Women’s Political Participation and Citizenship Rights

The task to reshape governments in the countries confronted with the Arab Spring prompts the question whether there are necessary conditions to realize a stable society that simultaneously seeks to eliminate the elements that have led to the uprisings. Acknowledging some constitutional rights seems indispensable in such a process. I argue that such a state of affairs is indeed the case, at least now that the ‘old’ justifications to differentiate between people do not suffice anymore. That is not to say that the countries involved will have identical laws in each respect, but merely that a common basis has to be realized, manifested in political and legal equality, so this given does not derogate from the fact that each country’s specific legislation needs to be shaped in the light of its own history. Such a basis has no ‘moral’ character, but is simply a necessary condition to prevent sedition.

Two decades after the Beijing Declaration and the Beijing Platform for Action it is still necessary to assess the Nigerian political landscape in terms of women’s political participation, that is: their participation in governance, measured through women’s representation, decision making, empowerment, and the achievement of equitable conditions for women. Women’s accomplishments in political representation and participation, and their influence in public policy and governance should be highlighted by exploring factors that enable women’s political empowerment and gender equity in Nigeria. These factors include Nigeria’s constitutional provisions and national policies. The Nigerian constitution affords women full de jure rights as citizens; discrimination against women is unlawful, and women have full access to the political sphere. However, de jure rights are not always matched by de facto conditions of women’s lives. Thus the creation and implementation of national policies specific to women and their advancement in governance remain important objectives

Representation is a core component of political voice, and gender quota policy greatly amplifies women’s voices in the parliaments of Europe.

This is a source book of new and updated information on gender quotas in the post-Communist world. We feature – in their own words and deeds – the powerful voice of the parliamentarians whose elite position in the political structure makes them prime movers in the battle for gender equality.

We intend for this book to be accessible to everyone interested in gender, political voice inequality, and representation.

This book was funded by the National Science Centre, Poland (project Number 2016/23/B/HS6/03916. PI: Joshua K. Dubrow).

El objetivo de este capítulo es repensar claves para incorporar la perspectiva de género en el estudio de los partidos políticos. Se trata de revisar los enfoques que se han empleado en la investigación sobre partidos; conocer trabajos innovadores que han contribuido a identificar de qué manera los partidos están “generizados” (Childs y Caul Kittilson, 2016; Lovenduski y Norris, 1993) y producir alternativas metodológicas que ayuden a evitar los sesgos de género en el estudio de los partidos (Morgan e Hinojosa, 2018; Verge y De la Fuente, 2014; Celis et al., 2016). Si los partidos participan, se organizan y compiten reproduciendo sesgos de género, entonces, resulta clave profundizar en el conocimiento de enfoques, dimensiones de análisis y estrategias metodológicas que puedan contribuir en la generación de investigaciones sin sesgos para alcanzar lo que Lovenduski (2005) denominó en su momento como la feminización de la política.  La manera como se observa la realidad, es decir, los conceptos que se usan, condiciona lo que se observa y -por tanto- resulta clave (des)generizar las aproximaciones, las mediciones y los mismos conceptos.

October 2020 marks the 20th anniversary of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325) on
Women, Peace and Security1. This marks a fitting moment to assess the resolution’s challenges and achievements
and to offer some suggestions for better implementation of the resolution in two Middle Eastern countries – Israel
and Turkey. Two countries with shared bilateral and regional interests as well as disputes and critical roles in many of
the area’s conflicts. Israel and Turkey responded to UNSCR 1325 positively, but did not implement it on the ground.
UNSCR 1325 led many United Nations (UN) member countries to adopt a National Action Plan (NAP) to implement
the ideas and ideals of the resolution (Peacewomen 2020). Most of those countries are in Europe, while only a few
of them are in the MENA region. There are eleven Regional Action Plans (RAP) around the world, but there is no
formal RAP for the MENA region2. Due to many barriers, such as political divisions between countries in the region,
ongoing conflicts, and women’s underrepresentation in politics and in decision-making, the push for the implementation
of UNSCR 1325 in the MENA region must be supported by the international community. Though the
implementation of UNSCR 1325 through a regionwide framework is unlikely, due to political and cultural differences
and the ongoing disputes between states, a push for its implementation could also originate from sub-regional
cooperation and bilateral agreements.
The 20th anniversary of UNSCR 1325 should also serve as an opportunity to prioritize it on the agenda of Israeli-
Turkish civil society activities. Furthermore, international exchange amongst female diplomats and security services
and gender trainings as well as leadership programs for women in such positions can support the acceptance and
the career opportunities for women in foreign and security policy.
Jointly, motivated women from the region and a push from the international community together can achieve
improvements for women through inclusion in peace building processes and regional cooperation. This needs long
term commitment from young women, who can take up the issues and set the groundwork for the next generation
of Middle Eastern women.

