Gender Equality Bill be tabled as a Private Member’s Bill rather than a government initiative to fast-track the process, and urged women to get the draft bill ready by 15 July 2011, before the parliamentary summer recess. The women’s movement responded with marked enthusiasm to a suggestion that would allow it to claim ownership of the bill from day one. But unfortunately this deadline was not met because, after the excitement and euphoria generated by the President’s promise, the movement was faced by the daunting task of fundraising to employ legal drafters conversant with the technicalities of crafting a government bill and the gazetting process for its presentation to Parliament.

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I believe that asking the women’s movement to lead the enact­ ment process of the Gender Equality Bill with its trans­formatory agenda – despite the existence of a fully fledged Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs – was a ploy enabling the regime to wriggle out of its ongoing post-war rhetoric of advocating parity in political participation and representation. As Dahlerup and Freidenvall (2003: 5) observed: Quota systems also aim at changing the gender pattern of party recruitment for elected positions.… In democratic political systems the political parties control or dominate the selection and nominations processes.… Quotas are thus a means to open up systems of closed and male-dominated patterns of recruitment. Quota systems do not accept the argument that there are not enough (competent) women, but demand that parties begin to seriously search for women and give room for women at all levels in the party organization. In this way quota provisions target the very heart of the recruitment process. However, quota systems do not remove all barriers that exist for women in politics, such as women’s double burden, the gender imbalance of financial means for campaigning, the many obstacles women meet when executing assignments as elected politicians, and quotas may even contribute to the stigmatization of women politicians. But quota provisions, properly implemented, do obstruct and overcome some of the most crucial barriers for women’s equal political representation, such as male succession patterns, women’s lack of power in the parties, especially in the nomination processes, and invalidate the common argument that the party could not find sufficient amount of women to stand for election. Instead quota systems force parties to scrutinize and change their male-dominated gender profile and seriously start recruiting women who share their political conviction.

In the light of these considerations and the political posturing of the government, it is perhaps not surprising that the Gender Equality Bill did not make it through the enactment process before the close of the 2007–12 Parliament – even though the women’s movement had organized a nationwide sensitization and validation process which garnered support from women and women’s organizations in the country’s four administrative

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regions, and from religious and traditional rulers, the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Sierra Leone (UNIPSIL), UNDP and UN Women. As a further affront to women, eight bills were enacted on 25 September 2012, the last day of the parliamentary session, but the Gender Equality Bill was not one of them. Barbara Bangura, the WSSG coordinator, vented her frustration bluntly after an arduous year traversing the country lobbying and sensitizing different stakeholders. Our challenges while few have been formidable and include the divisiveness within the Sierra Leone Female Parliamentary Caucus (SLEFPAC) who were tasked with tabling of the draft bill as a Private Member’s Bill on the recommendation of H.E. the President. They were unable to put aside party affiliations and other issues and come together as female MPs to work with the women’s movement to push our agenda forward. This made it difficult to deal with the resistance posed by male MPs who had issues about certain aspects of the draft bill, in particular the issue of reserved seats for women. Their question was, ‘Who is going to give up his seat/constituency for a woman’? Also, transforming the political will into action was a challenge throughout the year. Furthermore, even as he reaffirms his commitment to adhering to women’s call for a minimum 30 per cent quota for women in decision making, it remains a rhetoric as His Excellency the President has had limited interaction or communication with the women’s movement except through the female MPs who are part of the problem. (Bangura 2012: 2)

Since the women’s movement’s focus was on getting the Gender Equality Bill through Parliament to increase women’s political representation and participation through political parties, its emphasis was on training prospective party candidates, especially new entrants. As a result, it had no time to restrategize and support female candidates who had lost out in their parties’ nomination process, as had happened in the 2008 local elections. Therefore, the number of female independent candidates reduced drastically from the 2008 level of 29, to just 1 in 2012. However unlike 2007, when there were no female independent candidates at the parliamentary level, there were

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four contestants in 2012. Alice Saio Kamara, who was successful as an independent candidate in the 2008 local elections, contested and won as an APC candidate in 2012. However, Fanta Alpha was neither nominated by the APC nor did she run again as an independent. Rosaline Yeabu Kamara, Sierra Leone’s first successful female independent councillor, contested once again – but at the parliamentary level, and denied the APC party symbol, she was unsuccessful.

Conclusions Independent candidacy, as we have seen in this chapter is not a viable political pathway to political empowerment for either male or female candidates given Sierra Leone’s entrenched political party affiliations. In most cases, independents do not emerge as issue-based candidates who are dissatisfied with the current political system. Rather, they are people who have lost out for one reason or another in their parties’ nomination processes. The main reasons why independent candidacy is not a viable political alternative to engaging in party politics in Sierra Leone, as in most African countries, are the exorbitant cost of financing a campaign, the violence and intimidation involved in the electioneering process, and the lure of possible political appointments that forces independents to return to the party’s fold or cross to another party. The threat of physical and verbal abuse and intimidation from political party operatives, male opponents and community leaders also scares many women away from the political fray. As indicated earlier, none of the female independent candidates in the pre-war years won an electoral seat. Lack of historical data on the issue means that we cannot argue that they lost out in the nomination or electoral processes as a result of their gender. However, the non-nomination of Nancy Steele in the 1973 election – and the argument of some of her supporters that she was discriminated against because she is a woman – show that gender is an issue in internal political party dynamics.

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The increase in the number of female independent candidates from single digits in the pre-war years to double figures, and finally the success of three candidates in the 2004 and 2008 local elections, is a remarkable achievement that should be celebrated – while noting the stumbling blocks on the way to achieving this feat. While women’s groups coalesced around the WSSG to advocate and draft the Gender Equality Bill for a minimum 30 per cent quota for women in politics and public affairs, women politicians in Parliament and political party structures, who should have championed the process by lobbying their party leaders and male colleagues in Parliament, put party loyalty and their individual interests ahead of their gender interest and failed to ensure its enactment before the close of the 2007–12 parliamentary cycle. Unfortunately, the non-passage of the Gender Equality Bill affected women’s electoral success in 2012. Fifteen female party political candidates won parliamentary seats out of the 112 available, one less than in the 2007 elections. At the local level, 86 female candidates were successful in the 456 councillorships, the same as in 2008. Out of a total of 602 candidates contesting the parliamentary elections, 75 were women, translating to 12.45 per cent – slightly higher than the 2007 figure of 11.3 per cent. At the local level, out of a total of 1,624 candidates 338 were women – 20.5 per cent, which represented a 3.5 per cent increase from 2008. However, even though women’s participation rates increased, their success rate at the polls remained almost constant.

Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the assistance of the Campaign for Good Governance (CGG), under whose auspices this research was undertaken. I also enjoyed the support of Barbara Bangura, Coordinator of the WSSG’s Gender Quota Project, Mohammed Bizimana, former coordinator of the 50/50 and Oxfam GB PACER project, and Drs Peter Tucker and Sama Banya.

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Notes 1 Peter Tucker, founding member of the SLPP, was the Secretary of Training and Recruitment in the Office of the Prime Minister, where he rose to become Establishment Secretary in 1963 (under Sir Milton Margai) and Secretary to the Prime Minister and Head of the Civil Service in 1966 (under Sir Albert Margai). 2 L. A. M. Brewah, Prince Williams, J. B. Francis and F. S. Anthony were awarded ministerial appointments. 3 Manna Kpaka. 4 Kutubu Kai-Samba. 5 The only one of Sierra Leone’s 14 districts that did not elect a female councillor in the 2004 local government election. 6 This district had the highest number of female councillors in 2004, but their prospects for re-election were being threatened in the run-up to the 2008 elections. 7 The Campaign for Good Governance (CGG) is a national NGO advocating for good governance, increased citizens’ participation in politics, and gender equality. 8 Yenga, a border town in Kailahun District, was occupied by ECO­MOG (the Economic Community of West African States Moni­toring Group) in 1998 under Guinea’s command. Guinean occupation of Yenga remains an issue. 9 The committees are the administrative and policy arms of the local council. 10 A concept developed as part of post-war reconstruction efforts to increase women’s presence in all spheres of life to ensure women’s empowerment and gender equality.

References Abdullah, H. J. (2010) ‘Forging Ahead without an Affirmative Action Policy: Female Politicians in Sierra Leone’s Post War Electoral Process’, IDS Bulletin, Vol. 41, No. 5, pp. 62–71. Abdullah, H. J., A. Fofana-Ibrahim and T. Sensie (2009) ‘Women in Local Governance in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone’, paper prepared for the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment Research Programme Consortium’s Mid-Term Review Conference, Cairo, 20–24 January. Ahikire, J. (2009) ‘Women’s Engagement with Political Parties in Contemporary Africa: Reflections on Uganda’s Experience’, Policy Brief No. 65, Centre for Policy Studies, Johannesburg.

