Women in African Parliaments
Edited by Gretchen Bauer and Hannah E. Britton. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006; pp. 237. £34.95 (hb). ISBN 1588264270. Reviewed by Eileen Connolly, Dublin City University. ©Eileen Connolly, 2008.
The starting point and the raison d'etre for ‘Women in African Parliaments’ is the dramatic increase in the percentage of women elected to national parliaments in the past decade. Its opening paragraph details the Rwandan election of 2003 which resulted in a national legislature which was 48.8% female, and meant that Rwanda replaced Sweden as the country with the highest level of female political representation globally. Anyone who is familiar with the International Parliamentary Union (IPU) listing of the percentage of women in parliament could not but be aware of the shift that has taken place in its rankings. While internationally the percentage of women in parliaments has increased, some of the most dramatic changes have been in the global South, with many states in Latin America, Asia and Africa moving ahead of ‘old’ democracies. This appears more remarkable in the case of Africa, given the ‘development failure’ of the region and its overall declining level of human development. It is in the context of these changes that this book is particularly timely. The editors have drawn together some significant original research on the topic and the core of the book is six case study chapters each dealing with an African state: Mozambique; South Africa; Namibia; Uganda; Rwanda; and Senegal. With the exception of Senegal that had a relatively peaceful political transition, the states covered have all come through political transitions after prolonged periods of violent conflict. As a result of this choice, the chapters reflect a key strand of experience that was part of the wave of democratisation in Africa in the 1990s and also the gendered aspects of that experience.
The opening chapter sets up a framework to analyse women's political engagement in the case study states that has a universalist quality, and could be equally applicable to the democracies in the global North. In dealing specifically with Africa it synthesises the institutional and social movement factors that have impacted on the election of women candidates, and assesses the impact the election of women has had on institutional culture, on legislation, and on civil society, the later primarily in the form of the women's movement. The case study chapters that follow, with minor deviations, adhere to the structural framework provided in the opening chapter covering a brief history of women in the respective state, the path to political office, the impact of women in parliament and the future direction of women's political engagement. As a result of this discipline the book facilitates both a detailed examination of the individual states and a comparison between them.
In the detail of the case studies a diverse and complex picture of women's political engagement emerges. With regard to Uganda, Aili Mari Tripp comments that formerly the focus has been on ‘how women have sought to increase their political representation’ and that less ‘has been said of the motivations and objectives of states in adopting such policies’. It is this complex relationship between the goals of women's activism and the goals of existing political elites, set within the framework of the states’ relationship with the international system and its policy norms, and the pressure that can be put on reconstructing and aid dependent states that is explicitly or implicitly dealt with in the individual chapters. The picture that is built up, while it may have points of similarity with other contexts, is very far removed from the idealised ‘western’ model of women's political advancement and engagement with parliaments. The concluding chapter returns to a discussion of the feminist concerns alluded to in the opening chapter, asking the question how can women's representation advance the agenda of gender equality. It presents ‘weak’ versus ‘strong’ conceptualisations of participation, representation and gender equality outcomes – arguing predictably in favour of focusing on strong definitions. Its main strength lies in its application of these definitions to Africa and to the particular circumstances of the case study countries.
'Women in African Parliaments’ fills a gap in the literature. Without directly addressing the issue it also raises the question of the tensions that exist in this form of analysis between using a common, internationally applicable model, with the inevitable problems of ‘Western’ bias, and examining the particular patterns of women's political engagement that exist in Sub‐Saharan Africa. How far can models drawn from western experience aid an understanding of African women's problematic engagement with the state. In the substantive chapters, the complexity of this relationship is fully dealt with providing a basis for future research and debate. Overall a very welcome, interesting and readable book.