Equality in Politics


Book Description







Women in Parliament


Book Description

This updated edition of Women in Parliament: Beyond Numbers Handbook covers the ground of women's access to the legislature in three steps: It looks into the obstacles women confront when entering Parliament be they political, socio-economic or ideological and psychological. It presents solutions to overcome these obstacles, such as changing electoral systems and introducing quotas, and it details strategies for women to influence politics once they are elected to parliament, an institution which is traditionally male dominated. The first Women in Parliament: Beyond Numbers handbook was produced as part of IDEA's work on women and political participation in 1998. Since its release in English in 1998, there has been an ongoing interest and demand for the handbook, and responding to the request for the translation of the handbook, IDEA has produced Spanish, French and Indonesian language versions and a Russian overview of the handbook during 2002-2003. Since the first handbook was published, the picture regarding women's political participation has slowly changed. Overall the past decade has seen gradual progress with regard to women's presence in national parliaments. This second edition incorporates relevant global changes in the past years presenting new and updated case studies.--




Gender Budgets Make More Cents


Book Description

Comprises ten papers which document "good practice" in gender budget work from across the globe.







Violence Against Women in Politics


Book Description

Women have made significant inroads into political life in recent years, but in many parts of the world, their increased engagement has spurred attacks, intimidation, and harassment. This book provides the first comprehensive account of this phenomenon, exploring how women came to give these experiences a name: violence against women in politics. Tracing its global emergence as a concept, Mona Lena Krook draws on insights from multiple disciplines--political science, sociology, history, gender studies, economics, linguistics, psychology, and forensic science--to develop a more robust version of this concept to support ongoing activism and inform future scholarly work. Krook argues that violence against women in politics is not simply a gendered extension of existing definitions of political violence privileging physical aggressions against rivals. Rather, it is a distinct phenomenon involving a broad range of harms to attack and undermine women as political actors, taking physical, psychological, sexual, economic, and semiotic forms. Incorporating a wide range of country examples, she illustrates what this violence looks like in practice, catalogues emerging solutions around the world, and considers how to document this phenomenon more effectively. Highlighting its implications for democracy, human rights, and gender equality, the book asserts that addressing this issue requires ongoing dialogue and collaboration to ensure women's equal rights to participate--freely and safely--in political life around the globe.




Gender, Conservatism and Political Representation


Book Description

Can Conservatives represent women? Descriptively of course, they do. Conservative parties and organisations are increasingly feminised; conservative women sit in many of the world’s parliaments; a few women have led conservative parties; and there are, and have been, Conservative Prime Ministers. But whether these women actually stand for women, act for women and re-gender representation is likely to invite greater contestation. Contributors to this edited collection address head-on the puzzle of conservative women who engage in gendered political representation but do so within a conservative setting. Individual chapters examine women’s participation as conservative movement and party members, supporters, candidates, leaders, legislators and ministers – in countries ranging from Europe, the US, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Turkey and Morocco. Assessment is made of the nature of their representational contribution, and the relationship they have with conservative women’s views in society.




The Impact of Gender Quotas


Book Description

The Impact of Gender Quotas is a theory-building and comparative exercise in elaborating concepts commonly used to analyze the broad impacts of gender quotas. Using a conceptual framework based upon descriptive, substantive and symbolic dimensions of representation, the book presents case studies from twelve countries in Western Europe, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia.




Gender Sensitive Lawmaking in Theory and Practice


Book Description

This book addresses key questions around gender-sensitive legislation as a key output of gender sensitive Parliaments and explores practical ways to promote gender-sensitive ex-ante scrutiny of legislation, improve implementation through gender responsive budgeting, assess the gender impact of legislation ex post and express laws in gender inclusive ways. All laws have a gender, and the gender of the law can reveal itself in the language, the content and the results of legislation. Gender-blind laws can discriminate directly or indirectly against individuals or population groups, can produce unwanted effects, can reproduce gender stereotypes, and can render laws and policies ineffective. Gender-sensitive legislation on the other hand, can be expected to achieve its desired legislative objectives without unwanted differential impact on the grounds of gender and other individual characteristics and can simultaneously promote gender equality. This book advances the premise that gender sensitive legislation is not the result of political will or good intentions alone but the outcome of gender-sensitive legislative decision-making throughout the life cycle of legislation. This means that gender concerns need to be an integral part of the processes of legislative design and drafting, ex-ante and ex-post legislative scrutiny and implementation of legislation. Gender Sensitive Lawmaking in Theory and Practice will be a great resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of Law, Public Policy, Gender and Women’s Studies and Sociology. The chapters included in this book were originally published as a special issue of The Theory and Practice of Legislation.




Feminizing Politics


Book Description

This text offers an analysis of the changes in the political representation of women since the 1960s, and draws on a wide range of material, including interviews with women politicians, policy advocates and academics.