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Ballington, J. (2002) ‘Political Parties, Gender Equality and Elections in South Africa’, in G. Ficks, S. Meintjes and M. Simons (eds), One Woman, One Vote: The Gender Politics of South African Elections, Electoral Institute for the Sustainability of Democracy in Africa (EISA), Johannesburg. Bangura, B. (2012) ‘The Gender Equality Draft Bill’, paper presented at the UN Open Day on ‘Women, Peace and Security’, Freetown, 21 September. Cartwright, J. (1970) Politics of Sierra Leone 1947–67, University of Toronto Press, Toronto. Dahlerup, D. and L. Freidenvall (2003) ‘Quotas as a “Fast Track” to Equal Political Representation for Women: Why Scandinavia Is No Longer the Model’, paper presented at the American Political Science Association (APSA) Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, 28–31 August, www.statsvet.su.se/quotas/APSA5.doc (accessed 5 October 2012). Denzer, L. (1987) ‘Women in Freetown Politics, 1914–61: A Preliminary Study’, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 57, No. 4, pp. 439–56. Kandeh, J. D. (2000) ‘In Search of Legitimacy: The 1996 Elections’, in I. Abdullah (ed.), Between Democracy and Terror: The Sierra Leone Civil War, Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) Books, Dakar. Michigan Citizen (no date) ‘Sierra Leone: Harassment Hurt Campaigns of Female Candidates’, http://michigancitizen.com/sierra-leoneharassment-hurt-campaigns-of-female-candidates-p6304-78.htm (accessed 5 May 2011). Oxfam GB (2008) ‘Breaking the Barriers: Sierra Leonean Women on the March’, http://www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/learning/gender/ downloads/prog_insights_gender5_sierraleone.pdf (accessed 19 June 2011). Scott, D. J. M. (1960) ‘The Sierra Leone Election of 1957’, in W. J. M. Mac­kenzie and K. Robinson (eds), Five Elections in Africa, Clarendon Press, Oxford. Steady, F. C. (1975) Female Power in African Politics: The National Congress of Sierra Leone, Munger Africana Library Monograph, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. Tucker, P. (no date) ‘The 1957 General Elections’, Freetown. Vivian Roza, M. A. (2010) ‘Gatekeepers to Power: Party-Level Influences on Women’s Political Participation in Latin America’, PhD thesis, Georgetown University, Washington, DC. Women’s Solidarity Support Group (WSSG) (2008) ‘Case Studies of Female Candidates’, Women Solidarity Support Group, Freetown.

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8 Conservative Modernization in Brazil Blocking Local Women’s Political Pathways to Power Ana Alice Alcantara Costa and Andrea Cornwall

Brazilian politics has long been an arena that is difficult for women to enter, unless they are the wives, widows or wards of men. The nature of the Brazilian political system, a pervasively patriarchal, clientelist and patrimonial political culture, weak public identification with political parties and their ideologies, and a lack of connectivity between female candidates and the issues and demands that are being made by women’s groups and movements – these are some of the hazards that continue to obstruct women’s pathways to political power. In recent years, the Brazilian women’s movement has sought strategies to strengthen women’s political representation, calling upon the government to enhance the effectiveness of the quota law that was brought on to the statute books in 1995 but has remained without significant positive effect on electoral outcomes. It is only very recently, with the electoral reforms of 2012, that the sanctions forcing political parties to comply with the requirements of the law have been systematically and significantly strengthened. This chapter analyses the social and political conditions that define and characterize the participation of women in local government in Brazil, as it has evolved over the last 30 years. It seeks to identify possible changes in the mechanisms of access to and retention of power, and to explore individual trajectories and political practices, links and party political identities among other questions related to empowerment. The chapter draws on research conducted as part of the activities of the Pathways of 259

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Women’s Empowerment research programme. A longitudinal study of women politicians in the north-eastern state of Bahia surveyed electoral cohorts of elected municipal councillors and mayors on their political careers – their motivations for entering politics, their political connections and experiences as members of political parties, and the obstacles and assistance they had encountered along those pathways. The chapter compares the experiences of women in the 1988, 1992 and 1998 cohorts (Costa 1998) with women elected as municipal councillors in 2008 and 2012. It draws on these data to analyse barriers and opportunities in women’s pathways of political empowerment.

Political structures in Brazil The Brazilian federal constitution of 1988 gave relative auton­omy to municipalities, designating them as the third sphere of power. The municipality is the smallest cell of formal power in the Brazilian political system, and refers to the territorial area of a city and the surrounding regions circumscribed under its juris­diction, including the periphery, villages, districts and the adjoining countryside. The constitutional autonomy granted to the municipality guarantees citizens the capacity to experience wider democratic processes through participation in municipal government, to address their local problems, and to develop laws that are more directly related to their everyday lives and societies. This autonomy is relative because it is subordinate to the sovereign federal power. The municipality has a similar structure to that of the other two spheres of government: the executive elected through direct majority elections and a legislature whose councillors are elected through proportional elections. In both structures, the leaders are elected for a term of four years. Both mayor and councillors are elected by those citizens of the municipality eligible to vote. The executive is responsible for the management and control of municipal utilities. The city chamber is responsible for creating laws that are within the jurisdiction of the municipality (tax system, public services, exemptions and tax breaks, for example),

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for monitoring the activities of the mayor, and for public expenditure. The councillor is a kind of bridge between citizens and the municipality, responsible for bringing the demands of the people to the attention of the executive. Brazil has 5,563 municipalities which vary in size according to the number of inhabitants, ranging from a minimum of nine councillors in municipalities with small populations of up to 20,000 inhabitants, to a maximum of 55 councillors in large municipalities such as São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city. Based on this distribution by groups of inhabitants in Brazil, 48.02 per cent of municipalities are defined as having a small population, 41.84 per cent are medium-sized (with between 20,000 and 50,000 inhabitants), and only 10.14 per cent are considered large, with a population of more than 50,000 inhabitants. This means that although the majority of Brazilian citizens live in large cities (51.98 per cent), small municipalities still have an important weight in the national composition. In the field of social development this distribution also presents a significant diversity that involves large rural areas trapped in the past and cities saturated with intense rural migration without possibility of urban integration. These are the favelas (shanty towns). Their problems of marginality and social conflict dominate the peripheries of large cities. This picture of peripheral development has implications for women’s political participation. In large or medium-sized cities, where the modernizing presence of capitalism is felt in the centres of the reproduction and distribution of services, the presence of women in the paid labour force and in the circulation of employment and unemployment is very significant. According to data from the Departamento Intersindical de Estudos e Estatisticas Socioeconômicas (Interunion Department of Studies and Socio-Economic Statistics – DIEESE), women represented 44 per cent of the economically active population of Brazil in 2009 (DIEESE 2009). By December 2011, women represented 42 per cent of registered workers and comprised 58.53 per cent of those workers who had completed higher education (Brazilian Government, Ministry of Labour

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2011). It is these women who will become part of civil activist movements. These are the women who, in increasing numbers, are participating in the leadership of unions and professional associations, in popular neighbourhood movements, in landless peoples’ struggles, and in the struggles for housing of the homeless and for better living conditions. Despite these advantages, the majority of women still live their lives subject to the values and perspectives of rural life and are far from a true understanding of what we could call a critical feminist consciousness. Still isolated in their small towns, conditioned by traditional values yet subjected to significant levels of domestic violence that involves them emotionally and culturally, some of these women, even as they participate in political activities, are still trapped in the patriarchal structures and values that dominate most of these municipalities where family interests, patrimonialism and clientelism work to dilute those relations that express essentially political interests. The control of local political power remains in the hands of old families and oligarchic political groups. Many studies of local government in Brazil have demonstrated the importance of political and kin ties with a political group as one of the main means of access to power even in elected positions. The ‘conservative modernization’ pursued by the Brazilian state changed relations of production in the municipalities, but has not brought significant changes in traditional structures of power for the majority of the population.

Women and politics in Brazil Women won the right to vote in Brazil in 1932 and experienced a sort of honeymoon with power until 1937, when, because of a coup d’état, the entire set of constitutional guarantees of Brazilian citizens was curtailed. Only from 1945, with re-democratization, did women actually begin to exercise the right to vote. Today, 80 years after they won the right to vote, and representing 51.8 per cent of the national electorate, Brazilian women still largely remain out of power. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union

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(IPU), in July 2013 Brazil ranked 120th out of 189 countries in the world for women’s political representation within the national parliament. In the general election of October 2010, despite the election of Dilma Rousseff as President of the Republic, women continued to be in the minority within the structures of power, representing only 8.8 per cent of the Federal Chamber (Lower House), 14.1 per cent of the Senate (Upper House), and 12.85 per cent in the state legislative assemblies. Various factors contribute to the maintenance of women’s exclusion from the world of formal politics: the persistence of a patri­archal culture dominant in politics, manifested in the resistance to the incorporation of women in party structures; the reluctance of party leaders to nominate women as political candidates for their parties; the lack of resources (or autonomy to manage them) for the financing of election campaigns, which have become increasingly expensive in Brazil. This is coupled with the persistence of the patri­ monial and clientelist culture that has controlled electoral politics in Brazil, and today lies beneath the dominion of local political bosses and their family networks. This conjunction of practices has served not only to keep women out of power, but also to maintain the dominance of conservatism in the Brazilian legis­lature. Nevertheless, historically, in Brazil and throughout Latin America, the representative space at the municipal level, both the executive and the legislature, has been the most welcoming environ­ ment for women’s political involvement. It is in the municipal conselhos (participatory sectoral policy institutions asso­ciated with the executive) and in the leadership of the local executive that women’s political participation registers better indices. The proximity of home and the possibility of political activity more closely directed at private or family interests are facili­tating factors. However, this is not to say that women are even adequately represented in these political spaces, because, as can be seen from Tables 8.1 and 8.2, the percentage of women elected to lead municipal executives has risen over the last three decades but remains low.