RESUMEN
Este artículo contrasta los diseños institucionales de la reglamentación
interna de los partidos políticos en México que permiten o limitan el
ejercicio de la representación política de las mujeres en el año 2020, al
mismo tiempo que los contrasta con la dimensión externa del sistema
electoral mexicano. El estudio comparado permite identificar una distancia entre el principio constitucional que establece la paridad electoral de género, frente a las reglas formales adoptadas por los partidos políticos nacionales, aspecto que debilita al régimen electoral nacional de igualdad de género.
Palabras clave: Democracia paritaria | Representación política | Partidos
políticos | Derechos políticos de las mujeres | México.

ABSTRACT
This article compares the institutional designs of the internal regulation
of the political parties in Mexico that allow or limit the exercise of women’s political representation, of legal application in 2020, at the same time as it contrasts them with the external dimension of the Mexican electoral system. The comparative study identifies a distance between the constitutional principle that establishes gender electoral parity, compared to the formal rules adopted by national political parties, an aspect that weakens the national electoral gender equality regime.
Keywords: Parity democracy | Political representation | Political parties |
Women’s political rights | Mexico.

This paper looks at how abstract ideas important for citizenship, such as justice, freedom, equality, and patriotism, are represented in order to capture the imagination of political actors. Focussing on produced fantasies and images the paper seeks to understand how the political imaginary is sexed and what role it plays in inspiring individuals to take certain political roles and actions. More specifically, it examines the function of female nudity and sexiness in the representation of many abstract political ideas. It is suggested that the feminine and sexualised character of many symbols has a significant role in motivating the political agency of male citizens by making abstract political ideas symbolically more engaging.

Fiji had its first democratic elections after 8 years of military dictatorship following a coup d’état in December 2006.  The election was fought on the basis of a new open list proportional representation (PR) system where voters were required to endorse only the candidates on the ballot paper. (Party affiliations were not listed either on the ballot paper nor the National Candidates list).  Also, in accordance with the 2013 Constitution, the voting age was reduced from 21 to 18 years. It had been eight years since the previous election, close to 30% were first time voters and approximately 47% of the voting population was below the age of 35.  591101 eligible voters registered for the elections signalling the eagerness of Fijians to return to parliamentary rule. 249 candidates contested the elections under 7 registered political parties including 2 independent candidates out of which 44 female candidates contested the elections.

In 2012 Fiji Women’s Rights Movement was awarded a European Union (EIDHR) grant for the action “Enhancing the Political Participation of Marginalised Women Voters”.  The overall objective of the project was enhanced political participation of women, particularly women from minority and marginalised groups, in national democratic processes.

The two target groups identified for the purpose of this project were Indo-Fijian women and young women. Indo-Fijian women, or Fijian women of Indian descent, are part of the Indo-Fijian ethnic minority that forms 37.48% of the total 837,271 of Fiji’s population (Fiji Islands Bureau of Statistics 2012). Indo-Fijians have faced long-term discrimination, particularly in the political arena. Since the last military coup d’état in 2006, FWRM, which is a multi-ethnic, multicultural human rights-based organisation, noticed a steady decline in the participation of Indo-Fijian women in its workshops/campaigns/initiatives and as well as at the national decision-making level.  Young women, which overlaps with Indo-Fijian women, has been similarly marginalised over the history of Fiji as a nation state. They face multiple discrimination at the intersection of race, age, sexuality, place of origin and socio-economic status. However, with the growing importance of young voters and the national voting age at 18 years, the democratisation process was an opportunity for young women to become more politically engaged and influential citizens.

