Gender Norms, Democratic Reforms, and Violence Against Women in Politics and Public Life

Gender quotas are associated with increase of Violence Against Women in Politics and Public Life (VAWPP) in Kenya 

Those who study gender-based violence understand that changes to the distribution of power between men and women can trigger violence by those who prefer the patriarchal status quo. A recent study from Kenya finds that this holds true for disruption in the form of parliamentary gender quotas. The authors explored the relationship between gender quotas in government and violence against women in politics in Kenya. Looking at data from 1997 to 2019, they found a positive correlation between the percentage of women in the lower chamber of parliament and violence targeting women parliamentarians, suggesting that the increase in women’s political representation leads to more political violence targeting women. These findings do not imply that gender quotas should be abandoned as a means of increasing women’s political representation, but that quotas alone are not enough to facilitate women’s safe participation in politics. Quotas should be accompanied by other efforts to address the underlying social causes of patriarchal and political violence against women.

… and other types of democratic reforms show similar effects in Bolivia 

Gender quotas are not the only type of intervention that can backfire in ways that put women in politics and public life at greater risk of violence. A qualitative analysis of violence against women in politics in Bolivia found that other democratization efforts can have unexpected and even contradictory effects when it comes to violence against women in politics. For example, the author found that while decentralization reforms opened spaces for women’s political participation at the local level, they did not create mechanisms to address power imbalances among men and women, or challenge patriarchal beliefs about participation in public life, thereby opening up women who did engage in local politics to harassment and violence. Similarly, she found that anti-corruption mechanisms were often used to attack women and undermine their competence as political actors. Ultimately, while democratic reforms do not cause VAWPP, VAWPP can be perpetuated via democratic institutions when the gendered social norms that underpin these institutions remain in place.

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