Studies on the impact of women’s political participation focus on the extent to which women politicians can adequately represent ‘women’s issue’ or protect ‘women’s interests’. This has been the basis for measuring the impact that women politicians have within the political system. This is problematic as it places the responsibility of representing women solely on women politicians and consequently judging their performance on how well they speak for women. Some take it as far as using it to either legitimize or delegitimize the need for women’s participation in politics. Thereby threatening the right of women to represent and be represented in the political system.
Importantly, a growing concern of impact evaluation studies on women’s political participation is the metric for conceptualizating what women’s interests is. The notion that women politicians are there to protect women’s interests is based on the assumption that there is an agreed definition of women’s interests. Specifically, the question of what are women’s interests is premised on two assumptions; the homogeneity of women as a group and the absolutism of interests.
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On the homogeneity of women, the notion of women’s interests assumes that women are a homogenous group with same needs and wants bordering on the principle of ‘sameness’. The problem with this assumption is that similarity is mistaken for sameness and the nuances that exist amongst women are ignored. The generic brush used to assume that women irrespective of their race, sexuality, nationality and social class have the same interests betrays the essence of intersectionality. Failing to recognize how the intersection of different systems of power affect women thereby resulting in different needs and wants does not bid well for understanding women’s interests.
The generic brush used to assume that women irrespective of their race, sexuality, nationality and social class have the same interests betrays the essence of intersectionality
On the absolutism of interests, there are too many issues affecting women to assume on a centralized and universal notion of “women’s interests”. This does not mean that there are no common areas that women can agree upon, for instance, violence against women, menstrual hygiene, and gender pay gap are some of the very many issues that can be categorized as women issues. Nonetheless, proclaiming that women of different class, race, and sexuality will have the same issue troubling them at the same time creates an absolutist problem. The misdiagnosis of the problem will result in prescribing a wrong solution which can exacerbate the problem. For instance, the notion of protecting women’s interests often gives women politicians the prerogative to determine what these interests are which creates a disconnect between them and the women they are representing.
Proclaiming that women of different class, race, and sexuality will have the same issue troubling them at the same time creates an absolutist problem.
In the situation where women MPs see women’s interests as reducing the rate of gender-based violence through harsher penalties while women on the ground see it as increased provision of safety measures for survivors of GBV. There exists a disagreement on what women want and the strategy for achieving the interest. While the issue of GBV is agreed upon by both parties, it is in the ‘how’ that the disagreement arises. This disagreement in strategy will lead to a disconnect in the understanding of impact that women politicians are making. Women politicians will feel that they have made impact while women will assume they have not made impact because their expectations of impact are not being met. This disconnect is a major issue to consider when conceptualizing what women’s interests are or who defines these interests. The contestation on defining women’s interests led feminist political theorists to advocate for a shared perspective among women as a group to consolidate calls for more engagement between women politicians and women populace. They argue that collaborative procedures of interest articulation, rather than just the perspective of one legislator, are the best ways to define ‘women’s interests’.
It is also helpful for notion of women’s interests to be localized rather than universalized. By localising it, we can account for contextual nuances while still finding similarities with other contexts. Also, the localization of women’s interests will allow women politicians to focus on addressing the issues specific to the constituencies they are representing. More broadly, it prevents international development agencies to apply a one-size-fits-all approach to addressing issues specific to women. It forces them to consider the contexts and corresponding complexities of the women they are developing policies and strategies for. Researchers conducting impact evaluation studies on women’s political participation must engage their study population on what they conceptualize as impact/women’s interests. Let the study population determine what impact is to them and what they consider as women’s interests.
Finally, there is need for a shift in mindset in how society homogenizes women and centralizes the issues that affect them as if they are one and the same. It is worth re-iterating that similarity is not sameness and we must avoid generalizing what women’s interests are without consulting women. We need to engage women and the different identities they embody to understand what their needs and wants are and the strategies to achieve them. By recognizing the individual agency that each woman embody we can begin to understand women as a group with shared similarities and as a collective of individuals with different interests. It is therefore impossible to proclaim one specific issue as what women’s interest is, rather women’s interests are multifaceted, contextual, and nuanced.
Zainab Monisola Olaitan is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria. She is also a Research Associate at the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation, University of Johannesburg. Zainab is a member of the African Association of Political Science (AAPS), the African Indigenous Knowledge Research Network (AIKRN), and the Sexual Reproductive Justice Coalition.
Thanks Zainab for raising key issues about assumptions about women’s interests that leads to a broadbrush of cliches.
Do inducate where we might start to still push for an advance in the practical agenda of women empowerment while finalizing thr debate on the definitions and concepts we use. How for we do both well? The conceptual clarity and the contextual impact? I guess this a subject that could follow this piece as a subject on its own. Thank you again
This is such an informative and satisfying article. I hope we live to see a world that recognizes the fact that it is not enough to have women in leadership but women with feminist ideology in leadership instead. Thank you Zainab.