A scoping research was carried out in mid July 2013, the results and recommendations were used as a planning tool for the development of the media campaign and training awareness, to enhance the political participation of Indo-Fijian and young women. The different phases of the media campaign and the training workshops were conducted over a period of several months prior to the election.

At the conclusion of the elections, a monitoring and evaluation research was developed which used a mixed method approach in collecting data, conducting face-to-face interviews with 348 women, 7 focus group discussions involving 44 women and 9 key informant interviews. Respondents were directly chosen from the participants of the FWRM training, indirectly selected from the participants that attended workshops/trainings organised by the direct participants, and than randomly selected participants.

Some of the general findings of the research revealed that majority of the direct respondents found the FWRM training either very useful or just useful.  ON the other hand, more indirect participants found the FWRM trainings organized by the  direct respondents but delivered by FWRM training officers, as very useful or useful. The training materials developed and used by FWRM was found to be either very or just useful by 47% of the direct respondents whereas 9% did not find the trainings useful or not useful, ad 7% said it wasn’t useful and 36% refused to answer. The training materials were available to the indirect participants through the community workshop/training.  89% found it very useful or useful, and 5% didn’t find it useful, 3% did not find it useful at all and the rest were neutral or didn’t respond.

One of the objectives of the FWRM media campaign and trainings/workshop was to empower women to attend campaign meetings as a means of making informed voting choices.  There was a higher percentage of women from the direct participants attending campaign meetings compared to the women from the indirect participants and random selection.  Infact, 64% of women from the direct participants attended campaign meetings, followed by 42% from the indirect participants and 35% from the random selection. This finding directly links to the result that the FWRM trainings were useful as a mechanism to politically empower women.

The majority of the respondents did not vote for women.  From the direct participants only 27% voted for women compared to 27% indirect respondents and 32% random respondents. Given the level of involvement by the direct partcipants, it was expected that the number of people voting for women would be higher, at least relative to the respondents from the random selection who had not been part of any FWRM training or awareness campaigns or events.

Six recommendations were made follwing the analysis of all the data. They were:-
1. Trainings and workshops need to be frequent to futher development their knowledge and empower them to actively engage in political processes. 
2.The ad-hoc cascaded approach utilized needs to be strengthend and institutionalized for future projects like this, FWRM should build a network of trained community facilitators, who undergo a comprehensive training-of-trainers (content and methodology).
3. FWRM should intensify its media campaigns.
4.Evaluations from the trainers be conducted and diligently followed, including follow up interviews done with the women in the community network on the quality of the training specifically. 
5. FWRM and other women’s organizations (either independently or in collaboration) to distribute female candidates’ information to the wider public to ensure that female candidates’ profile gets more attention during the campaigning.
6. Develop gender-sensitive voter and civic education messages that highlight the capacities of women as candidates and political leaders

Seminario "La Condizione Femminile nel Panorama Europeo e Internazionale".

Ne discutono:
SILVIA COSTA (Parlamento Europeo)
BEATRICE PISA (Università La Sapienza)
SERGIO MARCHISIO (Università La Sapienza)

Modera: ALESSIA LIROSI (Università La Sapienza)
Conclude: RITA TOLOMEO (Università La Sapienza)

giovedì 10 maggio 2018, ore 15.00-19.00, Aula Odeion - Edificio della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, Università Roma La Sapienza, p.le A. Moro 5, Roma

