Teaching Comparative

Women in Politics

When Rob Crawford announced that his students had come across the web site for Angus Reid, Consultants, I was excited. It is a stellar connection to public opinion polls from all over the world.

I was exploring the Politics in Depth section at that site for treasures of the analytical kind. The most comparatively relevant choice on the list appeared to be Women in Politics: A revolution of sorts by Natasha Moore.

It begins, "Recent victories may have captured the spotlight, but equality remains inaccessible on the legislative branch.

"In 2005, important gains were made regarding women’s access to, and levels of participation in, political processes. We saw, under vastly different circumstances and across three continents, four women ascend to the highest political posts in their respective countries and the first opportunity for women in Kuwait to vote and stand for office.

"Michelle Bachelet in Chile, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in Liberia, Angela Merkel in Germany and Portia Simpson-Miller in Jamaica have recently taken office amid much media conversation about their personal history, their political experience, the job ahead and—as is customary—what they were wearing.

"These four appointments provided an increase of more than 30 per cent in the number of women at the executive level—a positive gain—but also a stark indication of the under-representation of women in our political systems..."



But, this was not the evidence-based account I was expecting from consultants who proclaim on their web site in all caps that they are "MONITORING WORLD OPINION EVERYDAY." After the first third of the essay, it turns into brief references to unique cases and unsupported generalizations.

You could use this essay with students if you asked them to verify the facts cited or confirm the generalizations. But, I suspect there are better ways.

So, I did a search for "women +politics" at Google News on June 1.

A search on a date closer to the time you want to deal with a topic like this will find more timely relevant articles. And, at Google News, you can "create an email alert" that will send you a notice once a day, once a week, or whenever a relevant article is posted there. That means you can set up the site to collect articles for you. (See the bottom of a News Search results page.)

In the first three pages of results, I found these which might be useful:

There was a May 3 article from Nigeria's This Day, Nigeria: "We Need More Women in Politics". It is an interview with Uche Ekwunife, a banker who is running for Nigeria's House of Representatives.

In a May 6 article in The Tide (Nigeria), "First Lady tasks women on politics," a governor's wife describes why more women should be in government and what was being done locally to encourage women's participation.

A June 1, BBC World Service article, "Finland's trailblazing path for women," notes the centennial of women in politics in Finland and compares women's participation there with other European countries.

The Gambian Daily Observer, on May 30, published an article, "Gambia: Empowering Gambian Women."


A search of Yahoo News, found a couple more useful articles. (You can also use a link on the Yahoo! News page to have "News Alerts" sent to your e-mail address when there are matches to your search words.)

An article from an South East Europe, an NGO, entitled, "OSCE Mission to Skopje Helps Women Participate More Actively in Politics."

And, from the Leeds (UK) Evening Post, comes this bit of analysis and advice, "Prepare for the charm offensive, girls..."

"Men are in the doghouse and women voters are to be wooed back to the ballot box....

"Look to your wish-lists, ladies. It seems your time has come...

"Welcome to the world of gender politics. Roughly translated that means, when men are locked in crisis – women will always hold the golden key to release. It's not much of a concession to electoral equality but we girls have grown used to striking while the iron's hot – and just now the iron is steaming..."


So, useful for what? The changing roles of women in politics is a vital topic to consider.

As a comparative tool, the roles women play in Russia and China are very different from the roles they play in the UK. Or are they?

An in-case comparision of the roles women played in politics before Mao's death and the roles they play now superficially suggests that major changes have taken place. Have they?

How do the political roles of women in Nigeria and Mexico compare? Do those comparisions reveal important differences between those political systems and political cultures?

Since Islam distinguishes between male and female roles so overtly, does that mean that Iranian women are more restricted politically than Chinese women?



All these questions are good ones to ask and to ask students to deal with. And they offer useful approaches to the comparative process and learning to think comparatively.

posted by Ken Wedding @ 2:09 PM