Promoting Gender Equality In Political Participation

The book analyses patterns of women’s political participation and evaluates disparity between levels of women’s participation in politics and representation in governance in Nigeria. It also examines the causes of women’s underrepresentation in governance and decision-making as well as their implications for the country’s socioeconomic development and describes strategies for increased women’s representation in governance and decision-making in Nigeria. This study relies on political-culture and liberal-feminist theory and adopts a mixed-method research design involving quantitative and qualitative methods. It uses multistage sampling in selecting Nigeria’s South-East, North-West and South-West geopolitical-zones and 1206 women of electoral age for the study survey conducted using structured questionnaire and in-depth interview.

The ability of a small elite of highly educated, upper-class Asian women to obtain the highest political positions in their country is unmatched elsewhere in the world and deserves study. But there is a marked lack of relevant research as well as of comprehensive and user-friendly texts. Aiming to fill the gap is this timely and important study of the various obstacles and opportunities for women's political participation and representation in Asia.

This volume brings together leading gender and politics scholars to assess how women’s political empowerment can best be conceptualized and measured on a global scale. It argues that women’s political empowerment is a fundamental process of transformation for benchmarking and understanding all political empowerment gains across the globe. Chapters improve our global understanding of women's political empowerment through cross-national comparisons, a synthesis of methodological approaches across varied levels of politics, and attention to the ways gender intersects with myriad factors in shaping women’s political empowerment. This book is an indispensable resource for scholars of politics and gender, as well as being relevant to a global scholarly and policy community.

Why, after several generations of suffrage and a revival of the women's movement in the late 1960s, do women continue to be less politically active than men? Why are they less likely to seek public office or join political organizations? The Private Roots of Public Action is the most comprehensive study of this puzzle of unequal participation. The authors develop new methods to trace gender differences in political activity to the nonpolitical institutions of everyday life--the family, school, workplace, nonpolitical voluntary association, and church. Different experiences with these institutions produce differences in the resources, skills, and political orientations that facilitate participation--with a cumulative advantage for men. In addition, part of the solution to the puzzle of unequal participation lies in politics itself: where women hold visible public office, women citizens are more politically interested and active. The model that explains gender differences in participation is sufficiently general to apply to participatory disparities among other groups--among the young, the middle-aged, and the elderly or among Latinos, African-Americans and Anglo-Whites. Table of Contents: Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: Citizenship and Unequal Participation 2. Studying Gender and Participation: A Brief Discourse on Method 3. Civic Activity: Political and Non-Political 4. The Political Worlds of Men and Women 5. The Legacy of Home and School 6. Domestic Tranquility: The Beliefs of Wives and Husbands 7. Domestic Hierarchy: The Household as a Social System 8. The Workplace Roots of Political Activity 9. The Realm of Voluntarism: Non-Political Associations and Religious Institutions 10. Gender, Institutions, and Political Participation 11. Gender, Race or Ethnicity, and Participation 12. Family Life and Political Life 13. What If Politics Weren't a Man's Game? 14. Conclusion: The Private Roots of Public Action Appendixes A. Numbers of Cases B. Ranges of Variables C. Supplementary Tables D. Explanation of Outcomes Analysis Index Reviews of this book: The Private Roots of Public Action begins with common explanations for the gender difference in participation, from domestic demands on women's time and psychic space through the effects of the patriarchal family, socioeconomic hierarchies, and political socialization...The results of [this] novel analysis are complex and interesting...The authors extend their model to examine the relationship between class, race or ethnicity, and political participation. This unique and accessible volume will be influential in the fields of political socialization and gender and politics. Strongly recommended. --B. E. Marston, Choice The Private Roots of Public Action is the most comprehensive examination of the similarities and differences in the political activity of women and men. The range of inquiry is enormous. Burns, Schlozman and Verba delve not only into political activity but also into the processes in the family, in the workplace, in places of worship, and in voluntary associations that promote and inhibit political involvement. This book goes beyond the literature in connecting to an enormous range of scholarship in political science, economics, and sociology. This is a fine piece of work. --John Mark Hansen, University of Chicago The Private Roots of Public Action is a very important book. It pushes research on gender and participation to a whole new level, and reshapes the agenda as far as our thinking and our research about the connections among family life, the workplace, institutions of civil society, and political and governmental institutions. The authors demonstrate the importance of understanding political participation within a larger context in a way that does justice to the complexity of people's lives. --Kristi Anderson, Syracuse University The Private Roots of Public Action is an important contribution to the literature on both political participation and gender politics. Because of its database, its tie-in to the most current work on political participation, and its comprehension of important current questions about gender politics, this book provides a new benchmark for work in this field. In particular, the Civic Voluntarism model developed by Verba, Schlozman, and Brady, and the consideration of how gender difference and inequality might feed into that model, is a unique contribution. This accessible book will be welcomed by gender politics scholars and will have an impact on the field of political participation. --Virginia Sapiro, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Why, after several generations of suffrage and a revival of the women's movement in the late 1960s, do women continue to be less politically active than men? Why are they less likely to seek public office or join political organizations? The Private Roots of Public Action is the most comprehensive study of this puzzle of unequal participation. The authors develop new methods to trace gender differences in political activity to the nonpolitical institutions of everyday life--the family, school, workplace, nonpolitical voluntary association, and church. Different experiences with these institutions produce differences in the resources, skills, and political orientations that facilitate participation--with a cumulative advantage for men. In addition, part of the solution to the puzzle of unequal participation lies in politics itself: where women hold visible public office, women citizens are more politically interested and active. The model that explains gender differences in participation is sufficiently general to apply to participatory disparities among other groups--among the young, the middle-aged, and the elderly or among Latinos, African-Americans and Anglo-Whites.

