Zainab Monisola Olaitan
When we think of gender quotas, we are instinctively forced to think about how they help to increase the number of marginalised groups in certain spaces or, for a more gloomy look, how they are used to select unqualified people into certain spaces. These myopic and misguided thoughts are part of why I chose to write a book on gender quotas, or as commonly known, quotas. I was interested in understanding how quotas have fostered an increased number of women in African politics and, beyond that, how they can be used to protect women’s interests. So, I wrote a book on a subject that has always lingered in my mind: the impact of women’s political representation, or as aptly articulated in a question by Reingold (2000), does the election of more and more women into political office mean that women will be better represented? This question forms the bedrock of most literature written on women’s descriptive and substantive representation in politics. Although there were pioneering works that studied women’s representation and the importance of critical mass, or as Kanter calls it, a ‘tipping point’ that predated Reingold’s question. Some of them are Hannah Pitkin’s 1967 book on The Concept of Representation, Rosabeth Kanter’s 1977 book on Men and Women of the Corporation, Drude Dahlerup’s 1988 article on From a Small Minority to a Large Minority: Women in Scandinavian Politics, etc.
My book titled ‘Women’s Representation in African Politics: Beyond Numbers’ examines the relevance of gender quotas for the substantive representation of women in African politics. It engages the link between the increased number of women in parliament and the protection of women’s interests. It reimagines quotas as a tool for ensuring the qualitative representation of women beyond their use for increasing the number of women in politics. With a total of nine chapters, the book centers phenomenology as a method of knowledge production by centering the perceptions and opinions of its interview participants in answering some of the questions raised. This phenomenological approach was influenced by my interest in phenomenology (perceptions and experience) and hermeneutics (interpretation), i.e., the interpretation of perceptions and experiences. I enlisted the use of interpretative phenomenological analysis as an analytical framework for the book, enabling me to focus on how women parliamentarians or members of parliament (MPs) and women in civil society organisations (CSOs) made sense of the impact of gender quotas on women’s representation. It also brought to the fore how women generally grapple with the relevance of gender quotas beyond the numerical representation of women in politics and if they believe quotas can be a tool for impact.
Women’s representation in African politics is written off the back of numerous debates on the relationship between descriptive (numbers) and substantive (quality) representation of women in politics, the value of quotas beyond numbers, and the contestation over what women’s interests are. Specifically, the debate over quotas has gone on for so long that some regard it as over-flogged or even closed. They hold this sentiment because the debate started with the need for quotas to ensure a critical mass of women in the political system, which was pegged at 30% in the 1990s. However, in recent times, the call for critical mass has shifted toward ensuring gender parity in the political system, a call authoritatively echoed by the Commission for the Status of Women (CSW) in its 2021 65 agreed conclusions. Without the thought that the debate on quotas has been over-flogged, I dedicated a chapter to tracing the adoption and implementation of quotas globally and in Africa to understand how the conversations started and what progress was made (Chapter 3). It is rather surprising that not all African countries have implemented quotas, and some of the countries did it as a checkbox exercise with no progress in sight. This is why the continental average of women’s representation in parliaments stands at 26%, still lower than the initial critical mass goal of 30%. As I noted in the book preface, can we declare the debate on quotas old or closed if Africa is yet to reach the first critical mass goal of 30% women’s representation in politics? I dare say no! Therefore, I took up the task of studying gender quotas and their relevance for protecting women’s interests in two countries (South Africa and Botswana). To situate the discussion on quotas and descriptive and substantive representation of women in African politics, I engaged the works of different African scholars: Shireen Hassim, Cheryl Hendricks, Sylvia Tamale, Monica Kethusegile-Juru, etc. Their works were instrumental in tracing the genealogy of the debate on quotas in Africa and also in understanding the state of play on the continent.