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Table 8.1 Female participation in the municipal executive, mayoral elections 1988–2012 Election year 1982 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 2012

Percentage of women elected as mayor 3.0 2.4 3.4 5.5 5.7 7.5 9.1 12.3

As can be seen from Table 8.1, in October 2012 only 12.3 per cent of the country’s mayors were women. Overall, 672 women were elected, 98.6 per cent of whom belong to municipalities considered to be medium or small in size. An interesting fact in relation to these data is that the majority of women were elected in the most backward regions in the country where there is a predominance of patriarchal and clientelist relations and particular families or political groups hold the reins of local political dynamics. Table 8.2 Female participation in municipal legislatures Election year

Percentage of women elected

1982

3.0

1988

3.0

1992

7.5

1996

11.2

2000

11.6

2004

12.6

2008

12.5

2012

13.3

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The same low indices for women elected to municipal executives are reproduced in elections to the municipal legislative chambers (Table 8.2). In October 2012, when 51,965 municipal councillors were elected across the country as a whole, only 6,911 (13.3 per cent) were women. It is interesting to note that, since 1996, the growth in the number of women elected to municipal councils has been negligible, remaining virtually stagnant or – in the case of the elections of 2008 – slipping back. This stagnation coincides significantly with the coming into force of Law 9.100 of 29 September 1995, which established a system of quotas at the federal, state and municipal levels. Initially, the law provided for a 20 per cent quota for women among all the candidates for the legislatures in proportional elections. Law 9.504 raised the quota to 25 per cent from the 1998 elections and to 30 per cent from the next elections. However, the quota system as introduced in Brazil proved to be feeble. It lacked any mechanism to force political parties to meet its requirement that 30 per cent of their candidates should be women – no penalty was imposed on parties that did not comply. Another weakness of the Brazilian quota law was that it did not consider making available guarantees of access for women candidates to party financial resources and to the free party political broadcast time on radio and television. The law also failed to devise mechanisms that would encourage parties to engage in political training for women, and did not guarantee that the same percentage of women would be amongst those elected in each election (Costa 2010a, 2010b; Araújo 2007, 2009). In September 2009, the Brazilian National Congress promoted a mild measure of electoral reform (Law 12.034/09). Parties became obliged to designate 5 per cent of party funds to women’s political training, and 10 per cent of the time allocated to them for party political broadcasts to promoting and disseminating the political participation of women. The law also outlined a punishment for those who failed to comply with the 5 per cent rule, establishing a fine that would add another 2.5 per cent of the resources in the party’s annual funds to actions that would

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build women’s political capacities. The impact of this electoral law on the indices of women’s political participation in elections to federal and state legislatures in 2010 was barely felt, and up to the present there is no information on the application of any sanctions at all on parties who failed to comply with the quota.1 The difficulty confronted by the women’s caucus in negotiating and gaining approval for its initiatives, such as more effective electoral legislation in relation to the quota system, reflects exactly the significance of the political force of women in the National Congress, where the proportion of female politicians is less than 10 per cent of the total number of parliamentarians in both chambers. Given the absence of women from the negotiating tables, and the difficulty they face in acting in concert – submerged as they are in a sea of patriarchal and party interests – it is difficult to imagine that women parliamentarians will succeed in pursuing processes of change or reform. The same difficulties are felt by women councillors in the municipal chambers. A major step forward came, nevertheless, when the Supreme Electoral Court – in Resolution No. 23,373 regulating the municipal elections of October 2012 – made it mandatory under the law to veto the registration of candidate lists submitted by political parties that had failed to reach the quota of female candidates. This resolution made the difference in the municipal elections of 2012, when the percentage of female candidates reached 31.5 per cent, contrasting with 21.9 per cent in 2008. However, the resolution also brought a new dimension to women’s political participation, the so-called ‘orange candidates’.2 A significant number of women who did not get any votes were characterized as ‘orange candidates’, that is, women who lend their name so that the party is able to ensure that its list is registered. All over the country, allegations of ghost candidates appeared in various municipalities when the election results were announced. Another significant fact providing evidence of parties’ attempts to circumvent the quota law – and what is worse, with women’s connivance – is the high number of candidates who were housewives. According to data on the candidates held by

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the Superior Electoral Court, 22,789 candidates for municipal councillor in 2012 declared that their principal occupation was ‘housewife’. In 2008 there were 9,869 candidates with this occupation. This signifies an increase of 131 per cent between 2008 and 2012. In 2008, ‘housewives’ occupied ninth place in the list of occupations pursued by female candidates. In 2012, ‘housewife’ moved to fourth place. This raises a question as to whether these women, who come from privileged backgrounds, do not need to work, and do not have a public role, are being used as proxies for their husbands’ political careers. Table 8.3 gives a better picture of the main occupations amongst female candidates for municipal councillor in Brazil. Table 8.3 Occupations declared by female candidates for the Municipal Chamber in the elections of 2008 and 2012 Order of classification

2008

2012

1st

Farmer (42,516)

Municipal public servant (39,268)

2nd

Saleswoman (35,976)

Farmer (38,655)

3rd

Municipal public servant (25,426)

Saleswoman (35,160)

4th

Municipal councillor (19,232)

Housewife (22,789)

5th

Businesswoman (13,047)

Municipal councillor (20,787)

6th

Primary school teacher (11,682)

Businesswoman (20,494)

7th

Secondary school teacher (11,224)

Retired (14,860)

8th

Retired (10,916)

Primary school teacher (13,481)

9th

Housewife (9,869)

Secondary school teacher (11,509)

Source: Superior Electoral Court (2012).3

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This table makes explicit the difficulties faced within the entire field of feminist struggles that has focused on instruments for affirmative action to overcome obstacles to the effective exercise of citizenship by women. The Brazilian case is symptomatic in this respect. Over the last 15 years, efforts have been made to put in place legislation that can guarantee the effectiveness of the quota law, but law itself is not enough to bring about the changes that are needed. It is necessary to change the culture of the political parties as well as of the people (men and women) who constitute them. Despite these difficulties and although at a slow pace, women are attaining a place in formal politics. This experience lends itself to further examination, in order to understand more about the kind of women who engage in politics. We seek to identify their opportunities for access, the paths they take in undergoing a political apprenticeship, and the kinds of networks they are able to establish. These insights are essential in exploring how women, as political actors, engage the formal power structures they encounter at the municipal level.

Women councillors and mayors in Bahia As reflected in the tables presented earlier in this chapter, recent years have seen changes in women’s entry into politics in Brazil. The political and economic changes that the country has experienced in this period are reflected in the lives of women. An earlier comparative study of women elected to office in 1982, 1986 and 1994 (Costa 1998) and the more recent study of councillors elected in the 2008 and 2012 elections identify significant changes in women’s pathways into political office, as well as in relation to political practice. The earlier study constructed a representative profile of councillors who occupied a role in the local legislative body in Bahia. The typical profile of a female councillor of that time was a 45-year-old Catholic widow, with four children, who had completed secondary school (at least) and was typically a primary

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school teacher until being elected for the first time (Costa 1998: 148). Today, among the councillors elected in 2008 and 2012, this representative profile has changed. They are mostly legally married (54.3 per cent) with two or three children (69 per cent); despite the rise of Protestantism in large urban centres, they remain predominantly Catholic (70.7 per cent); and they have a higher (post-secondary) education, the majority having studied at college. The main difference has been the retreat of widows from the local political scene. In the earlier research, they represented 65.3 per cent of women councillors; often, they had been called to occupy the political space of deceased husbands and to safeguard the interests of hegemonic local groups (Costa 1998: 149). It is likely that this change is related to improvements in the quality of life of the population, a fall in the mortality rate, and the transfer of the widow’s role to her daughter – all of these innovations may be set against the background of the democratic consolidation of the Brazilian state. In the case of mayors, the most significant change has been the rise in their level of education – most of them now have higher education credentials, acquired as part of prior professional careers. With regard to their previous occupations, other changes are evident. In the previous research, women came primarily from three professional sectors: health care (nurses and midwives), teachers, and public employees. Teachers represented 48 per cent of all women councillors (Costa 1998: 151). In the elections of 2008, however, only 19 per cent of female councillors were teachers. The largest occupational concentration was now among public officials (especially in the area of service provision, including health care), who constituted 41 per cent of the elected female councillors. This indicates that openings for women in professional fields other than teaching had appeared by this period. There was also a significant reduction in the number of women who defined themselves as ‘housewives’ in 2008, relative to the cohorts who formed part of the earlier study. In Bahia, there were no women councillors who defined themselves as housewives, in contrast with the official statistics of the Superior

