WOMEN IN POLITICAL OFFICE AND GENDER EQUITABLE POLICIES

Women in political office and gender equitable policies

Women in political office and gender equitable policies

Background

Over the last half-century, women have made significant advances in education, labor force participation, and political activism across the globe. Gender gaps still exist in low-income countries, but are much smaller than in previous decades. In middle- and high-income countries, many of these gaps have been reversed. Women have overtaken men in some areas of educational participation and performance: in lower-middle income countries, women are enrolling 11:10 in tertiary education compared to men, and the ratio is 14:10 in upper-middle-income countries. The U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in 2009 that women constituted 51% of all workers in high-paying management, professional, and related occupations (Conger, & Long, 2010).

Discussion

Turning to politics, while female suffrage did not exist anywhere in 1890, women had obtained the right to vote in 96% of the countries in the world by 1994. The few remaining countries have also moved toward female suffrage in recent years. Women obtained the right to vote in Oman in 2003, in Kuwait in 2005, and in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in 2006. These developments have been followed by an increase in the female share of registered voters across the globe. In Egypt, for instance, the share rose from 16% in 1975 to 37% by 2004. Barbados, Chile, Ecuador, Malta, Puerto Rico, Sweden, and the United States now show consistently higher female voter turnout than male.

Yet, improvements in education attainment, professional development, and political participation have not translated into significant increases in female leadership in politics and business. While some women have risen to the pinnacle of political power - such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Dilma Rousseff, newly elected as president of Brazil, Latin America's largest and most populous country - less than 19% of legislators in the world today are women (Conger, & Long, 2010).

Similarly, in the corporate sphere, female representation falls with seniority. In Europe, despite a labor force that is 45% female, women only average 11.9% membership when it comes to companies' boards of directors. The percentage is 9.9% in the Americas, drops to 6.5% in the Asia-Pacific region, and down to 3.2% in the Middle East and North Africa.

Political Quotas

Three main types of political quotas exist. First, voluntary party quotas have been adopted by political parties in a number of countries and involve a party committing itself to nominating a certain percentage of female candidates for electoral lists. Second, candidate quotas are required by the law of a country and stipulate that a certain number of candidate positions must be reserved for women. They sometimes include conditions on the position of women on the electoral list, for instance by requiring that every second entry on the list must be a woman (Conger, & Long, 2010). Finally, reserved seats are positions for which only female candidates can compete and are used as a more direct way of regulating the number of women in elected ...