Elite patriarchal bargaining in post-genocide Rwanda and post-apartheid South Africa: women political elites and post-transition African parliaments
Date
2016
Authors
Makhunga, Lindiwe Diana
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Abstract
This study comparatively interrogates the representative parliamentary politics of women
political elites in the subSaharan
African states of posttransition
Rwanda and South Africa.
It analyses the relationship between women political elites and gender equality outcomes
through the theoretical framework of the presupposed
positive relationship that is said to
exist between high levels of women’s descriptive representation and women’s substantive
representation. It specifically explores this relationship through the lens of legislative
outcomes passed in each state. In South Africa, this legislation takes the form of the 1998
Recognition of Customary Marriages Act and in Rwanda, the 2008 Genderbased
Violence
Act. This study locates the outcomes of women’s parliamentary politics in these states to the
different articulation of elite patriarchal bargains negotiated by women political elites within
the opportunities and constraints of parliamentary institutional contexts and the political
parties represented in these regimes. I show that the higher the degree to which a ruling
political party needs to privilege and emphasise women’s interests in the reproduction of political power and legitimisation of its own authority, the more favourable the terms of the
elite patriarchal bargains that women political elites tacitly negotiate within political parties
will be for pursuing gender equality legislative outcomes in patriarchal institutional contexts.
I illustrate how political institutions located in the state never present conclusive gains or
losses for women and gender equality but are contextually ambiguous and contradictory in
the ways that they foster representation and locate gendered political accountability.
Description
Thesis (Ph.D. (Political Studies))--University of the Witwatersrand, Graduate School for Humanities and Social Sciences, 2016