This paper interrogates the nature of gendered political settlements through analysing selected country cases studies of the gendered nature of political and policy-making processes. It identifies the different contextual and structural factors that promote gender inclusive development policies and outcomes.
The paper argues that a political settlement framework stands to gain from using a gender lens as it allows for exploration of the role played by (gendered) ideas, (gender) ideology, informal relations, policy coalitions, bottom-up strategies in how settlements are reached and sustained.
Key findings:
- Post hoc analysis of the different country cases reveals that the factors that play important roles in determining how gender equity concerns are represented and decided upon in politics and policy making processes are: the interests and incentives of the political and social elites in promoting/ obstructing gender equity concerns in political and policy making processes; the relationship and negotiations that take place between the feminist constituency and these actors on gender equity; the political opportunity structures that create or limit space for making claims around gender equity and the discourses around gender which influence the gender ideologies of these different actors.
- The political settlement perspective allows one to focus both on agency of different actors and structures; and also the interactions between these elements. This focus on structure, agency and their interaction, makes political settlement a useful perspective for understanding how women as actors are included and women’s needs and gender equity concerns are negotiated in politics and policymaking processes and the subsequent outcomes.
- A major challenge in using a political settlement framework to unpack gendered politics of securing inclusive development is that its focus on incentives and interests is based on a rational choice analysis that leaves out the role played by ideologies. Gender ideologies play a key role in motivating behaviour of the actors, both of political and social elites, excluded elites, oppositional non-elites and women who may want to contest these ideologies.
Gaps in research into women’s political representation and policy that a political settlement perspective can explore:
- Research on gender analysis of policies focuses on outcomes of policies on women. These rarely take into account the particular relationships that exist between the state, political and social elites, that leads to certain forms of policies. A political settlement perspective may helpful in unpacking these relationships and why certain forms of policy measures are undertaken.
- Feminist research on women’s representation extensively debates how women are not a homogenous social group and the difficulties this poses in representative democracies or systems for promoting women’s interests or gender equity. There is less focus on: how, when and why electoral and policy elites consider women as an important constituency; when and how women’s ability to retaliate electorally and in other ways occurs; when and how women (including women’s groups), who in many cases are excluded by elite or non- elite actors, through collective mobilization challenge existing political settlements on gender.
- Gender and development research has focused on the impact of quotas on promotion of gender equity interests. However, there has been less focus on who (which women) comes in through quotas and how that influences policy choices. There is also little research on women in formal political parties and how they negotiate with different political or social constituencies on gender equity concerns.
- Much of the development research on gender and women’s inclusion in politics does not use a context specific and historical analysis of how women as a collective group were able to secure ‘political entitlement’, especially during moments if state formation and how this interpretation of entitlements affect women’s collective ability to secure inclusive development.
