Abstract
The question that haunts this book, both explicitly and implicitly, has long been a concern of feminists. Butler raised it definitively in her book, Antigone’s Claim (2000), as the question of whether feminists need the backing of the state in order to implement feminist policy aims. Dahlerup takes up this question by examining the presence of women in elected assemblies in countries around the world. She does so by focusing and being in sympathy with the use of gender quotas in elected assemblies as signifying parity and gender-based inclusivity by the state that holds promise of greater political participation by women and increased democracy. She promises to undertake an analysis that does justice to the complexity of the issue of gender parity and keeps her promise. Using examples from her own work as an advisor on the empowerment of women around the world, Dahlerup undertakes institutional as well as discursive analysis of the parity of women’s presence in leadership positions in ways that are complex, nuanced, and highly readable.
In her discussion using a wide range of quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis, Dahlerup deftly presages the many issues that arise from the thorny question of gender quotas in elected assemblies as an indicator of feminist democratic participation. She firmly grounds her analysis within a feminist theoretical framework that acknowledges the unequal power relationship that exists between cis-gendered men and women in the political arena globally and aligns her own views with feminists who consider equal participation of women as decision makers in political institutions as an important indicator of democracy. Dahlerup begins by undertaking a genealogical analysis of the exclusions experienced by women to participate politically since the First World War, thus providing a context by which to understand contemporary-gendered omissions that exist globally. She then focuses on the main theme of the book, surveying the numerical landscape of women’s presence in elected assemblies in countries all over the world. By studying many countries in addition to Western democracies, Dahlerup affords herself the opportunity to examine unexpected findings of the spread of gender quotas in diverse political regimes, which she then takes up in her discussion in ways that eschew simplistic claims of western exceptionalism with regard to promoting women’s equality rights. The following two chapters are dedicated to a substantive and discursive analysis of women’s representation in leadership positions. The comprehensive discussion that Dahlerup undertakes in these two chapters is consistent with her nuanced analysis in the earlier parts of the book and reflective of the knowledge she has amassed on this subject as a result of her experiential and academic learning. Her final chapter takes up the issue of women’s presence in the international arena and institutions.
This book makes an important contribution to analyzing women’s presence as political leaders the world over and challenges commonplace stereotypes that assume western liberal states have an exclusive prerogative in ensuring greater equality of women’s political participation. Its clear-eyed view of the global political situation particularly in relation to women also contributes substantively to the discussion alive within feminist circles as to the meaning and significance of women’s presence in political institutions albeit under the guise of controversial programs such as the gender quota system.
I would have wished, however, to have seen more of an analysis of other forms of political participation, more broadly understood, as in the case of Iran, where the strong surge of a grassroots women’s movement resisting against a patriarchal state also speaks to women’s presence in furthering democracy. To be fair, this is not the focus of Dahlerup’s book; however, exclusively attending to only one facet of women’s participation at the cost of others invisibilizes unconventional ways by which women make their presence known on the political stage.