Building on this, I extended my curiosity on quotas to understanding how they can be a tool for impact beyond just numbers. How can quotas be a mechanism for protecting women’s interests? In Chapter 5, I engaged gender quotas as a means to foster the substantive representation of women, examining themes such as the value of quotas for impact. This question was answered more in-depth in Chapter 8 by using data findings from interviews with women parliamentarians and women in civil society. I was privileged to interview women parliamentarians in South Africa and Botswana, as well as women working in civil society in the two countries. The idea that I would have to interview MPs was exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time. I remember having to go through hurdles to get these MPs to agree to be interviewed for my work; it took me months to get my first ‘yes’ from an MP. I thought getting them to agree to be interviewed was the end of it; another hurdle was getting them to sit for the interview. My interviews with the MPs were around the time of the 2022 State of the Nation Address (SONA) in South Africa and budget committee meetings in Botswana, so it was quite difficult to get a hold of them. As a result, most of the interviews were conducted at night, some at midnight even. I look back at these events, and I am once again taken aback by the different MPs I spoke to, how open and honest they were with me, and how engaging with them gave me insight into their world as MPs and the work they do in parliament. I could go on and on about my experience interviewing these MPs and women in CSOs, but I would save that for another piece. Summarily, I can say that conducting the interviews was one of my favourite parts of the book development process. Chapter 8 of the book encompasses my interaction with MPs and women in CSOs and their responses to how gender quotas can be a tool for impact, in this case, how they can be used to address gender-based violence.
Reflecting on the writing process, I enjoyed immersing myself in the contestation over women’s interests. This contestation revolved around questions such as, what are women’s interests? Two problems often raised with this question are the homogenisation of women as a group without recourse for nuances and the absolutism of interests. In a piece I wrote for Liberation Alliance in 2024 on engaging the concept of women’s interests: who does it mean and who defines it, I argue that the notion of women’s interests assumes that women are a homogenous group with the same needs and wants bordering on sameness; this creates an illusion where similarity is mistaken for sameness. I also noted that there are too many issues affecting women to assume a centralised notion of women’s interests. To address the many concerns that feminist and representation scholars have concerning ‘women’s interests,’ I proposed that it is helpful for the framing of women’s interests to be localised rather than universalised to enable it to account for contextual nuances. While women are not the same, there are similarities in lived experiences that can be used as a convergent point for arguing for universalised women’s interests. However, we might miss the nuances and differences that exist amongst women if we are fixated on the idea of a universally agreed women’s interests.
As an African feminist scholar who also identifies as a radical feminist, Women’s Representation in African Politics exposes the different structures of power and identities that shape women’s participation in politics and how their participation impacts the protection of women’s interests. Anchoring the book’s conceptualisation of women’s interests as gender-based violence, we can see how patriarchy, poverty, racism, and inequality contribute to the increasing rate of GBV and the susceptibility of certain types of women to it. During my interview with one of the MPs, she noted that it is important for women to be economically independent, as dependence on their perpetrators often makes it hard for them to leave spaces of abuse. Most MPs raise the point that Black women living in townships in South Africa are more vulnerable to GBV because of their racial, socio-economic, and gender identities—these identities were instrumental to the institutionalisation of apartheid in South Africa. They noted that they, as MPs, are not immune to GBV because, by virtue of their gender and racial identity, they are also susceptible to GBV. It becomes intriguing to observe how these MPs, across racial lines, grappled with the severity of GBV and how they identified the anchors of identity (race, class, gender, sexuality, etc.) that increase vulnerability to GBV. When we use an African feminist lens, we are able to understand that susceptibility to GBV is not solely based on one’s gender identity, as other anchors of identity can exacerbate exposure.
As I wrap up my reflection, I find myself ever-grateful to all the women parliamentarians and women in CSOs who graciously allowed me to interview them. In the book preface, I stated that ‘as a young woman, I have always pondered about how the presence of women in politics positively or negatively affects my life.’ The whole process of this book’s writing, starting from when the idea was conceptualised up until when it was published, has been nothing short of enlightening and informative. Through the writing of this book, consultations with colleagues, and interviews with women MPs and women in CSOs, I was able to get clarity on this long-held dilemma. I urge readers to immerse themselves fully in the spirit and words of Women’s Representation in African Politics. In doing this, I hope that the book piques the curiosity of readers and encourages them to want to know more about gender quotas and their value for protecting women’s interests in Africa and across the globe.
