The Impact of Consociationalism on Female Political Representation: The Case Study of Mauritius

ABSTRACT

By prioritising ethnic representation over gender representation, consociationalism is often criticised as being ‘gender blind’. This trend is very apparent in Mauritius’s consociational democracy as ethnicity is deeply entrenched in its different electoral practices ranging from the nominations of candidates, coalitions negotiations, the influence of religious organisations, the ethnicisation of the main political parties and voters’ perceptions. The focus on ethnic politics is so overwhelming that it side-tracks other important issues in the Mauritian political system like persistent inequalities in gender representation. This research relies on data from the Office of the Electoral Commissioner in Mauritius and Statistics Mauritius to analyse gender representation over the last 12 general elections. The findings show that the problem of low female political representation lies in a faulty institutional architecture designed to cater for ethnic representation without due regard to the problem of gender inequality. This problem is amplified by a serious lack of political will and consensus on an electoral reform that can correct this problem.

KEYWORDS:

• Consociationalism
• gender
• ethnicity
• representation

Acknowledgements

We are thankful to the editors and the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions in improving the article. We would like to thank our research assistant Gabriella Batour for helping us with the interviews and we are grateful to Associate Professor Sadasivam Jaganada Reddi for his views and comments.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 A community is an ethnic group in the Mauritian context.

2 The 1972 population census is the last census with ethnic categories which is still being used for electoral purposes. Up till now, Mauritius does not have an updated ethnically classified population census as most parties refused to hold a population count along ethnic lines for the sake of national unity (See Sookrajowa, 2021).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sheetal Sheena Sookrajowa

Sheetal Sheena Sookrajowa is a Senior Lecturer in Political Science in the Department of History and Political Science at the University of Mauritius. Her main research interests are ethnicity, political parties, elections, nationalism and power-sharing. Email: [email protected]

Jason Narsoo

Jason Narsoo is a Senior Lecturer in Actuarial Science and Statistics at the University of Mauritius. He graduated in Mathematics from the University of Mauritius and holds a Master in Actuarial Science from the University of Paris Dauphine, France. He is an Actuarial Associate of the Institute of Actuaries of France since 2013. His research areas cover advanced actuarial and statistical modelling. His publications embrace financial market dynamics and risk modelling, stochastic finance and portfolio optimisation strategies, and stochastic mortality modelling and forecasting.

Linganaden Murday

Linganaden Murday is an African Leadership Centre (ALC) alumnus who holds a Bachelor of Arts in History with International Relations (University of Mauritius), an MA in International Law and Politics (University of Hull- UK) and an MSc in Security, Leadership and Society (Kings’ College London- UK). He is a Lecturer at the University of Mauritius where he is teaching modules like International Institutions, Human Rights in World Politics and Theories and Concepts of International Relations.