Gender and Politics in Kuwait: Women and Political Participation in the Gulf

From Gender Equality to Gender Difference: Feminist Campaigns for Quotas for Women in Politics, 1936-1947 by Louise Edwards In the decade from 1936, Chinese women's rights activists waged a successful campaign to win a set minimum quota of seats for women in the national legislative bodies. This little-known campaign is a pivotal part of the history of women's participation in politics in the Republic of China (ROC), since it reflects the strategic shift in the feminist struggle for improvements in women's political rights from activism premised on gender equality to that premised on gender difference. It was a direct extension of the Chinese women's suffrage movement of 1911-1936; moreover, the legislative changes effected are still upheld in current Taiwan, ROC electoral laws. This article explores the campaign through which. Chinese women lobbied for this special quota with the intention of demonstrating that, contrary to common perceptions, an independent feminist movement did engage in distinct activism on women's political rights during the "conservative" periods of Nationalist Government rule and the Anti-Japanese War. The feminists active at this time were much reduced in number and were far more cautious than had been the case in the mid-1920s, but they nonetheless campaigned to further women's political rights and opportunities . Their efforts were rewarded with the inclusion of a ten percent minimum quota in the national constitution of 1946-1947. WHAT 'QUOTA CAMPAIGN'? There are several distinct reasons why previous scholarship has been uninterested in exploring the quotacampaign. Apart from the fact that histories of the Chinese women's movement have been generally scarce until recent years, one reason for the campaign's failure to draw scholarly attention is that it falls between the histories of the women's programs· of the two dominant partiesthe Nationalist Party (GMD) and the Communist Party (CCP)-thathaverightly attracted more attention. Many of the women involved in the quota campaign were aligned with neither party ~Instead they occupied the middle-ground between the two and, in some cases but not all, joined smaller democratic groups Twentieth-Century China, Vol. XXIV, NO.2 (April 1999): 69-105 70 Twentieth-Century China such as the Federation of Chinese Democratic Parties (FCDP). Feminists active in the two majorparties did participate, some taking leading roles, and there is no doubt that support and leadership from GMD women contributed greatly to the eventual success of the campaign. Nonetheless, the two major parties did not directly sponsor the issue and the vitality of the campaign during a difficult decade originated from the alliance of feminists with disparate political perspectives . In the decade after 1936 when the quota campaign was waged, both major parties had moderated their interest in feminist issues. As Christina Gilmartin has pointed out, "After 1927, feminist programs lost their political backing as neither party was willing to repeat the full-scale assault on patriarchal social controls over women that had occurred in the 1920s."1 Thus, scholars inter;.. ested in the history of the women's movement have tended to focus on the years when the major parties took more proactive roles on women's issues. The quota campaign reflects a far more complex array of political interests, and has thus tended to be ignored. A further reason explaining scholarly silence on the quota campaign is that there has been a tendency to regard women's activism surrounding access to political participation as mere· "bourgeois" feminism, and hence the concern of only a narrow, conservative elite. In her discussion of the scholarship on the international suffrage movement, Ellen Carol DuBois argues that there has been a "tendency to dismiss woman suffrage as a conservative development, especially with respect to issues of women's sexual and social freedom. From this perspective, the campaign for political equality appeared to be the least interesting and most narrow aspect of women's efforts for self-liberation."2 In the case of China, middle and upper class women's activism was often regarded as tangential and frivolous when compared to the more urgent needs of peasant and working class women. The sympathy of scholars for the left-wing women's movement has been amplified by...

The 1923 constitution included only the promise that women's political and civil rights would soon be improved by a future law that would articulate women's suffrage rights. In the 19th century, ideas about women's political rights developed under the influence of debates on Romania's modernization according to Western standards. Demands for female suffrage were based on women's contribution to progress, a progress that required women's equal involvement in the construction of a new, modern state. The first feminist demands for women's political rights appeared at the end of the 1890s, in the publications supporting one of the earliest Romanian feminist organizations, Liga Femeilor . Romanian women won full political rights only in 1946, and only after a long fight. As with female suffrage, progress in women's political participation is proving slow, and it is usually triggered by political pressures stemming from the need to comply with a particular democratic model. Keywords:constitution; democratic model; female suffrage; feminist; Liga Femeilor ; political rights; Romania