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Electoral Court ranking ‘housewife’ in ninth place relative to other occupations undertaken by women councillors prior to their election, and the recent changes in this composition due to the enforcement of the quota law, as discussed earlier. In the field of political action, the profile of the female muni­ cipal councillor has changed completely. While the councillors in the 1980s began their pathways into politics when they put themselves forward as candidates for election, most of those elected in 2008 and 2012 had a track record of prior political activism, with links to social movements and other organizations in civil society. Only 17.2 per cent of those elected in this period said that they had no political experience prior to putting themselves forward as candidates. Women have expanded their activism through the diverse spaces created by participatory democracy. Residents’, women’s, and religious associations can be found in the small municipalities in Bahia, and these become spaces in which women gain political experience and develop political skills. It is worth noting that 41.4 per cent of the women councillors in the sample said that they participate (or had participated) in some kind of women’s group. In urban centres, union activism is a significant source of political skills and access to candidature. Women’s reflections on their political trajectories reveal histories of engagement in these different political arenas: I always participated in social movements. In my municipality, I started participating in a women’s group in the church and after that I joined the residents’ association. It was there that I began to interest myself in politics. (Female councillor elected in 2008) When I was at university, I participated in the student movement and then I joined the party. To run as a candidate was also a decision of my party that thought I’d have a chance. (Female councillor elected in 2008) I started in the church, in the women’s groups, and it was after I joined the Union of Rural Workers I started to think more about politics. In the union I also participated more in women’s events. (Female councillor elected in 2008)

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In the case of women elected to be mayors, many began their political lives participating or assisting in the election campaigns of husbands or other family members. Some started engaging in politics when they married, and began to play the role of ‘first lady’. According to one mayor, ‘When I got married, with my husband being mayor and being put in the position of being first lady, I couldn’t escape direct contact with the population.’ On her prior experience before putting herself forward as a mayoral candidate, she affirmed that it was ‘as a wife of a politician, I always participated, for decades, in political activities as a member of the directorate of the party, in political campaigns and so on’. One female councillor whose husband did not possess the necessary eligibility as defined by the electoral law – because he had changed parties months before the election – explained the reasons behind her own candidature and her evaluation of what made her election worthwhile: The campaign was born of a need to defend ideas, work that I believe in above all because I worked, I had a lot of experience alongside … we were classmates in college and graduated together, worked together.… Suddenly there was a phase of life in which I didn’t want to work with him, because I thought that what brought us together was not working together but having identities, thinking the same, one helping the other, this adds up to something in which to believe. Because of this, I agreed to put myself forward for election to defend the things in which we both believed.… I am aware that the votes aren’t mine. In truth, the votes are his. But the mandate is mine, I am responsible for the mandate. In the next election, I can be reelected or not depending on what I do during my mandate.

A significant feature of the candidate profile – unchanged over the three decades studied – is the predominance of political family ties. The earlier study of mayors and councillors elected in Bahia in 1982, 1988 and 1992 established that 51 per cent of these women had family ties with political office holders. Among those elected in 2008 and 2012, 65.5 per cent had ties of kinship with people who have exercised or are exercising political

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mandates. This, incidentally, is not just a specific characteristic of mayors and councillors. We can say that it is a general tendency in Brazilian politics, one that works well for men. It occurs in the state legislative assemblies and even in the national congress. According to Sardinha and Camargo (2011): Every other federal deputy in the current legislature has kinship ties with other figures in Brazilian political life. Of the 564 Deputies who took office this year… 271 (48 per cent) are relatives of politicians. They are children, grandchildren, parents, brothers, nephews, uncles, cousins, spouses or former spouses who have or have had tenure, held some kind of position of political appointment or participated in elections. (Our translation)

The increase in the percentage of Bahian female politicians with family ties in politics between the two periods can lead us to the conclusion that the process of democratic consolidation experienced by Brazil since the end of the military dictatorship in 1985 has not succeeded in changing clientelist and patriarchal practices. Indeed, the data suggest quite the opposite: that there has been a strengthening of control on the part of family networks over the formal structures of power in Bahia. In this context, it can be said that the existence of family ties (primarily as wives, daughters and sisters) can be an important pathway into the world of formal politics. These are women with prestige acquired in the exercise of their professional lives – usually teachers, doctors, midwives and so on – who stand out in relation to men from their political and family group and thus come to be powerful pieces in the chess game of local dominion. In the words of some of those elected as municipal councillors in 2008 and 2012: I am affiliated to the party with which my family is connected, it is my father’s, brother’s and husband’s party. My family is political. My father was a state deputy and was mayor several times. I have several uncles in politics and my husband too. We are in politics for many years.… (Female municipal councillor elected in 2008) My family has been involved in municipal politics for many years, I

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was raised in politics, living with politicians participating in elections. When I was asked to be a candidate I thought it was natural. (Female municipal councillor elected in 2012)

Family ties that facilitate the entry of women into formal politics can be one of the main reasons for the candidature of women mayors and councillors. According to one mayor interviewed, ‘In continuity with the work of my father, I put myself forward to serve the people of my land’ (mayor, elected in 1988). Despite these family ties and the political commitments that result from them, many women express a desire to ‘assist or represent the people’ or ‘fight for the improvement of the municipality’ as a main motive in the decision to put themselves forward for election as mayors or councillors. The idea of ‘care’ appears as a defining aspect of many women’s formal political participation. According to this representation of motivations, women do not participate because they like politics, because they are interested in political practice, or because of their consciousness as citizens – they are there to ‘help’ and to ‘care’: I always wanted to help people. Being a municipal councillor has given me the opportunity to help poor people and make my munici­ pality a better place. When I was invited to put myself forward as a candidate, I accepted because that was a way I could help my municipality and poor people. (Two female municipal councillors elected in 1992)

Table 8.4 gives an idea of why these women from small and medium-sized municipalities in Bahia become candidates for political office. Women are affiliated to political parties at the time of applica­ tion, but often have no ideological bond with the party. Their primary connection is still with the family group; the link with the party is a consequence of this link, and a legal condition for their participation in the electoral process. For these women, the party is not the channel for public opinion through which citizens can influence government decision making, as defined in the classic liberalism of John Locke, Tocqueville and Mill. Depart­ing from

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Table 8.4 Motives given by women councillors for their candidature Candidate motives

Electoral period 1982/1988/1992

Desire to represent/ help the people

2008/2012

37.8



37.9

3.1

13.8

-

Help the party or a particular candidate

8.6



Replace a family member

4.7



Represent/help women Improve the municipality

Meet the request of family or friends Other reasons Total

26.8

19 -

15.7

15.5

3.3

13.8

100

100

this rule are those who have links with small parties of the left, especially in the large urban centres. In the words of some women councillors: I’m in this party because it’s the party in which my family works, it’s like family. (Female municipal councillor elected in 1998) This is the party in which I succeeded in becoming a legend. In my municipality, I’m the party. I’m the only councillor and because of this I have more control over the party. (Female municipal councillor elected in 2008) I’ve been through several parties. When my group lost the leadership of the party we used to belong to, we had to move to this one. (Female municipal councillor elected in 2008) Inside the party you don’t have much power, what’s important is the group that supports you, to whom you are connected. Sometimes you have more support in the municipality but the state directorate won’t give you any support. (Female municipal councillor elected in 2008)

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This fluidity of links with the party is not specific to women politicians. It is a characteristic of Brazilian political culture. The lack of a party tradition is the fruit of constant political reforms, military coups, and the absence of legal rules that legislate on party loyalty. The end result of all these factors is a complete disintegration of any party political perspective. If we can speak of a tradition of the Brazilian political party, it is the constant mobility and change of parties that we witness in the behaviour of Brazilian politicians. To follow the trajectory of a Brazilian politician, for example, is to follow them through diverse parties and see them change as they come to conform to new political agreements, alliances and political pacts. Women follow the same trajectory when they put themselves forward as candidates. Twenty years ago, 40.2 per cent of the elected women muni­ci­ pal councillors said that they came to be affiliated with their current party because of family tradition or links that their family had with the political group of that particular party. In 2008 and 2012, the councillors pointed to ideology as the factor that determined their choice of party (51.7 per cent). However, 29.3 per cent still claimed that they chose their party for family reasons: I joined this party to be a candidate and this was the party who invited me. (Female municipal councillor elected in 2008) I was elected by the other party, but we had some problems here in the city and we had to change to the party that I am in now. (Female municipal councillor elected in 1992)

On the other hand, it is in the party that women encounter their most discouraging obstacles. Not only does their electoral potential go unrecognized, but, especially, their campaigns are undersupported and party resources are unequally shared with them. According to the women interviewees, the parties take no action whatsoever to engage with or approach women. What we see here is resistance to the quota system and to the incorporation of women in the internal power structures of the party, and a lack of real commitment to women’s demands. In the words of two women councillors:

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The party never helped me. Inside the party, I could only count on the support of those friends who helped with my campaign. It seemed that the party only wanted me so that they could make up the quota because after I accepted to be a candidate I didn’t get any more help from them again. Inside, your campaign is your own personal cost, one you need to meet as an individual. It is you that needs to cover everything. (Two female municipal councillors elected in 2008)

