Gender-blindness of Democratization Studies
The process of political democratization provides women (and men) with new opportunities for political participation (Viterna and Fallon 2008: 668); however, the mainstream democratization literature has rarely paid attention to the impact of gender on the processes of democratization and largely neglected women in the analysis. This has several reasons: First, women as political subjects have not been taken seriously, or gender as a category has been absent in the theoretical analysis (Phillips 1991, 1998; Paxton 2008; Tremblay 2007). This becomes particularly clear in the measurements of democracy. If women’s suffrage is effectively included in the measurement, the notion of the waves of democratization is no longer supported, or established democracies in the West do not have a hold on early democratization (Paxton 2008: 68). To put it differently, democratization studies do not regard the introduction of women’s suffrage as a determinant of the transition. The most prominent example related to the ineffectiveness of women’s suffrage is the case of Switzerland. Although female citizens in Switzerland obtained the right to vote only in 1971, the mainstream democratization literature has usually labeled the country as a democratic state since the nineteenth or the beginning of the twentieth century. If a significant part of the population, in this case women, is hindered to participate in politics, then such a regime cannot be classified as ‘democratic’. As the Swiss example exposes, even though women are included in the definitions of democracy, they are mostly ignored in measurements. Hence, researchers must take into account women’s inclusion not only in their working definitions, but also in their operationalization (Paxton 2008: 70).
Second, democratization scholars have mainly been concerned with how to achieve and endure institutional democracy (Waylen 2000, 2003). Such studies are confined to studying institutional processes or the behavior of political elites in the transition to or the consolidation of democracy (Jaquette 1994; Waylen 2007). Since the number of women have remarkably been low within the political elite, they have been implicitly excluded from the analysis of
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democratization. Moreover, such studies limit the scope of their analysis to the upper echelons of political institutions, where women are not usually represented, and, in consequence, ignore women’s issues in the process of democratization (Waylen 2007: 5).
Third, a group of democratization scholars shifted their focus from the upper to the lower echelons of politics and began to question the role of CS in the process of democratization (Croissant et al. 2000; Diamond 1994; Foley and Edwards 1996; Schmitter 1997). However, none of these studies has explicitly discussed the role women played in democratization, even though women formed the majority in many popular movements, especially in the Latin America transitions (Waylen 1994: 334). Because of the lack of interest in women’s mobilization and gender issues, these studies have ignored the relationship between gender and the democratization process.
In sum, women’s role as political actors and women’s issues have been ignored in the literature on democratization. This incomplete understanding of politics, democracy, the public sphere, and CS has made it impossible to place gender in the processes or outcomes of democratization (Waylen 1994: 335). The integration of gender as a category in the analysis of democratization would thus broaden the scope of democratization theories. This is not only because women will be added to the range of political actors to be analyzed, but also women will put forward a new and broader set of issues to achieve democratic politics and society.
A Gendered Approach to Democratization
Since the late 1980s, there is a growing body of literature on gender-and- democratization.
Especially after the success of women’s movements in the Latin American transitions, gender scholars have begun to scrutinize the role of organized women in bringing down authoritarian regimes and in building democracy (Alvarez 1990; Jaquette 1994; Jaquette and Wolchik 1998; Rai 2003; Viterna and Fallon 2008; Waylen 1994, 2000, 2003, 2007). These single-case and comparative studies not only analyze why and how women mobilize, but also how women’s participation and their interaction with political institutions contribute to democratization and consolidation processes (Waylen 2003: 159). Some of the key findings of the literature on gender-and-democratization are:
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Strong women’s mobilizations in the transitional period are central for state-level changes in gender policies after the transition (Viterna and Fallon 2008; Waylen 1994, 2003, 2007).
The existing political institutions, i.e. the institutional context, during the transition to democracy can shape, and change, the strategies and aims of organized women as well as gender relations (Beckwith 2005; Waylen 2007).
If the presence of influential political parties that are open to demands of women’s movements, and that have feminist activists within them, coincides with a transition path that facilitates the participation of women in those processes, it is more likely that progressive gender policies will ensue (Waylen 2003: 173).
When women’s movements develop cohesive coalitions, they are more effective in influencing the newly established democratic regime (Franceschet 2001; Viterna and Fallon 2008).
The special focus in all these studies is exclusively on women’s participation and representation in the broader political realm. These studies have introduced a new analytical dimension in the democratization literature and have sought to make a theoretical sense of engendering democratization.
Given that democratization research has divided the process of democratization into phases, gender scholars also use this periodization, and analyze the role women play in different stages of democratization. The periodization helps gender scholars to comprehend and compare how differences in the institutional context in each stage of transition have differing ‘gender outcomes’ (Franceschet 2001; Viterna and Fallon 2008; Waylen 2003, 2007). In analyzing the regime breakdown, gender-and-democratization scholars primarily concentrate on women’s mobilization and the circumstances under which women make gender claims visible in oppositional politics (Waylen 2007: 65). As regards the transition to democracy, scholars explore where women organize in the newly forming political arena and focus on their interactions with the changing political context, i.e. with the institutions in the new political regime.
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In the democratization phase, women usually engage in CSOs or in grassroots movements.
Accordingly, scholars look at the activities and strategies women’s organizations pursue, as well as at their effectiveness in putting gender issues on the policy agenda of transitional politics (Waylen 2007: 69). By comparing different case studies, gender scholars have found out that different transition paths have diverging impacts on the effectiveness of organized women (Viterna and Fallon 2008; Waylen 2003, 2007). While the ‘pacted’ transitions to democracy can offer opportunities for women’s organizations more time to mobilize to develop strategies to unfolding events during the transition (Waylen 2007: 71), the modifications of the laws regarding women’s lives might be easier in ‘un-pacted’ transitions since the opposition parties, which are open to women’s demands, can refuse the overtures of the authoritarian regime (Viterna and Fallon 2008). However, the impact of transition paths on the effectiveness of women’s movements after the transition is closely related with other factors such as the level of women’s mobilizations before the transition, the characteristics of the movements, and the openness of the transitional regime to women’s demands (Viterna and Fallon 2008; Waylen 2007).