The 1999 decree by Kuwait's emir granting women electoral rights, and its subsequent parliamentary rejection, is more than just an instance of women's oppression in action. It also demonstrates a potential paradox between two axes of democratization: liberalization, the existence of a sphere of meaningful public contestation, and participation, that the right to participate in that sphere is extended to all. In Kuwait, 1999 represents an instance where those two axes were in direct competition. This article explores the 1999 enfranchisement as a way of understanding this democratic paradox and then follows these issues through the successful 2005 enfranchisement and the election of female Assembly members in 2007 and in the 2012, post-Arab Spring elections.In 1999, Kuwaiti women had the right to vote for six months, during which time there were no elections. The basic facts of this curious moment in Kuwaiti politics are these. The Kuwaiti National Assembly was dissolved on May 4, 1999, for the third time in Kuwaiti history; for the first time, elections were scheduled within two months, as is required by the constitution. On May 16, the emir, Shaykh Jabir al-Ahmad Al Sabah, decreed that Kuwaiti women would have the right to vote and be elected in the parliamentary elections in 2003. Immediately, there was an outpouring of support from high-ranking women within Kuwaiti society, women's rights activists in Kuwait and abroad, and international actors, such as religious leaders and Western governments. There was also immediate opposition to the decree, both from Islamists within and outside Kuwait who opposed women's voting rights on religious grounds and from liberals who said that the decree was an unconstitutional attack on the power of the National Assembly.When the parliament reconvened on July 17, it contained both strong Islamist and liberal blocs - 20 Islamists, 16 liberals, and 14 pro-government elected members, in addition to 15 government-appointed cabinet members. Immediately, the constitutionality and permissibility of the emir's decree became hot topics for debate, as the new assembly had to confirm or reject all of the decrees passed during the suspension. Many liberals and most Islamists opposed the decree, while the pro-government members followed the government line. On November 23, the Assembly rejected the emir's decree by a vote of 41 to 21. However, a group of liberals, who supported women's voting rights but opposed the emir's action, introduced an identical bill. On November 30, the parliament-initiated bill failed, by a vote of 32 to 30. All 15 of the government-appointed members of parliament supported the bill, as did 15 elected members, but two elected supporters of women's rights abstained. All 32 votes against the bill came from elected members. The National Assembly did not pass legislation giving Kuwaiti women the right to vote until May 16, 2005; women were able to vote for the first time in 2007.Following the coverage in the Western media, a reader would find herself confined to a single narrative about Kuwaiti women's oppression at the hands of Kuwaiti men and the conflict between traditional Islamic values and modern liberal values. But in the Kuwaiti context, the issue of women's political rights is part of a broad system of contestation that marks struggles over the consolidation and increasing strength of democratic institutions. This decades-old policy controversy is not merely an interesting footnote to the story of women's rights in the region; rather, it helps to demonstrate important tensions in the relationship between democratic institution-building, women's rights, and the multiplicity of actors involved in both processes.In this article, I use the example of the 1999 failed enfranchisement to explain the way that these tensions are constitutive of the politics of democratization in Kuwait. I begin by exploring the two elements of democratization I am discussing here: open contestation and full participation. …

Much research investigating changes in women's political rights focuses on the presence or absence of improvement that is evident in national and international policies or on gender proportionality in representative institutions at international, national, and local levels. Public opinion about women's rights is an important corollary to this research because it underpins the legitimacy of policies and representative bodies. However, if examined alone, changes in public opinion over time yield an incomplete picture of women's situation, just as changes in policies and representation do. Factors that lie behind statistics about trends in women's rights matter, and it is essential to figure out if the sources of support for women's political rights shift over time. We employed data from Kuwait in the years surrounding the Beijing +5 conference to illustrate how the absence of change in public opinion about women's rights can hide important social dynamics that figure into the development of policies and practices affecting women. Whereas support for women's rights was evident among the most numerous and advantaged Kuwaiti citizens in 1994, it rested less with the general public and more with citizens involved in social networks and those who had particular political and cultural agendas by 1998.

War termination and women's political rights

The protection of women's political participation is a fundamental issue for the advancement of women around the world and for the advancement of all mankind, according to what was stated in the Beijing Declaration. The international community believes that women are affected, just like any man, by the challenges facing humanity in the twenty-first century, whether with regard to development. Economic and social, or with regard to peace and security, but that women are often the most affected by these challenges and therefore must participate in decision-making processes in all areas with equal force and the same numbers. There is no policy more important than the political empowerment of women in preventing the outbreak of conflicts or in achieving reconciliation after the end of the conflict. With the increasing political participation of women, they still represent a small percentage in the higher and leadership ranks, which help in influencing the process of enacting laws and legislation in favor of women and their equality in society.In spite of Iraq’s commitment to international conventions that guarantee women's political rights, women have not formed an effective force in parliament or political parties and are still absent from leadership positions in the country in spite the emphasis on their participation, on an equal footing with men due to security, political, social and economic threats. Its Rise to the ranks of crimes, it is a serious obstacle to their political participation, criminal protection for women's political participation and its impact on their human rights. For women's political participation and its impact on their human rights. Research objectives/promote women's political participation by securing an effective criminal policy against threats to their political participation and activating the implementation of legal texts that criminalize these threats, as well as enacting penal texts to criminalize other acts that do not find criminal coverage for them within the legislation in force, which in turn will constitute protection for women in The scope of their exercise of their political rights, as well as deterring the perpetrators of these threats or those who are begging to commit them. The introductory plan/includes an introduction, and an investigation that deals with studying the nature of political participation of women and their criminal protection and definition, their characteristics and conditions, as well as the forms of crimes that are electoral crimes and their clarification of their position in the laws in force of what is covered by these laws, as well as an explanation of what are actually electoral crimes but need legislative cover. Then we conclude the research with our findings and recommendations.