This political party practice in relation to women has been a vector of women’s mobilization in relation to the demand for more participation in the spheres of decision making within the party, in particular in the parties of the left. The demand for proportionality has passed from a demand for the participation of both sexes in the structures of power in the party to one for parity. These demands are being made not only from outside the political party system, by women’s movements, but also from within by women who came into politics to represent women and are frustrated by the lack of opportunities that they face once elected. As one interviewee put it: I didn’t realize this before, but after a lot of activism in the party I came to see that the space was very much occupied by men, and that it was only men who were making the decisions. There comes a moment when you know that a certain party has a chapter in its manifesto that refers to women, but there’s very little in relation to what needs to change. If you don’t have women to defend this little, it can fall by the wayside. I was encouraged [to take this up] by comrades who felt that women who were candidates didn’t have much to do with women’s issues.… I would never put myself forward as a candidate just to defend what everyone else defends, that doesn’t have any originality, it’s because we needed someone there to talk, to defend, to fight, to do what could be done in Parliament to change things. (Female municipal councillor elected in 2008)

The Workers’ Party (PT) has been one of the most innovative parties in this respect, introducing a policy of parity at its Fourth National Congress in São Paulo in September 2011.4 This is not to say that in the PT, or indeed in any of the other parties that

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have established an internal quota system, women are effectively included in the spheres of decision making. What is common in these parties is that women become social secretaries, roles that effectively exclude them from power. In more traditional parties, and those identified with conservative or centrist politics, women are not even able to have this discussion, and the few who occupy positions in the party structure reproduce the reigning patriarchal logic in its entirety. The relationship that political parties have with women in Brazil can be characterized as a paradox. On the one hand, the political parties exhibit a set of practices that exclude women, boycott their candidatures, create barriers to women’s access, disqualify their demands, and so on. On the other, no party leader­ship can fail to recognize the electoral potential of the female vote. Women are 51 per cent of the national electorate. In many localities, the female vote is definitive of the electoral process. It is not for nothing that the parties, whether left or right, have in their party manifestos a number of promises in rela­tion to women’s demands. In election campaigns, parties and candidates produce materials to disseminate their proposals and commitments in relation to women. The female vote is a treasure to be won. Table 8.5 Role of the political party in the election of female municipal councillors Role of party

Electoral period 1982/1998/1992

Helped

2008/2012

62.5

46.6

Made things more difficult

8.4

12.1

Remained neutral (indifferent)

29.1

32.7

Vague answer

-

5.2

No response

-

3.4

Total

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100

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The kind of support women candidates can count on comes much more from their political or family group than from the party per se. One important finding recorded in Table 8.5 is the high percentage of councillors who believed that their party ‘remained neutral’ – that is, had no importance in the electoral process and brought no contribution or influence to bear on their election. That this remains relatively unchanged over the cohorts of councillors from 1982 to 2012 confirms that, for them, In the municipality, what matters is the candidate, their family and not the party. Voting is personal, based on commitments, alliances. It is a kind of recognition of the work done previously by the candidate or political group or family to whom they are linked. (Female municipal councillor elected in 1992) The party does not go as far as the small municipality. At the time of campaigning you have to fend for yourself. The state leadership only remembers the party in the municipality at the time of elections for [federal or state] deputies. (Female municipal councillor elected in 2008)

This sense of the party’s distance is reinforced not only by the vision that female municipal councillors have of what the party does in the municipality, but also in the very practices developed in the party in relation to women. In Table 8.6, we can see how female municipal councillors evaluate the attitude of the party in relation to the demands and interests of women. The predominant opinion is that the party does nothing to attract women, although it must be noted that this perception is not as common amongst those female municipal councillors elected more recently. It might also be noted that the proportion of respondents who saw their party as providing encouragement and support for female candidates remained virtually unchanged throughout the 30-year period, at just over a quarter of respondents. In the words of some women councillors: In my municipality, the party does nothing to help women. It seems that in Salvador the party held an event. (Female municipal councillor elected in 2008)

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Table 8.6 Attitude of the parties in relation to women Attitude of the parties

Electoral period 1982/1988/1992

2008/2012

Does nothing to attract women

49.5

32.8

Motivates and supports female candidates

25.3

25.9

Promotes political training for women

-

Is only active in election periods

17.7

Other responses

7.5

Did not respond

12 5.2

Don’t know Total

12.1

12 100

100

From time to time there are events in Brasilia to bring together women of the party but in the municipality there aren’t those kinds of things. The party does nothing here. (Female municipal councillor elected in 1988) In the elections there’s always someone there from the state leadership, principally when there are elections for deputy, but outside that it’s abandonment. The party doesn’t help, doesn’t support, doesn’t pre­ pare the women [for election]. (Female municipal councillor elected in 1992) I’ve never heard of any activity carried out by the party to help women. For us, everything is always very difficult – not only to come out as a candidate but to succeed in making a campaign. And after being elected we continue alone, lacking support. (Female muni­cipal councillor elected in 2008)

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This ‘abandonment’ by the party means that the period of electoral campaigning is very difficult for women. The lack of their own financial resources, along with the high cost of election campaigns today in Brazil, makes it virtually unviable for women to put themselves forward as candidates for election. A significant example in this context is the trajectory of Creuza Maria Oliveira, president of the National Federation of Domestic Workers (FENATRAD), whose long-standing activism in leading the organization of domestic workers in Brazil has earned her national and international recognition. In 2011, Creuza received the National Human Rights prize, the highest award of the Brazilian government. Also an activist in the Unified Black Movement, Creuza is affiliated with the Workers’ Party and has run as candidate for state deputy in Bahia, and three times for councillor in the municipality of Salvador. Despite the prestige she has won nationally, on none of these occasions has Creuza been elected. According to her: I come from a political trajectory linked to the struggles for recognition of the category of domestic workers, I have participated in diverse social movements, but I haven’t got resources to finance my campaign, the party hasn’t helped me, the big businessmen don’t usually finance the campaigns of women and, worse still, of a domestic worker. The small individual contributions that I get are just not enough to ensure the minimum materials I need for the campaign. They’re not enough for me to compete with the power of those who have the money to bankroll their campaigns or who have weighty supporters.

In smaller cities where the cost of campaigning is lower, women confront other obstacles. Even those who have their own resources do not apply them to their campaigns. Studies show that women are not in the habit of mortgaging their goods to finance their electoral campaigns. This is a practice common amongst men. Women candidates do not want to risk any of their property, or that of their families. This way of thinking contributes further to the exclusion of women from power.

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Conclusion Women in Brazil experience numerous obstacles along their path­ ways to political power. In order to overcome these barriers, the Brazilian women’s movement has sought to create mechanisms to transform this reality: to improve the quota law and, in addition, to secure a guaranteed allocation of financial resources from party funds as well as access to free party political advertising. The women’s movement is, however, well aware that financing mechanisms alone are not enough to transform mentalities. To address this, women’s organizations and the state have created training programmes for women and a national campaign, ‘More Women in Power’, has been developed and coordinated by the National Secretariat for Women’s Policies (Secretaria Nacional de Políticas para Mulheres, SPM), which has the status of a ministry linked to the presidency of the republic. SPM represents an important ally in the battle for the incorporation of women in Brazilian politics. Another source of support has been the Women and Democracy Programme, which coordinates various organizations across the north and north-east of the country to constitute a network of professionalized women across the region who carry out political training for women and encourage women’s candidature. For all this, the effective and equal participation of women in decision making in Brazil is still a long way off. If we were to calculate this journey using the indices of growth in participation of women in electoral office over the last 30 years, we would conclude that another 50 years are needed for women to win parity in representation in Brazilian society. Improving the quota system and guaranteeing its effective implementation is only one important step on this pathway. The quota system in and of itself does not create conditions for the political empowerment of women. It needs to be accompanied by public policies that promote equality and that can create the conditions for more radical changes in the patriarchal structures of society as an essential part of what it means to deepen democracy.

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Notes 1 According to data published by the Secretariat for Women’s Policies, only 17.3 per cent of political parties and party coalitions in the whole country complied with the quota law in the 2010 elections. See http://www.sepm.gov.br/noticias/ultimas_noticias/2010/10/ apenas-17-3-dos-partidos-coligacoes-cumpriram-as-cotas-naseleicoes-2010 (accessed 20 March 2013). 2 ‘Orange candidates’, in popular Brazilian terminology, are those candidates who only occupy a place on the list in service of another candidate or a party, and are not real candidates. The use of ghost or orange candidates is common among political parties in Brazil, where electoral legislation bars public functionaries from continuing their work during the period of pre-election campaigning. By using these ‘proxies’, candidates who are public servants are able to dedicate themselves to electoral campaigning for candidates who are priorities for the party. 3 See http://g1.globo.com/politica/eleicoes/2012/noticia/2012/ 09/com-cota-numero-de-donas-de-casa-candidatas-aumenta131-no-pais.html (accessed 20 March 2013). I am grateful to Jose Eustaquio Alvez for bringing this to my attention. 4 In September 2001 the Fourth National Congress of the Workers’ Party approved a quota of 50 per cent of women in the composition of their leadership, delegations, commissions and roles relating to sectoral governance. In 1991, the First Congress of the Workers’ Party had approved a minimum quota of 30 per cent for women’s participation at all levels of party governance.

References Araújo, C. (2007) ‘As Cotas e os Desafios para a Reforma Política’ [Quotas and Challenges for Political Reform], in A. Massolo (ed.), Participación Politica de las Mujeres en el Ámbito Local en América Latina [Women’s Political Participation at the Local Level in Latin America], Instituto Internacional de Investigaciones y Capacitación [International Institute of Research and Training], Mexico. —— (2009) ‘As Cotas e os Desafios para a Reforma Política’ [Quotas and Challenges for Political Reform], in A. A. Costa (ed.), Seminário Trilhas do Poder das Mulheres. Experiences Internacionias em Ações Afirmativas [Women’s Pathways of Power. International Experiences in Affirmative Action], Chamber of Deputies Press, Brasilia.

