"What are the foundations of difficulties responsible for women's under-representation in the lower houses of the parliament?

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Acknowledgement

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Declaration

I [type your full first names and surname here], declare that the contents of this dissertation/thesis represent my own unaided work, and that the dissertation/thesis has not previously been submitted for the academic examination towards any qualification. Furthermore, it represents my own opinions and not necessarily those of the University.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgementii

Declarationiii

Introduction1

Female Representation in Established Democracies5

Impact of Electoral Systems on Women Representation in Politics8

Impact of Spectrums of Political Parties on Women Representation in Politics10

Barriers to Women Representation in Parliaments11

Gender Quotas: A Measure to Improve Women Representation in Parliaments14

Types of Quotas14

Implementation of Quotas in Different Countries15

Success of Quota in Improving Women Representation15

Recommendations17

Conclusion17

References19

Women in parliament

Introduction

Women make up for about 40 to 50% of the total population of the world (www.unstats.un.org); however, the lack of proper representation of female in a number of countries all over the world has always been conceived to be a problem from the perspective of democracy and human rights violation. In accordance with the different standards of the International Human Rights, like the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Political Rights, the International Covenant on Civil, and Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is the responsibility of the state to ensure that women have equal participation along side with men in the process of political and public decision making (Norris Carty Lovenduski and Simms 1990).

Figure 1: Global proportion of women population

(Source: www.unstats.un.org)

The statement that a parliament is not a true representative of the nation but a representative of a few specific groups in the country this implies to a demographic or descriptive representation. This further implies that a parliament of a country should be a demographic and specific model of the whole nation, which should include all demographic ...