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The number of women in public office is an inadequate proxy for assessing ‘women’s political voice’ in public decision-making as it is based on the assumption that female public officials will - by virtue of their gender - seek to promote women’s rights and gender specific issues. This Policy_Brief seeks to explain how a critical analysis of the concept of ‘representation’ can help researchers understand the reasons why numbers alone is not enough to ensure an amplification of women’s public voice and substantive transformation of policy. …

The number of women in public office is an inadequate proxy for assessing ‘women’s political voice’ in public decision-making as it is based on the assumption that female public officials will - by virtue of their gender - seek to promote women’s rights and gender specific issues. This Working Paper seeks to explain how a critical analysis of the concept of ‘representation’ can help researchers understand the reasons why numbers alone is not enough to ensure an amplification of women’s public voice and substantive transformation of policy. …

This chapter explores different ways in which ‘voice’ has been a pathway to empowerment in India. Three major streams are discussed, the women’s movement, official efforts to institutionalize women’s voice, and decentralization with reservation which has guaranteed a space in local governance to women. The manner of engagement between the women’s movement and the State is reviewed. A more detailed discussion of the Panchayat institutions with empirical evidence on women’s participation is presented. …

This chapter focuses on one of the most comprehensive, regional coalition building efforts for nationality reform and citizenship across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the Campaign to Reform Arab Women’s Nationality (the nationality campaign). It explores the politics and dynamics of channelling voice through feminist nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), and specifically examines regional and domestic advocacy campaigns and collaborations in the Campaign to Reform Arab Women’s Nationality. …

Voicing demands is a collection of analytical narratives of what has happened to feminist voice, a key pathway to women's empowerment. These narratives depart fromthe existing debate on women's political engagement in formal institutions to examine feminist activism for building and sustaining constituencies through raising, negotiating and legitimising women's voice under different contexts. …

This chapter explores the strategies and choices of feminists in organising voice and mobilising support in a post-authoritarian Bangladesh. It provides an analytical narrative of how three national level feminist organisations strengthen their voice by: a) packaging their demands strategically to appeal to different actors; b) building coalitions and networks with other civil society actors, c) using personal networks to access politicians and state actors, d) creating transnational links to exert pressure on the state. …

As part of its post-war reconstruction and peace consolidation efforts, the Government of Sierra Leone has noted in all its policy documents that gender equality is a cross-cutting issue and will be included in all government policies, programmes and projects across all sectors of society. The objective of this research was to assess the government’s gender equality and mainstreaming framework in the arena of politics and public sector governance. The author found that despite the government’s policy initiatives, women’s political empowerment within the structures of government were unsatisfactory. However, Women have continued to actively engage the state and political parties to increase their numbers in government. …

The objective of this study was to assess the implementation of the government’s gender equality and mainstreaming framework in the arena of politics and public sector governance. The paper discusses: election results and post-war changes in female participation and political representation; Affirmative Action policies; the effect of the women’s movement on women’s political representation; the electioneering process. The paper concludes that opportunities created by the post-war moment have opened up the male-dominated political arena to female politicians, in spite of threats of violence including rape and intimidation, and women have moved ahead to claim their space however small, through articulated demands for inclusion in governance. This increase is shown to be more of their own making as individuals and as a coalition than of a political will from a male-dominated system of governance. …

This paper adopts an upside-down approach to women's political empowerment. While the number of women we need to get into legislatures has often assumed centrestage, this paper takes women's pathways as its starting point. In so doing, it challenges the narrow conception of women's political engagement as occupying formal positions and seeks to present a more nuanced perspective on the spaces, relationships and ways of working that influence power hierarchies and dynamics.  …

This paper is a critical examination of the implementation of the government’s gender equality framework to its decentralization programme. It is argued that the practice of local governance in post-war Sierra Leone which, is far below the Beijing minimum of 30 per cent, rather than leave women disillusioned, has spurred them on to actively engage the state, political parties and the National Electoral Commission to demand a legislative quota to enhance women’s participation and a conducive political atmosphere to level the playing field for women in local governance. …

This study investigates the ‘criss-cross’ processes through which women in Pakistan become empowered, focusing on how the larger institutional set-up (whether military or non-military) helps women achieve their goals. It explores how some of the major initiatives from civil society have contributed to women’s voices at the local government level, and also looks at individual case studies of women when they either surmount or fail to surmount societal pressures in their individual lives. The research involves qualitative interviews at all three tiers of government, and mapping out NGO initiatives, tracing how women's voices have arisen and how demands have affected policy. …

This article looks at women's representation in local government in Pakistan, focusing particularly on the introduction of a quota setting 33 per cent of the seats for women brought in under General Musharraf's Devolution of Power Plan in 2000. The article suggests that establishing a direct correlation between a woman's quota and regime type is problematic. It demonstrates a complex pattern of interaction on the issue by both the military and civilian regimes in Pakistan. Policies which have been brought in, informed both by political pragmatism and ideological continuity, have been wide ranging and almost contradictory in nature. …

Local Government reforms in Bangladesh in 1997 introduced direct elections to reserved seats for women. This replaced an earlier system of nomination. The change allowed women a direct link with their constituency, helping to increase their legitimacy as representatives. However restrictions on mobility, lack of knowledge about local government functions, male resistance, and the gendered nature of local level politics limit women’s effective participation in local politics. …

Despite the engagement of Sierra Leonean women in the peace process, and efforts to increase women’s participation in public life, they face difficulties today in entering parliamentary politics. Since the end of the country’s brutal civil war in 2002, Sierra Leone has had two national and two local elections, with a third taking place in 2012. Despite some positive changes, especially at the local level, women continue to be underrepresented in Sierra Leone’s political institutions. …

This report, presented to the 'Pathways: What are we Learning?' Conference held in Cairo from 20-24 January 2009 is based on a study of women in Local Government in Bangladesh, and seeks to examine the levels, margins and boundaries of the re-definitions and contestations of the existing values, traditions and spaces of women both in the private and public sphere. The obstacles faced by women in doing so and their responses, as well as struggles, to overcome those also constituted a major focus of the study. The challenges of breaking into a restrictive system and the strategies and paths adopted by the councillors in carving out spaces are presented in this paper. Finally the report trenched out the emergence of new voices, spaces and the march of women towards the creation of structures, more amenable to social justice, equity and human needs. …