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Brazilian Government, Ministry of Labour (2011) ‘Características do Emprego Formal Segundo a Relação Anual de Informações Sociais’, [Characteristics of Formal Employment according to Annual Report of Social Information], http://www.rais.gov.br/, Brazilian Government, Ministry of Labour, Brasilia. Costa, A. A. A. (1998) As Donas no Poder. Mulher e Política na Bahia, [The Ladies in Power. Women and Politics in Bahia], Vol. 2, Assembléia Legislativa da Bahia/NEIM-UFBa, Coleção Bahianas, Salvador. —— (2010a) ‘Quotas: A Pathway of Political Empowerment?’, IDS Bulletin, Vol. 41, No. 2, pp. 18–27. —— (2010b) ‘Quotas as a Pathway to Parity: Challenges for Women’s Participation in Politics’, IDS Bulletin, Vol. 41, No. 5, pp. 116–19. Departamento Intersindical de Estatística e Estudos Socioeconômicos [Inter-Union Department for Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies] (DIEESE) (2009) Anuário dos Trabalhadores [Workers’ Yearbook], DIEESE, Brasilia. Sardinha, E. and R. Camargo (2011) ‘Quase 300 Deputados têm Parente na Política’ [Almost 300 Deputies have Relatives in Politics], Revista Congresso em Foco, 11 April, http://congressoemfoco.uol.com.br/ noticias/quase-300-deputados-tem-parente-na-politica/ (accessed 20 March 2013).

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About the Contributors

Sara Abbas has researched women’s political participation in Sudan since 2010, with support from the Pathways of Women’s Em­power­ment programme. She has worked for various organ­ izations including the UNDP, UN Women, the Carter Center, the Social Science Research Council and Columbia University. Hussaina J. Abdullah, an independent researcher and con­sul­ tant, is a member of the Board of the Agency for Research and Cooperation in Africa (ACORD). She has recently completed a multi-sectoral Country Gender Profile of Liberia for the African Development Bank and is currently consulting with the Millennium Challenge Cooperation Compact in Sierra Leone as a social and gender constraints analyst. Andrea Cornwall is the director of the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment programme and professor of anthropology and development in the School of Global Studies at the Univer­sity of Sussex. She has written widely on gender issues in develop­ ment, sexuality and development, and participatory govern­ ance. Her publications include Women, Sexuality and the Politics of Pleasure (co-edited with Susie Jolly and Kate Hawkins, 2013) and Men and Development: Politicising Masculinities (co-edited with Jerker Edstrom and Alan Greig, 2012). Ana Alice Alcantara Costa is coordinator of the master’s 284

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and PhD programmes on interdisciplinary studies on women, gender and feminism at the Nucleus of Interdisciplinary Studies on Women (NEIM) at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA). She was one of the founders of NEIM, acting as its director from 1999 to 2004. Costa has worked in the area of gender and public policies in Brazil for over twenty years, publishing several articles and books on feminist studies in Brazil and abroad. Active in the Brazilian and Mexican feminist movements since the late 1970s, she has been a member of the UFBA’s faculty of philosophy and human sciences since 1982. Iqbal Ehsan has an MSS in anthropology from Jahangirnagar University. He is currently working at Concern, Bangladesh. He worked as a research associate for the Center for Gender and Social Transformation (CGST) based at the BRAC Development Insti­ tute (BDI), BRAC University until December 2013 on projects on women in politics, the cultural construction of Bengali Muslim women’s identity, access to microfinance and women’s empowerment. Bayazid Hasan is an anthropologist and is currently working as a research associate at BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD), BRAC University. His area of work mainly focuses on urbanization, governance and service delivery in urban slums. He is one of the co-authors of the chapter on Bangladesh in Heltberg et al. (eds), Living Through Crises: How Goods, Fuel, and Financial Crises Affect the Poor (2012). Islah Jad is the director and one of the founders of the Women’s Studies Institute at Bir Zeit University, Palestine. She is also assis­ tant professor of gender and development at Bir Zeit. She is one of the founders of WATC (Women’s Affairs Technical Com­mit­tee), a national coalition for women in Palestine. She has pub­lished many works on Palestinian and Arab women’s political participation. Takyiwaa Manuh is a retired professor of African studies at the

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University of Ghana, where she also served as the director of the Institute of African Studies (2002–9). She now works as an independent researcher and consultant. Her research interests are in the areas of African development; women’s rights and gender equality in Africa; contemporary African migrations; and African higher education systems. She has published extensively on these topics in books, monographs and journals. She was convener of the West African hub of the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment programme (2007–11), and has also led and initiated other research programmes. Kanchan Mathur is a professor at the Institute of Develop­ment Studies, Jaipur and coordinator of the women’s/gender studies unit. She has wide-ranging experience of applied research, policy analysis and advocacy in the field of social and rural development, especially focusing on gender issues in India and South Asia. She is the author of Countering Gender Violence: Initiatives Towards Collective Action in Rajasthan (2004) and has also published extensively in edited volumes and journals of national and international repute. Her areas of interest include women’s empowerment, genderbased violence, poverty, gender and livelihoods. Sohela Nazneen is a professor of international relations at the University of Dhaka and a lead researcher at the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD), BRAC University. Her research mainly focuses on institutional analysis of gender, particularly in the areas of governance, rural and urban livelihoods and feminist movements. She is currently leading research on gender and political settlement in selected South Asian and subSaharan African countries for the Effective States and Inclusive Development Research Programme Consortium based at the University of Manchester. Sohela has published many articles and book chapters. She is the co-editor of Voicing Demands: Feminist Activism in Transitional Contexts (2014).

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Index

31st December Women’s Movement (DWM) (Ghana), 58, 59 50/50 Group (Sierra Leone), 24, 243, 247, 248, 251 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act (1992) (India), 204, 206, 207, 208, 214, 227 74th Constitutional Amendment Act (1992) (India), 204, 206, 207, 208 ABANTU for Development, 26, 56 Abban, Grace, 47 Abbas, Mahmoud, 140 Abbasher, Areej Ali, 187, 188, 189 Abd el Hameed, Helal, 115 Abd el Mohsen, Hanan Mohammed, 116, 117 Abou el Hassan, Manar, 124, 129 Abou el Komsan, Nehad, 132 Abou el Mahasen, Manar Talaat, 127 Abou Muaisse, Sireen, 158, 159 Abu Mashaikh, Hanan, 148, 153 Abu Muaisse, Sireen, 153 Adel, Samia, 119, 120 affirmative action, 136; in Brazil, 268; in Egypt, 28; in India, 31, 203, 204; in Palestine, 25, 31, 135, 143, 155, 161; in Sudan, 28, 185; see also quota policy age, role of, 10, 33; in India, 214; in

Palestine, 150 Agyeman-Rawlings, Nana Konadu, 58 Ahikire, Josephine, 8 Ahmed, Najah Ibrahim, 174, 189 Akibo-Betts, Alfred, 241 Al-Bashir, Omar, 169 Al-Hashimi, Samia, 171 Al-Nour party (Egypt), 112, 114, 120, 121, 122, 126, 132; and ghost candidates, 29; women members, 130 Al Thawra Moustamera party (Egypt), 112, 114 All People’s Congress (APC) (Sierra Leone), 236, 237, 239, 245, 246 Alpha, Fanta, 234, 249, 250, 255 Anim, Ernestina, 47 Arafat, Yasser, 137; death of, 138 Ashok Mehta Committee (India), 206 associations, 15; in Bangladesh, 15, 85, 93; in Brazil, 15; in Egypt, 16, 124, 125; in Ghana, 15, 16, 57, 58, 60; religious, 15; voluntary, 15, 85; women’s, 270; see also trade unions Awami League (AL) (Bangladesh), 76, 86 Ayensu, Grace, 47

287

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women in politics

Badri, Balghis, 196 Bahia, 268, 269, 270, 271 Ballington, Julie, 105, 235, 236 Balwant Rai Mehta Committee Report, 206 Bangladesh, 76, 97; social networks, 89, 91, 96 Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), 76, 86 Bangura, Barbara, 254 Bart-Plage, Charlotte, 46, 47 Baviskar, B. S., 209 Beall, Jo, 30, 43 Beaman, Lori, 4 Beijing Plan for Action, 40 Bishara, Azmi, 137 Brazil, 259, 260, 261, 262, 275, 281; community activism, 270; constitution, 260; elections (in 2008, 265; in 2012, 29, 266); electoral reform, 259, 265, 266; employment, 261; female vote, 277; municipalities, 260, 261, 263; right to vote, 262 Brownill, Sue, 7 Brunnbauer, Ulf, 104 Buch, Nirmala, 207 Building and Development Party (Egypt), 126 Camargo, Renata, 272 Campaign for Good Governance (CGG) (Sierra Leone), 247, 249 campaigning: cost of, 66, 280; in Bangladesh, 87, 88; in Brazil, 280 candidate selection, 5 care, 11, 19, 20, 156; in Ghana, 11, 17; in Bangladesh, 19; in Brazil, 273; unpaid, 33, 35; see also childcare caste, 219 Caulker-Caulker, Ellen G. A., 236 charity: in Ghana, 88; in Egypt, 123, 124