During the past decade governments around the globe have introduced institutional mechanisms to promote the advancement of women, including measures to increase women's political participation rates and to incorporate women's interests into policy-making. Why have they done so? How successful have these initiatives been? What are the emerging agendas facing gender equality advocates now? In The New Politics of Gender Equality Judith Squires examines the origins, evolution and key features of three strategies that have been employed across the world in pursuit of gender equality – quotas, policy agencies and gender mainstreaming. The author critically examines each strategy to see how far they transform political institutions and agendas and to what extent they lead rather to the assimilation of women in male-defined structures. Squires argues that a multi-pronged approach, drawing on democratic rather than technocratic strategies, offers the best potential for advancing gender equality. She highlights too the limitations of approaches that ignore inequalities among women and the challenges of developing equality initiatives to address multiple and cross-cutting inequalities between groups. Judith Squires is Professor of Political Theory, University of Bristol. She has written, researched and published widely in the field of gender politics and gender equality.

""As women continue to gain more prominence as active participants in the American political and electoral process as voters, candidates, and officeholders, it becomes even more important to understand how gender shapes political power and the distribution of resources within our society. There are many areas of research in a variety of disciplines focusing on women, gender, and feminism, and many of them intersect with a discussion of women in American politics. Our goal in writing this book is to present these topics in an interesting, lively, and timely way through an analysis of contemporary political gender-related issues. We hope to have provided just enough of an historical context to get students interested in the evolution of women in American political life, and enough theory and analysis to inspire them to seek more information and knowledge about gender justice today. The study of women and U.S. politics, as well as the role gender plays in the broader political context, has emerged as a powerful voice within the discipline of Political Science in the last few decades. As such, we hope that readers find this text a useful addition to the ongoing dialogue while instructors find it to be a useful pedagogical tool for their courses on women/gender and politics"--

Today, gender equality is widely seen as a critical dimension of democracy. Over the past three decades, the United States and other donor governments have spent millions on aid programs that seek to advance women's equal political participation and leadership around the world. What do these assistance programs consist of, and how effective have they been? In Aiding Empowerment, Saskia Brechenmacher and Katherine Mann take a critical look at this growing field of international aid and policy action. Drawing on research in Kenya, Nepal, Morocco, and Myanmar, they examine the varied methods aid providers use to challenge patriarchal political structures and support local reformers, identify persisting challenges and promising innovations, and make practical recommendations for reform.