Religiously diverse Lebanon prides itself on being a regional standout when it comes to the status of women. But since the 1920s, Lebanese women’s citizenship has been incomplete. Unlike the country’s men, Lebanese women do not have the right to pass their citizenship to their children or spouses. The law has broken apart families and denied basic services to children who have never known another country. This report chronicles the struggle of Lebanese women’s organizations, beginning nearly two decades ago, to give Lebanese women full citizenship. Their campaign has been one of the most carefully planned of its kind, combining legislative advocacy, litigation, street protests, and awareness raising. Yet it has also been crippled by infighting, and has so far been unable to overcome the blend of sectarianism and misogyny that defines Lebanese politics. With interviews and historical analysis, the report illustrates both the importance of incremental gains, and how effective a state’s stalling strategy can be in the face of demands for change.

Este trabalho se propoe a dar uma contribuicao ao estudo dos direitos humanos em Angola. Inicialmente, procurou-se conhecer os elementos que contribuiram para a formacao historica dos cidadaos angolanos, com destaque para os anos de 1975, 1991 e 1992, e analisar o entendimento que os governos tiveram sobre direitos humanos a partir da leitura legislativa e sua relacao com as praticas sociais de violencia. Em seguida, apresentaram-se referenciais conceituais de direitos humanos em funcao desta leitura historica. Neste processo, inclui-se a educacao como o meio atraves do qual os sujeitos sao socializados. Num contexto de naturalizacao da violencia, a educacao desempenha papel fundamental. Buscou-se, ainda, compreender a educacao formal em Angola e sua relacao com a emancipacao social. E, assim, perceber como e por que a educacao em direitos humanos pode ser um meio de concretizacao da democracia, da tolerância e de combate a violencia. Tambem foram analisadas as atividades das ONG qu...

Historically and traditionally women experience rights violations more widely and this caused them to practice an indirect citizenship form. Hence, a gendered perception has emerged to understand civil, political and economic rights of women apart from the general notion of citizenship. In this paper, the notion of women’s citizenship and its reflections in Latin America will be examined together with examples from women movements, motivations and claims. Although women in different geographies passed similar paths in order to achieve equal rights, every experience has its uniqueness. What makes the Latin American example special are unique motives and environments such as dictatorship, the Church, motherhood and neoliberalism. In this paper, firstly, women’s citizenship with a gendered viewpoint is stated. Then, the Latin American women’s claims and what mobilise them on realising equal citizenship were explored along with the concepts such as motherhood, religion, military regime and neoliberal transition. Finally, women’s political participation in formal politics and civil society is indicated with a special emphasis over quotas as commonly adopted measure to increase the level of women representation in formal politics. Also, women’s movements during the military regime and neoliberal process were stated with examples of women organisations from countries in the region.

The aim of this contribution is to provide a framework to understand the political position (by understanding “political position” in terms of belonging and subjectivity) of migrant women, migrantas, in our contemporary Latin-American democracies. Thus, this chapter explores the encounter of two subject positions: being a woman, being a migrant.
While some developments from the feminist theory (such s D. Smith’s  framework) have identify women as the oppressed subject by definition, some others from a migration perspective, we shall argue, allow us to recognize an absolute excluded position in migrants. To think about the outcomes of such an encounter, we are also going to take into account the feminization of the political agenda (from e.g. social mobilization such as “Ni Una Menos”, No one less) and on the other hand, the feminization of migration and their consequences in terms of reproductive work and invisibility. Why? We will argue that both
the feminization of the political agenda (at least from where we both authors write, Argentina) and the feminization of migration are, even in a different extent, well established facts but at the same time are tendencies that have not dialogue between them.
By analyzing such trends, we will try to answer the following question: what it will result for migrant women’s position? What outcome will prevail, if any, at reading the intersection of gender and mobility? Literature indicates that the fact of being a migrant women (and probably with class and racial components as well) carries out a deeper
discrimination and actually increases vulnerability. On the other hand, women in the public sphere have been gaining traction in the last years: many demands, posed as human rights claims, have achieved an outstanding place in the political agenda and the results in terms
of women’s empowerment are undeniable. Would the position of migrant women be improved through this role of women in our contemporary democracies or on the contrary, the position as excluded subjects will prevail? If the women’s standpoint of Dorothy Smith is a port of entry to better understand the situation of other oppressed subjects, will it also provide an entrance to share the empowerment achieved by women to other (oppressed or excluded) subjects?
In the following section, we will introduce this idea in an extended fashion. Then, we are going to address the position of women and migrants, the contributions from the so-called feminization of migrations as well as from the feminization of politics to, then, go towards the feminization of our democracies. In the last part, we will debate these ideas to provide a better insight about the position that encounter or embody these two subjectivities: women and migrants, migrantas.