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childcare, 11, 33, 35 children, 11, 19; in Ghana, 51; in Palestine, 149, 150 Choudhary, Kiran, 226 Choudhary, Reshma, 21 civic engagement, 42 civil society, 140 class, 20, 33; in Egypt, 117, 118 Coker, Esther Lily, 237, 241 community support, 21 community work, 12 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) (Sudan), 170 constituency, 20, 21, 32, 125; in Bangladesh, 22, 87, 92; in Egypt, 123; in Ghana, 60 Conteh, Juliet, 246 Convention on the Elimina­tion of All Forms of Discrimina­tion against Women (CEDAW), 40, 204 Convention People’s Party (CPP) (Ghana), 46 Conyers, Diana, 42 Coptic Orthodox Church, 126 Cornwall, Andrea, 9, 13 corruption, 153 Cross-Cole, Joana, 47 culture, 22, 33 Cummings-John, Constance, 236, 240 Dahlerup, Drude, 4, 104, 253 decentralization, 30, 42, 183, 209-10; entrepreneurial, 42; in Banglad­ esh, 97; in Ghana, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48; in India, 31, 206, 207, 212, 228; in Palestine, 31; in Sierra Leone, 244, 245; in South Africa, 30, 43; participatory, 42 democratic coalition (Egypt), 112 Democratic Front (DF) (Sudan), 193, 194, 195 Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) (Sudan), 169

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index

development: in Bangladesh, 85, 94; in Ghana, 54, 55, 63, 64; in India, 223, 225 Devi, Durga, 217 Devi, Santoshi, 220 Devolution of Estates Act (2007) (Sierra Leone), 251 Dirar, Amna, 170 discrimination against women: in Bangladesh, 78; in Ghana, 62, 64; in India, 210, 212, 213 district assemblies (DAs) (Ghana), 45, 62, 63; committees on, 62; sitting allowance, 66 District Assemblies Law (1988) (Ghana), 41, 45 District Mutual Health Insurance Scheme (Ghana), 59 domestic labour, 33, 218, 280 Domestic Violence Act (2007) (Sierra Leone), 251 Dove, Mabel, 46 education, 12, 13; 156–7; in Bangladesh, 12, 80; in Brazil, 269; in Egypt, 12; in Ghana, 13, 51; in India, 12, 215, 221; in Palestine, 12, 158 Egypt, 106, 112, 123; constitution, 109, 111; elections (in 2010, 101, 102, 113–14; in 2011–12, 23, 101, 105, 110, 113, 114, 116, 120, 125, 128, 129, 130, 131); electoral law, 112, 113, 120, 121, 132; press freedom, 109; revolution, 101, 102, 103, 119 Egyptian Social Democratic Party, 112, 126 Eid, 88 El-Battahani, Atta, 181 El-Deen, Welaa Salah, 7, 17, 193, 194, 195, 196 El Fostat al Gedeeda organization (Egypt), 116

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289

el Gebaly, Tahany, 111 El Horreya party (Egypt), 117 El Karama party (Egypt), 112 El-Khawad, Eman, 182, 183 El-Mahdi, El-Sadiq, 181 El Saeed, Sanaa, 115, 117, 129 El Wafd party (Egypt), 114, 126 El Wassat party (Egypt), 126 Elections Act (2008) (Sudan), 174 empowerment, 6; empowerment programmes, 9, 10, 34, 35, 36, 198; in Bangladesh, 92; in Palestine, 160; in Sudan, 34 equality, 203 Eshun, Anna Augustina, 47 Evans-Lutterodt, Hesse, 46 Evertzen, Annette, 42 Fallon, Kathleen, 104 family, 14, 18, 20, 35, 91, 145; in Bangladesh, 14, 19, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 89, 95, 96; in Brazil, 15, 271, 272, 273, 275; in Egypt, 19, 115; in Ghana, 15, 19, 50, 54; in India, 20, 216, 217, 223; in Palestine, 148; in Sudan, 198; financial assistance from, 88, 89, 149 Fateh party (Palestine), 138, 141, 142, 149, 151, 153 favelas, 261 Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) (Ghana), 26, 56 feminist movement: in Bangladesh, 78; in Brazil, 24; in Palestine, 25; in Sierra Leone, 24 Franceschet, Susan, 6 Free Egyptians party, 112, 126 Freedom and Justice Party (Egypt), 112, 114, 118, 122, 126 Freidenvall, Lenita, 253 Garang de Mabior, John, 190, 191 Garber, Cassandra, 238

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women in politics

Gender Charter (Palestine), 160 Gender Empowerment for SelfReliance (Sierra Leone), 247 Gender Equality Bill (Sierra Leone), 24, 251, 252, 253, 254, 256 Gender Forum for Women in Local Councils (Palestine), 161 Gender Unit (Palestine), 145, 160, 161 General Union of Palestinian Women, 142, 143 Ghad el Thawra party (Egypt), 112 Ghana, 23; constitution, 45; demographics, 60; electoral system, 48 Ghathala, Sunita, 218 ghost candidates, 29; in Egypt, 29, 121, 130; see also orange candidates and proxy actors Goetz, Anne Marie, 9, 13, 204 Gom’aa, Mohamed Mokhtar, 115 governance, 209 Habashneh, Khadija, 25, 143 Halford, Susan, 7 Hamad, Fatima, 185, 186 Hamas party (Palestine), 137, 138, 139, 140, 149, 151, 155, 160 Hasina, Sheikh, 76 Hizb al Tayar al Masry, 119 Honourable Women, 48 housewives, 266, 267, 269, 270 husbands, role of, 19, 35; in Bangladesh, 82; in Brazil, 15; in Ghana, 50; in India, 219; in Palestine, 149 Hussein, Hawa, 17, 184 Ikhwan El-Muslemeen party (Sudan), 169 independent candidates: abuse of, 247, in Egypt, 24, 113, 131; in Palestine, 23, 153, 160; in Sierra Leone, 23, 233, 234, 235, 238–48

TADROS_03.indd 290

passim, 251–2, 254, 255, 256; in Sudan, 189 India, 204, 206; civil liberties movement, 204; community, 224; constitution, 203, 207, 209; emergency rule, 203; five-year plans, 204 informal pact, 107, 108 informality, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 31, 32 Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) (Brazil), 262–3 Islamic Charter Front (Sudan), 169 Jain, Devaki, 208 Jalal, Eman, 183, 184, 185 Jayal, Niraja, 210 Johnson, Penny, 157 Kagee, Roman, 191, 192 Kamara, Alice Saio, 255 Kamara, Rosaline, 244, 255 Kamara, Salamatu, 234, 248, 250 Kamel, Omaima, 118 Kast Hedar organization, 116 Katsiaouni, Olympios, 42 Kayode, Julie Keturah, 236 Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 26, 57 Koroma, Ernest Bai, 252 Kotla coalition (Egypt), 112, 114, 126 Kumudini trust, 85 leadership: in Ghana, 57, 64; in India, 223; in Palestine, 157, 158 life history, 2, 66, 95 literacy: in Egypt, 110; in India, 12, 215 Local Government Act (2004) (Sierra Leone), 243 Local Government Ordinance (1951) (Ghana), 44 Lokko, Stella Dorothy, 46 Machakos Protocol, 170 Mahama, Fati, 47

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index

mahila mandal organizations, 213 Mahmoud, Mustapha, 111 Mandela, Winnie, 54 Margai, Albert, 236, 239 Margai, Milton, 236, 239 Marrah, Edward, 238 marriage, role of, 10, 23; in Bangla­ desh, 80, 93; in Brazil, 271; in Ghana, 50; in India, 214, 215; in Palestine, 157 Marxism, 142 mastans, 89 Mathew, George, 209 Mayaram, Shail, 211 MIFTAH, see Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH) Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs (MOWAC) (Ghana), 48 mobility, 224 Mohamed, Hanan, 128 Mokhtar, Mona Mohamed Rab’i, 115, 125 ‘More Women in Power’ campaign, 25, 281 Morsi, Mohamed, 108; ousting of, 132 Mubarak, Hosni, 110; ousting of, 107, 129 Mubarak, Suzanne, 111–12 Muslim Brotherhood (Egypt), 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 118, 125, 126; and service provision, 123; women members, 114, 118 Muslim Brotherhood (Sudan), see Ikhwan El-Muslemeen Muslim Sisters, 125 Musso, Juliet, 42 Naseem, Magda, 18, 187 National Commission for Women (India), 204 National Congress of Sierra Leone Women, 240

