Women and Democracy

Womens political participation is a key component of democracy. The issue of womens political participation is on the front page of newspapers in established democracies worldwide and also in those countries that are moving toward democracy. There was a time when most of the faces of women in newspapers were the faces of victims. But we are also seeing women who are emerging as builders of democracy. Women who are registering to vote and who are making their vote count. Women who are coming to the forefront in countries that do not have a democratic tradition but are working in that direction. Conditions for promoting democracy may not be all that comfortable, but womens groups are nding that they can become a force for democratic change. Many times, because they are womens groups, they can begin by operating under the radar so to speak, without drawing much attention from hostile authorities. After a while, their numbers grow and their influence is clearly seen and heard. For the past years, there has been a rapid increase in the number of women who are politically mobilized, a trend that has coincided with the so-called Third Wave of democratization. This note for discussion address two basic questions: what is the impact of womens mobilization on the process of democratization? And, how has the process of democratization affected womens movement? The analysis is divided into women and transitions to democracy, women in post-authoritarian or consolidating democracies, and issues for the future. Women and transition to democracy The general picture that has emerged is that in many countries around the world, women participated actively in the campaigns for a return or for a turning towards democracy. Their visibility, particularly in human rights groups, helped win recognition of the need to foster womens political representation and to address womens issues under the new democratic governments that emerged. This fact provided a useful but rarely acknowledged impetus to civilian rule by encouraging the hope that democratic governments would be popularly based and representative, which was particularly important regions where democracy had fallen into disfavor with both the left and the right. In addition, womens movements provided proof of the existence of a vital civil society and reinforced the Toquevillean view that problems could be addressed by organized groups of citizens and not, as is the tradition of multiple regions, only by the state. Along with other social movements, the womens movement helped raise expectations that democracy could pursue progressive but not radical agendas. This phase of womens mobilizationfrom the mid-1970s to the late 1980s coincided with the unprecedented rise of an international network of womens movements. This was created and nurtured by the UN Decade for Women (1975-85). The Decade

provided opportunities for women to meet and provided role models of womens leadership, innovative strategies for penetrating the state, a clear list of womens demands, and a sense of being part of a worldwide wave of womens movements as well as democratic reform. The major exception to this trend, marked by womens politicization in the North as well as the South, was in Eastern and Central Europe where the agendas of democratization and womens assertion of their rights did not coincide and reinforce one another. Womens rights and womens political participation were negatively associated with communist authoritarianism, not with new democratic prospects. Women felt that they had been politically exploited rather than marginalized and men, newly able to act independently in the political arena, argued that politics was a male game, and that the communist effort to incorporate women had been misguided and unnatural. Women and democracys consolidation Recognizing that electoral democracy does not itself mean democratization, and that simply holding elections and achieving an alternation of parties in power do not themselves provide sufficient evidence that a country is achieving democracy, it is nonetheless important that activist women experienced a high level of disenchantment with the way the newly installed democratic governments dealt with them and their issues. The solidarity and oppositional strategies of social movements were no longer as useful under democracy; parties reasserted themselves as the representative institutions responsible for interest articulation and aggregation, displacing social movements who had seen themselves as powerful and independent forces during the transitions; and the goal of getting the military to return to the barracks, which had provided a basis for unity among womens groups, could no longer keep women together. Groups differed on priorities and strategies. To be successful, they needed to be organized in ways that could put pressure on parties and the executive to pass laws, and able to follow through to monitoring the effects of that legislation and ensure that the executive and the courts implemented the laws that were passed. There were some important successes: women were able to organize to get some of their issues into rewritten constitutions and to change some of the most discriminatory legislation. But success was far from uniform: divorce was passed in some countries, but in others not, for example. Abortion legislation in Eastern and Central Europe became highly restrictive (after decades of abortion on demand). In Latin America, abortion was debated, but quietly, and the gap between restrictive laws and more open practices remained. Thefore, the ability of the womens movement to achieve its policy goals, even when those were relatively agreed upon among activist women, depended on factors very 2