"Women's Rights, Vol. 2" is a publication organized by Denise Almeida de Andrade and Mónica Sapucaia Machado avaiable at Amazon (https://www.amazon.com.br/Womens-Rights-International-influence-contemporary-ebook/dp/B084KMYWDC?fbclid=IwAR3SAYwS7mlRhq6SahrWV0VVRLJY_xuIkfjnWPknTWuDXjPqW7AbE0cwLaUç) The work presented in this volume is inscribed in a theoretical perspective that deals with the established relations between Law and society, and in particular a set of pertinent reflections on the issue of ‘Women’s Rights’.
The title of this publication in itself can evoke in us a call to reflect on our own lives. Whilst excluding what we already know about how evidence and certain meanings commonly affect us as readers, we need to also ask ourselves questions in relation to the title about which specific rights, the work will be looking at in depth.

Chapters:
1. CHALLENGES ANNOUNCED TO GENDER EQUALITY IN CURRENT BRAZIL: A “DEMOCRATIC STATE” AS A DANGER TO WOMEN’S RIGHTS
2. PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY: IS IT LEGITIMATE WITHOUT WOMEN?
3. VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMAN IN POLITICS
4. DEMOCRACY, ONLINE MEDIA AND VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMAN: THE DISCOURSE AS AN INSTRUMENT OF STRUCTURAL POWER FROM THE PATRIARCHAL SOCIETY
5. FEMINIZATION OF MIGRATIONS, FEMINIZATION OF CITIZENSHIP: “MIGRANTAS” IN OUR CONTEMPORARY DEMOCRACIES
6. THE AUDIENCES OF CUSTODY AND PRISON IN FLAGRANT IN THE DOMESTIC AND FAMILY VIOLENCE COURTS AGAINST WOMEN IN THE AMAZON-BELÉM
7. FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: AN APPROACH TO URBAN PLANNING FROM “FUNK CARIOCA” SONGS
8. A REFLECTION ON BRAZILIAN FISHERWOMEN FROM A DECOLONIAL PERSPECTIVE.

INCONTRO "DONNE COSTITUZIONE POLITICA" - 8 marzo 2018, ore 15 – 19 - Aula Odeion della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia - Università La Sapienza, Roma.

SALUTI: Eugenio Gaudio - Magnifico Rettore della Sapienza Università di Roma; Giuliana Scognamiglio - Delegata del Rettore alle Pari Opportunità; Stefano Asperti - Preside della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia.

INTERVENTI DI: Anna Maria Isastia - Sapienza Università di Roma; Cinzia Dato - Università degli Studi del Molise. Modera: Rita Tolomeo - Direttrice Corso Alta Formazione «Donne Diritti Culture»

Seguirà:

SPETTACOLO TEATRALE «Figlia di tre madri. La passione politica dalle Madri Costituenti ad oggi», a cura di Associazione Almateatro e Associazione Terraterra.  Regia di Gabriella Bordin. In scena: Elena Ruzza. Al contrabasso: Bianca De Paolis. Con la partecipazione di 21 donne dello Spi-Cgil di Torino nel ruolo delle 21 Madri Costituenti.

CONCERTO del Coro MuSa della Sapienza, diretto dal Maestro Paolo Camiz.



Coordinamento scientifico e organizzativo: Alessia Lirosi.