A Response to “Who Cares How Many Women Are in Parliament” in Foreign Policy
By Rosemarie Clouston
In a recent Foreign Policy article, Joshua Foust and Melinda Haring argue that the proportion of women legislators in a country’s parliament is not as important as NGOs and aid organizations make it out to be. Because female legislators do not bring about democratic reform (no tall order, mind you), they are ineffective and are no more supportive of women than their male counterparts, or so Foust and Haring argue. They point out that “equitable representation of women in politics and government is an ideal promoted by every development organization and to which every Western government aspires.” However, they do not examine the nuanced and layered motivations behind this aspiration, instead assuming the rigid interpretation of democracy, as defined and measured by Freedom House, to be the end goal.
Foust and Haring do not acknowledge the numerous other reasons NGOs and governments might support increasing the proportion of women in parliment, such as encouraging women to participate in politics, creating legislation more responsive to female constituents’ needs, or ensuring that women’s unique experiences and concerns are lent a voice in the bodies that are supposed to represent them.
Simply because Cuban and Rwandan female Members of Parliament (MPs) cannot change years of history and compel their countries to be true democracies does not mean those female MPs are failing. Nor does it mean that their roles would be filled just as well by their male counterparts. Within the confines of the patriarchal systems in which they must operate, these women may still be achieving gains for their female constituents. The true test is not whether female parliamentarians are more prevalent in democracies than autocracies, but whether they are creating better countries in which women can live.
This is the question that Foust and Haring do not ask. But it is the one we face in the real world. If having more women in the Rwandan legislature makes life better for Rwandan women in any way, then it is worth having those women in Parliament where their voices can be heard, even if their influence on policy is limited, as is the case in Rwanda. A popular way governments, like Rwanda’s, have achieved these gains in female representation is through quota policies, which require minimum thresholds of women in the legislature or on political parties’ candidate lists (in proportional representation systems).
Unfortunately, improvements in women’s lives are much more difficult to examine statistically or even show in a table. Which issues count as women’s issues? If a female MP raises a point of importance to women, but she did not sponsor the legislation for political or procedural reasons, did she impact the lives of women? This would be difficult to prove in most statistical studies, but the women in her country probably would not view that as a critical distinction.
Foust and Haring seem to demand a quick solution to an institutionalized problem and discount the possibility that there can be value to women (in place of some men) working within existing political structures to make incremental improvements. However, in one example, between 2003 and 2006, Rwandan legislators introduced only one bill into Parliament, whereas the president and the executive branch proposed all the other legislation over those three years. That one bill promulgated by the legislature, where women comprised nearly 49 percent of MPs, dealt with gender-based violence. It passed both houses and became law.
Nonetheless, the authors try to take the evidentiary high road by claiming to negate the efficacy of female legislators because conclusive evidence indicating they deliver for women is lacking. While they are correct that the jury is still out on the “relationship between a country’s political freedom and the number of women in parliament,” they seem to be trying to paint a broader picture about the importance (or unimportance) of women in legislatures.
However, Ester Duflo and her colleagues have shown that in a randomized situation in India where women were put in charge of local governing councils, these bodies invested more in public services prioritized by women (e.g., drinking water) than when men were in charge. They also found that in areas with female council heads, teenage girls had greater career aspirations for themselves than girls living in areas with councils headed by men. Not only does it appear that women deliver policies for women but they may also politically empower their gender, particularly in future generations, so the impact may not be immediately evident in many studies. Researchers at the University of Notre Dame have studied this relationship between female legislators and political activity across developed democracies and found that women and girls are “more likely to discuss politics, and younger women [anticipate becoming] more politically active [in adulthood] when there are more women in parliament.”
In addition to female legislators delivering on women’s policy priorities, enhanced aspirations for women and girls, and encouraging women to be politically active, the quota policies that are responsible for women attaining these roles in many countries may themselves send women signals that benefit them and the country as a whole. In my thesis research on this question, I found that quota policies tend to signal to women in sub-Saharan Africa that they have a role to play in their country’s political system, which in turn improves their political engagement. Women were more likely to vote and more likely to attend a community meeting if their country or political parties had quotas. Such an overt commitment to political equality may in itself, therefore, help establish greater gender equity in civil society.
Since most of these studies looked at individual cases or at groups of established democracies, one may posit that the outcome may be different in Rwanda or Azerbaijan. As the Foreign Policy article asks, “Does the number of women matter in a fake parliament?” Foust and Haring ask the question, but they do not offer an answer. Would policies that unaccountable governments pass be different without women in that government? Do these women impact the policies their parties create?
Unfortunately, these counterfactuals are difficult to prove. But we cannot assume the answer is no simply because we do not have proof that there are positive implications of women in these bodies. How would we rather err: on the side of equality or on the side of patriarchal discrimination? I would contend that in the absence of definitive evidence, we should not write off the potential impact of women, but rather strive for the parity for which NGOs and Western governments aim. With a legislature that has a filibuster rule like that of the United States Senate, for example, do you think Congress would be more likely to repeal fair pay requirements if there were one woman senator, or none?
Women have unique experiences and needs—especially in developing democracies—and understanding them is critical for legislatures to make informed decisions about policies that affect women and girls’ lives. Those policy debates cannot happen in a meaningful way without women’s voices and participation. But in repressive societies like the ones Foust and Haring cite, women’s political activity at the grassroots level is often marginalized or repressed. Therefore, those women need women in the halls of parliament to speak on their behalf. While women legislators may not be able to deliver everything their female constituents would like (such as an open political space), they do tend to improve women and girls’ situations more than when men hold those legislative seats. Without NGO and Western government support, those same repressive governments that do not respect their female citizens’ rights are likely to continue marginalizing or excluding women from the legislature as well in order to more effectively silence women’s voices.
Established in 1995, the Georgetown Public Policy Review is the McCourt School of Public Policy’s nonpartisan, graduate student-run publication. Our mission is to provide an outlet for innovative new thinkers and established policymakers to offer perspectives on the politics and policies that shape our nation and our world.