A New Way of Doing Politics? Cross-Party Women's Caucuses as Critical Actors in Uganda and Uruguay

Abstract

Many parliaments now include specialised bodies to further women's interests in the legislative process. In this article, we compare cross-party women's caucuses in two non-Western countries—Uganda and Uruguay—which, despite very different levels of women's descriptive representation, spurred public debate on women's issues and made significant legislative gains. We explore how female legislators in these two cases collectively were able to carve out institutional space in male-dominated contexts and successfully establish themselves as critical actors for the substantive representation of women. Both women's caucuses facilitated networking and collaboration among female parliamentarians from different parties and between legislators and the women's movement, as well as building strategic alliances with male colleagues.