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Abstract
Adoption of gender quotas is significant in addressing women's political underrepresentation. While low levels of women's parliamentary presence is a global phenomenon, in the past decades developing countries have been at the forefront of gender quota adoption. This article analyzes the process of quota adoption during postconflict reconstruction, a reality that is prevalent in much of the developing world. It argues that the context of postconflict reconstruction provides quota advocates with unique opportunities to demand women's political presence. This article considers the quota adoption processes of two developing countries, Rwanda and Afghanistan, in the context of their postconflict reconstruction, with a particular emphasis on the actors and factors involved.
Acknowledgments
I thank the anonymous reviewers, as well as the editors of the Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy, who provided me with extensive supportive comments to improve this article. I also thank Homa Hoodfar and Kimberely Manning for their helpful feedback and support. I am very grateful to Najia Haneefi, Fawzia Koofi, and various other activists and scholars who provided me with much valuable information and shared their experiences with me.
Notes
1. Gender quotas are meant to rectify the historical exclusion of women and are divided into three broad categories: reserved seats quotas, which are adopted in the national constitutions; national legislative quotas, which are adopted through legal reform at the constitutional or electoral law levels; and political party quotas or targets, which are voluntarily adopted by parties (CitationKrook 2009).
2. For the purpose of this article representation refers to women's descriptive (as opposed to substantive) representation because this work concerns quota adoption. I argue that the mere adoption of quotas is a significant accomplishment of a state or party, as it acknowledges that women's political marginalization deserves affirmative action measures to reverse various discriminatory treatments against women.
3. Quota advocates can include civil society, state, or international and transnational actors, though much of the quota literature identifies domestic women's movements as initial and primary actors in quota adoption (CitationKrook 2006,Citation2009; CitationLovenduski 2005).
4. A significant limitation of these studies on the process of quota adoption in Afghanistan has been the researchers' limited accessibility to non-English sources, which has resulted in obscuring Afghan women and the civil societies' contributions to these efforts.
5. According to one Afghan activist in 2001, “While diplomats all talk about having to achieve a balance of tribal interests, there have been no official statements regarding the need to bring women into the negotiating process” (as quoted in WLUML 2001).
6. This agreement laid the groundwork for the establishment of a Ministry of Women's Affairs, which was charged with mainstreaming gender into the policies and programs of the ministries (Kandiyoti 2005).
7. According to Kandiyoti (2005), although women participated in the Emergency Loya Jirga to elect the transitional government, they nonetheless faced intimidation by being banned from speaking as their microphones were cut off. Despite such harsh treatments, a female candidate, Masouda Jalal, ran against Hamid Karzai for president.
8. In an attempt to address women's issues, the interim government appointed two key women's rights activists: Sima Samar as the minister of women's affairs and Suhaila Seddiqi as the minister of public health (Benard et al. 2008).
9. Various Afghan women of the diaspora formed women's nongovernmental organizations during their years of exile to attend to refugees' issues. Their activities led to the establishment of women as civil society actors (Kandiyoti 2007).
10. This conference “brought together 45 ethnically diverse women, community leaders in the movement for women's and human rights in Afghanistan, many of whom were grassroots women's rights activists, both educated and under-educated, from rural provinces all around the country” (CitationWomen for Afghan Women 2003).
11. Drafting of the constitution rested with three bodies: the Constitutional Drafting Commission, the Constitutional Review Commission, and a Constitutional Loya Jirga; these groups revised and approved the draft constitution (CitationBallington and Dahlerup 2006). Due to extensive women's lobbying, women's representation in each of these bodies never fell below 20%.
12. Despite the fact that some female candidates were able to receive higher votes than their male competitors, the Afghan quotas act more as a threshold on women's representation, since it rarely happens that more than two women from a single province receive the highest votes (CitationDahlerup and Nordlund 2004, 9).
13. A triple balloting system was introduced to encourage female candidacy and make voters comfortable with voting for women. This system designated one ballot just for women so that female candidates compete with one another (Powley 2004; CitationInternational IDEA and Stockholm University 2011).
14. In addition to the 24 reserved seats, Rwandans in 2003 voted in 15 women, followed by 21 women in 2008.
15. Although Rwanda is not a member state of the Southern African Development Community, the rhetoric of gender quotas was nonetheless apparent in the developmental and political discourses across the continent, which in turn positively influenced country-specific advocacy work.