Moreover, gender-and-transition scholars claim that the international gender agenda has a considerable impact on the success of women’s movements in the context of democratization process. For instance, the positive impact of the UN’s declaration of the years 1976-1985 as the
‘UN Decade for Women’, the UN’s ‘World Conferences on Women’ and the influential
‘Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women’ (CEDAW)24, introduced in 1979, helped popularize and legitimize the struggles and demands of women’s movements in a multitude of transition countries (Jaquette 1994; McBride and Mazur 2008;
Viterna and Falon 2008; Waylen 2007). Especially, the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, which declared “women’s rights as human rights” in the framework of the Beijing Platform for Action, pointed to the need to focus on the concept of gender and to recognize all relations between men and women within the entire structures of society and to re-evaluate them.25 Accordingly, national women’s movements began to refer to the Beijing
24 The CEDAW agreement is considered “an international bill of rights for women”. CEDAW consists of thirty articles and defines ’discrimination against women’ in its possible broadest sense. It sets a political agenda for national action to counteract discrimination against women. For further details on the Convention, see:
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/ (rev. 25.10.2014)
25 See further: http://www.un.org/en/globalissues/women/ (rev. 25.10.2014)
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Declaration and reminded their governments to take action for empowering women and ensuring gender equality in their countries.
In analyzing democratic consolidation from a gender perspective, scholars have studied whether organized women could translate their mobilization against authoritarian regimes into institutional political power in the newly democratized political regime (Ray and Korteweg 1999:
54). In doing so, the literature first examines the levels of women’s “descriptive representation”
in the political life, which denotes the numbers of elected women in parliaments, assemblies, and governmental bodies (Tremblay 2007; Waylen 2007). In the aftermath of the Beijing Conference, quotas for women candidates have been discussed globally to enhance women’s descriptive representation (Cornwall and Goetz 2005; Tremblay 2007; Waylen 2007). Since then quotas have been adopted by political parties or imposed through legislature or constitutional mechanisms to raise the numbers of women in representative bodies, in both developed and developing countries (Cornwall and Goetz 2005; Waylen 2007). Even though the effectiveness of quotas is still debated, quotas have been implemented as an effective strategy to counteract women’s under-representation on different levels of politics.
However, the focus on the numbers of women in formal politics is not sufficient. The attention should also be given to gender policy outcomes (Viterna and Fallon 2008; Waylen 2003, 2007). This refers to the “substantive representation” of women; i.e., the expression of women’s interests in policy-making (Waylen 2007: 3). Scholars therefore look at the political outcomes in gender policies in the post-transitional phase of regimes, and scrutinize how and through what ways organized women and women in elected bodies and other state institutions exert influence on the legislative to pass the laws related to women’s issues (Jaquette 2001; Waylen 2003, 2007).
For instance, the “national machineries for women” (state’s women’s machineries) have emerged as a unit inside the government to advance women’s substantive representation and have become influential in supporting gender mainstreaming in all public policy areas (Rai 2003:
17). As it is the case in the democratization phase, both the differences in the nature of the transition path and of the institutional settings; i.e., how the electoral system, the party system, or the legislature is organized, have a considerable impact on gendered policy outcomes in the consolidation phase (Ray and Korteweg 1999; Tremblay 2007; Viterna and Falon 2008; Waylen 2003, 2007).
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In sum, a gendered analysis of democratic consolidation focuses on two dimensions: 1) the extent of the participation of women in the political sphere, and 2) the representation of women’s needs and interests in gender policies. To this end, scholars study if women have been included in decision-making processes and have achieved policy outcomes corresponding to their demands and interests. As gender-and-democratization scholars argue, to achieve a fully consolidated democracy in a gendered sense, states need to include women in policy-making processes and to mainstream gender equality in their policies (McBride and Mazur 2008; Paxton 2008; Phillips 1991, 1998; Sauer 2006; Tremblay 2007).
It is often discussed that larger numbers of women in formal politics would bring about
‘positive gender outcomes’ and would engender democracy (Jaquette 2001; Sauer 2006; Tremblay 2007; Waylen 2003, 2007). Following this argument, gender scholars have extensively focused on the role of women in the formal political arena, that is, the electoral, constitutional/legal and bureaucratic/state arenas (Waylen 2007: 9). They have sought to explain how women in formal politics shape gender policies in a post-transitional period. In doing so, they look at the roles that a range of female actors – not just women’s movements – play in translating the articulation of gender issues into positive gender outcomes (Ibid: 91). However, there are few studies that explore exclusively the role of women organized outside of formal politics in the democratic consolidation process. This is because the literature claims that women’s CSOs, as CS in general, decline both in numbers and in their impact in the consolidation phase (Jaquette 2001; Waylen 2007). However, it can be contended that organized women, as much as other groups within CS, gain new opportunities to interact with the government, state institutions, and political parties and to continue their struggles to influence the gender policy agenda in the consolidation phase.
The present study follows the latter argument and argues that more empirical work is needed that analyzes politically active women in the public sphere beyond the state (and the market), i.e. in the civil society arena, as well as their effectiveness in achieving gendered outcomes in the consolidation period. As discussed in the first section (1.1), consolidation process in general is the most controversially debated phase in the democratization literature. Thus, the examination of the role of organized women in democratic consolidation not only contributes to the theoretical perspective of the gender-and-democratization literature, but also expands the scope of the consolidation literature.
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