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291

National Congress Party (NCP) (Sudan), 18, 170, 172, 173, 185, 186; women members, 187 National Council of Sierra Leone, 235 National Council of the Colony (Sierra Leone), 235 National Democratic Congress (Ghana), 58 National Democratic Party (Egypt), 112, 116, 117 National Elections Act (2008) (Sudan), 171 National Federation of Domestic Workers (FENATRAD) (Brazil), 280 National Insurance Health Scheme (Ghana), 59 National Islamic Front (NIF) (Sudan), 169, 170, 177 National Perspective Plan (India), 204 National Secretariat for Women’s Policies (Brazil), see Secretaria Nacional de Políticas para Mulheres (Brazil) National Umma Party (Sudan), 168– 9, 181, 182, 183 Network of Women Ministers and Parliamentarians (Sierra Leone), 24, 251 New Patriotic Party (NPP) (Ghana), 58 New Sudan Women’s Associa­­tion, 190 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), 15, 26, 123; in Bangladesh, 93; in Egypt, 124; in Palestine, 25, 159, 160 Nugdallah, Sarah, 181 Nyame Bèkerè Women’s Group (Ghana), 60 Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), see Palestine

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women in politics

Ofei-Aboagye, Ester, 49 Okyere, Mary, 47 Oliveria, Maria Creuza, 280 orange candidates, 29, 266; see also ghost candidates and proxy actors Oslo Agreement, 136, 137 Osman, Nazik, 174 Oxfam, 243, 248 Palestine, 20, 135, 136, 156, 161; community activism in, 156, 157; economy, 137; elections, 137, 138, 140, (in 1996, 143; in 2004– 5, 139, 144, 162; in 2006, 139; in 2012, 162); national consensus, 137; nationalist movement, 141; unemployment in, 137, 140; women’s activism in, 141 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 138, 139, 141, 142 Palestine Martyrs Works Society (Samed), 142 Palestinian Authority (PA), 137, 138, 139, 140, 143 Palestinian Communist Party, 137 Palestinian Initiative for the Promo­ tion of Global Dialogue and Democ­racy (MIFTAH), 25, 143, 159 Panchayat Raj Act (1992) (India), 206, 211, 212 panchayati raj institutions (PRIs) (India), 206, 208 participation, of women, 62, 63, 67; in Ghana, 40, 41, 43, 48, 49; in India, 208, 212 party political broadcasts, 265 party proportional lists: in Egypt, 104, 105, 113, 127, 128; in Sudan, 189, see also quota policy Pathways of Women’s Empowerment (Brazil), 48, 259–60 patronage, 8, 125; in Bangladesh, 89; in Sudan, 185

TADROS_03.indd 292

People’s Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC) (Sierra Leone), 237 political apprenticeship, 13, 32, 33, 36; in Bangladesh, 9, 79, 80, 86, 95; in Palestine, 151; in Sudan, 180, 197 political parties, 23, 32; in Bangla­ desh, 77, 84, 86, 87; in Brazil, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279; in Egypt, 16, 24, 114; in Ghana, 48, 58; in Palestine, 16, 33, 151, 153; in Sierra Leone, 233, 235–8 passim, 240, 251; in Sudan, 16, 173; women’s wings, 58, 174 Popular Congress Party (Sudan), 174, 175 positive discrimination, see affirmative action Promoting a Culture of Equal Repre­ sentation (PACER), 248, 250 Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, 41 Provisional National Development Council (PNDC) (Ghana), 45 proxy actors, 210, 223; in Bangladesh, 79; in Brazil, 267; in India, 20 purdah, 81, 213, 221 Quartey, Lucy Kpakpa, 47 Quota Law (2009) (Egypt), 112 quota policy, 6, 105, 136, 175, 181, 199, 253; in Bangladesh, 30, 77, 86; in Brazil, 28, 29, 259, 265, 266, 268, 281; in Egypt, 27, 28, 102, 104, 105, 111, 112, 131; in Ghana, 27, 47; in India, 30, 204, 207, 209, 214; in Palestine, 25, 136, 143, 144, 145, 151, 161, 162, 163; in Sierra Leone, 27, 243, 244, 251, 252; in Sudan, 18, 28, 167, 170–4 passim, 181–4 passim, 187, 189, 196, 197; see also party proportional lists

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index

Rahman, Sheikh Mujibur, 76 Rahman, Ziaur, 76 Rajasthan, 212, 213, 214, 219, 224, 227, 228 rape, 91 Reform and Development Party (Egypt), 126 Registration of Customary Marriage Act (2007) (Sierra Leone), 251 religion: in Egypt, 23, 110; in Ghana, 58 representation, 2, 4, 5, 34, 204; descrip­tive, 4, 5; in Bangladesh, 76, 77, 97; in Brazil, 263; in Egypt, 104, 114, 128; in Ghana, 41, 46, 47; in India, 213; in Palestine, 144; substantive, 4, 97; symbolic, 4 reproductive cycle, 10–11 reserved seats, see quota Richards, Patience, 236, 240 Roman, Kagee, 8, 190 Rousseff, Dilma, 263 Saad, Nadia, 127 Saeed, Sanaa, 125 Said, Khalid, murder of, 107 Salafi movement, 9, 120, 122 Salah, Mona, 121, 122, 124 Salvation Revolution, see Thawret El-Inkaz Samed, see Palestine Martyrs Works Society (Samed) Sardinha, Edson, 272 Sayigh, Mai, 142 Search for Common Ground (Sierra Leone), 247 Secretaria Nacional de Políticas para Mulheres (Brazil), 25, 281 security, 89, 91 self-employment, see work, selfemployed service provision, 125; in Egypt, 15, 122–5 passim, 131

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293

sexual harassment: in Bangladesh, 91; in Egypt, 109; in India, 220 Shafik, Ahmed, 108 Shafiq, Mounir, 141 shalish, 92 sharia law, 170 Shreime, Laila, 153, 154, 163 Sierra Leone, 233, 238, 245, 246, 251, 255; elections (in 1957, 236, 239; in 1962, 236; in 1967, 236, 239; in 1973, 237; in 1977, 237, 239; in 1996, 234, 237; in 2002, 234, 237-8; in 2004, 234, 239, 242; in 2007, 234, 237; in 2008, 234, 238, 239, 242, 245, 246; in 2012, 256); ethnic groups in, 251; women’s activism in, 234 Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), 235, 236, 237, 239, 245, 246 Sierra Leone Progressive Independent Movement (SLPIM), 236 Singh, Rita, 14, 216 Singh, Shobha, 222 single women, 10; in Ghana, 23, 50, 51; in Palestine, 22, 23, 157 Social Democratic Party (Egypt), 115 Socialist Populist coalition (Egypt), 126 Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality, 40 South Sudan, independence of, 173 Steady, Filomina, 240, 241 Steele, Nancy, 237, 240, 241, 242, 255 student politics: in Bangladesh, 84; in Sudan, 193, 195 Sudan, 18, 34, 168, 169, 173, 187, 197; 2010 elections, 172, 185; coup d’état, 169 Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), 169, 170, 172, 173, 190 Supreme Council for Armed Forces (SCAF) (Egypt), 107, 108, 109, 111, 126

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294

women in politics

Tagammu party (Egypt), 112, 115 Taha, Aisha Abbaker, 175–80 passim Tahrir Square (Cairo), 103, 111, 119; women’s march, 109 Tamarameh Gender Development Group (Sierra Leone), 248 teachers, 11, 52, 85 Thatcher, Margaret, 54 Thawret El-Inkaz, 169 time, lack of, 66 trade unions, 17, 270 training programmes, 26; in Bangladesh, 26, 79, 92, 93, 95; in Brazil, 25, 265; in Ghana, 26, 56; in India, 27, 211; in Palestine, 27, 159; in Sierra Leone, 243, 248; in Sudan, 26, 184 Tsiboe, Nancy, 47 Tucker, Peter, 236, 239 Tunisian revolution, 107 two child norm, 211, 212 Two Saints Church, bombing of, 107 Uganda, 8 Union Parishad (UP) (Bangladesh), 77 Unit Committees (UCs) (Ghana), 45, 46 United Sierra Leone People’s Party (UPP), 236 universities, 17 University of Khartoum, 193, 195 unmarried women, see single women Unnati organization (India), 212 Urban Partnerships for Poverty Reduction (UPPR), 94 violence against women, 91, 92; in Egypt, 109; in India, 211, 220, 221; in Sierra Leone, 246 Viterna, Jocelyn, 104 volunteering, see work, voluntary

TADROS_03.indd 294

Waylen, Georgina, 104 widows: in Brazil, 269, in India, 215 Williams, C. T., 236 Williams, Yema Catherine, 236 Women and Democracy Programme (Brazil), 281 Women Councillors Organization (Sierra Leone), 24, 251 Women in Law and Development in Africa (WILDAF), 26, 56 Women in Leadership programme (WIL), 243 Women’s Affairs Technical Committee (WATC) (Palestine), 25, 143, 159 women’s interests, 96, 97, 225 Women’s Solidarity Fund (WSF) (Sierra Leone), 248 Women’s Solidarity Support Group (WSSG) (Sierra Leone), 246-7, 252 Wood, Nancy Phillipa, 47 work, women’s, 53; in Bangladesh, 80, 83, 85; in Brazil, 269; in Ghana, 52; in India, 215; informal, 52; professional, 52, 53; self-employed, 52; voluntary, 55 Workers’ Party (PT) (Brazil), 276 Working Women Society (Palestine), 143 workshops, see training programmes World Conference on Women, 57 Yakubu, Hawa, 54, 56 Yassine, Aisha, 153, 154 Young Pioneer Movement, 58 youth: in Bangladesh, 21; in Egypt, 120; in Ghana, 21, 60 zakat, 88 Zia, Khaleda, 76

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