specific to each country. Further, one could hardly talk about a movement any more, as the coalitions broke down rapidly after the transition. The issue of autonomy bitterly divided feminists, increasingly, feminist, human rights, and neighborhood organizations of women became dependent on external funding from foundations and multi-lateral and bilateral aid programs (which now viewed democracy as a priority objective and the funding of NGOs as a way to achieve that goal). Informal groups and neighborhood organizations increasingly became (or were replaced by) NGOs, and NGOs were more professionalized and, many argued, too focused on narrow issues. Urban neighborhood groups became overtly dependent on the state which used womens organizations to distribute food and provide minimal employment opportunities, thoroughly coopting the groups in the process. Even the feminist think tanks increasingly relied on government consultancies to pay the bills. As womens agendas moved from goals such as day care or consumer prices to womens reproductive rights, womens groups that had been encouraged by the Church now found themselves in conflict with it. Lacking a strong local tradition of philanthropy or a tradition of broad-based organizations supported by membership dues (which must have middle class support), womens grass roots organizations lost members and those who remained suffered from burnout. The womens movement that remains consists of fewer, better organized, but one could argue less representative NGOs. These are relatively well-funded in the area of womens reproductive rights and there is still support for groups working on violence against women. But participants and scholars alike seem to agree that there has been a decline in advocacy as opposed to service-delivery organizations, and a loss in momentum. One recurring problem has been the tensions between womens groups and political parties. In Eastern and Central Europe, women have lost substantial numerical representation and have had to face substantial resistance from male party leaders. Womens educational advantages, decades of exposure to gender-egalitarian ideologies, and their experiences in work and politics will soon be reflected in increases in womens mobilization in the more advanced countries of Central and Eastern Europe to demand that the highly gender-discriminatory practices that have accompanied restructuring in those countries be redressed. (in general, it might be predicted that women in more traditional societies will be more likely to support authoritarian rule. However, this generalization does not hold in other directions and international norms, exposure to modern media, and increasing levels of education for women may undermine the arguments behind that assumption .) Trying to foresee the future

As a result of several factors, including the frustration of womens groups, the recognition of the importance of the womens vote, and the unwillingness of parties to risk backlash by taking controversial positions on womens issues, the political dilemma represented by womens mobilization is increasingly being met by the adoption of electoral quotas. It remains to be seen if having more women in national legislatures will change the content of legislation, though there is some evidence that where women are a critical mass, legislative priorities reflect womens interests in social policy, especially issues of particular concern to women, including parental leave, day care and the like. The focus on movements, NGOs and civil society that has characterized studies of the Third Wave suggests another area for research that thus far has barely been tapped. If we posit that the survival and strengthening of democracies in Latin America, Asia and Africa will depend on the degree to which democracies can address the so-called second generation reforms (including the rule of law and police and judicial reform, increasing inequality, the dismal quality of education, and endemic violence), then the question Is womens participation strengthening democracy? suggests a focus not only on womens formal representation but on the role of womens groupsor the impact womens participation in civil society more broadly. There are two aspects of womens organizations are not so encouraging, however. The process of NGO-ization, though essential because not all groups can survive on voluntary effort alone, may be narrowing the vision of womens groups, locking them into particular issues or service roles, and not giving them the flexibility to broaden their goals. This suggests two important research questions: what is the depth, the thickness of civil society in democratizing countries (that is, what is the organizational resource base and is it expanding or contracting?) And, how involved are women and womens organizations? We might conclude that, if grass roots organizing depends on women, who are not always the leaders but who are a source of volunteer work and commitment, then it may be important to find ways to further encourage womens participation. A second issue is the fact that few organizations traditionally part of the womens movement appear to be looking at these second generation issues, or doing the kind of analysis or advocacy that would connect them to these problems, even when an obvious case could be made. It might not seem useful to argue that spontaneous organizations can be nurtured or that groups that arise because members are strongly aware of a particular issue can be encouraged to think about other issues less central to their cause. But recognition and symbolic politics have always been factors in promoting voluntary organizations and in shaping organisations agendas. 4

Far from least, is the issue of womens political attitudes. If political party leaders are waking up to the importance of womens votes, surely scholars cannot be far behind. However, there is growing evidence of gender gaps that are emerging on issues, and strong evidence of gender gaps in support for particular candidates. Finally, despite what seems to be a deep commitment to ignorance on the part of mainstream scholars, it seems obvious that womens political participation should be a required dimension of all case study and comparative research on democratization. Gender is increasingly being looked at as an important variable in global attitude surveys and in voting studiesnot, as I might want, because it is intrinsically interesting, but because polling shows that womens votes often make a crucial difference. It is not enough to generalize about women; we need to understand more about the political dynamics of gender at every level to understand how political options will evolve. The experiences of womens groups provide an important window on state/society relations, how interest groups influence the state, and how the state tries control group access and manipulate group support. Finally, I think that looking at womens participation will show that issues of inequality and redistributionwhich were virtually banished from public debate by the assumptions of political and economic liberalizationare beginning to re-emerge, framed in new ways. Womens political attitudes and participation may not be globally predictable, at least not from what we have seen to date. But they will certainly be of central importance to the future of democracies and therefore to the future of the international system and the long-term prospects for peace.

Women and Democracy: Past, Present, Future, Jane S. Jaquette

http://www.onlinewomeninpolitics.org/beijing12/wpp_asia.pdf