During the last decade, there have been signs of increased democratization in the Middle East. Yet women's political rights remain limited. In this article we focus on Kuwait, a country representative of how citizenship rights have been gendered in the Middle East. Some Kuwaiti women's groups support expanding women's political rights. This article seeks to determine if they have potential allies in the general population. Using survey data from 1500 Kuwaiti citizens in 1994, we identify potential advocates for extending women's rights by examining social status, social networks, religious identity and Gulf War experiences. We found that organized women's groups have potential allies in Sunni young people and men who belong to voluntary organizations, and Shia young men, older women and those who backed Islamic movements abroad. These groups form a basis for developing a broad base of popular support for expanding the citizenship rights of women.

This study analyses the dynamics of women's political rights movements in Iran and Indonesia, focusing on differences in institutional frameworks, interpretations of Islamic values, and the evolution of women's movement strategies during 2000-2024. Employing a qualitative comparative approach with process tracing and content analysis methods. Data were collected from policy documents, official reports, Inter-Parliamentary Union statistics, and the World Economic Forum Gender Gap Report. Analysis was conducted through thematic coding, systematic comparative analysis, and process tracing.Indonesia shows an increase in women's political representation from 11.8% (2004) to 21.3% (2024), supported by progressive legal frameworks and institutional transformation of political parties. In contrast, Iran with 5.6% representation faces structural barriers, pushing women's movements towards digital resistance. An empowerment paradox is evident in Iran, where high educational participation (60%) does not correlate with political representation. The success of women's movements is largely determined by institutional configurations and adaptive capacity in responding to political opportunities. The Indonesian case proves that Islam is compatible with women's political participation when supported by appropriate institutional frameworks.

Women's political rights are often debated. Often deprived of women's rights. This is because women are often only involved in domestic or domestic matters. Basically, women's rights are the same as men's rights, including citizenship rights, education rights, opinion rights, and other rights. In connection with the position of women in obtaining political rights in the Islamic system and concept, it has been widely expressed. Some argue that Islam does not recognize political rights for women. There are those who view the same thing, there are also those who argue that Islam establishes and recognizes political rights for women except for being leaders of the state. This paper tries to describe the political rights of women in Islam and also explores the constitution of the Indonesian state. The method used is to conduct research on several literatures on politics in general regarding women's political rights and then compare them with one another.

Reviewed by: Seeking Rights from the Left: Gender, Sexuality, and the Latin American Pink Tide ed. by Elisabeth Jay Friedman Juliana Restrepo Sanín Seeking Rights from the Left: Gender, Sexuality, and the Latin American Pink Tide. By Elisabeth Jay Friedman (ed). Durham: Duke University Press, 2019, p. 344, $29.95. Latin America has made significant gains in the legal protection of women's and sexual minorities' rights, including comprehensive laws against gender-based violence, political participation, and some legal protections for LGBT+ folks. These advancements are somewhat recent, coinciding with the so-called Left Turn that started with the election of Hugo Chávez en Venezuela in 1998. The increased legal recognition of women and LGBT+ rights is sometimes lauded as an achievement of the Pink Tide. However, as Elisabeth Jay Friedman and the contributors to Seeking Rights From the Left: Gender, Sexuality, and the Latin American Pink Tide make clear, the relationship between progressive gender and sexuality policies and the Left is not as clear and straightforward as some suggests. Friedman's book offers a more nuanced comparative perspective building on Mala Htun's (2003) and Htun and S. Laurel Weldon's (2010) framework for analyzing gender and sexuality policies. Seeking Rights from The Left shows that, despite advancements, Left-wing governments in Latin America "relied on heteropatriarchal relations of power" and engaged in "strategic trade-offs among gender and sexual rights" (p. 3), promoting maternalist and familist policies instead of transformative policies to achieve gender and sexuality justice. The contributors evaluate the Left's policies in diverse areas, including welfare, redistribution, and poverty; political representation; violence against women; and bodily autonomy and reproductive rights. Importantly, the book finds that there were important advancements in regards to poverty alleviation and women's political participation. Despite the significant increase in women's political participation, which surpassed 25% regionally, and in some countries reached 50% in national legislatures, Left governments frequently engaged in "Pinkwashing:" advancing (some) LGBT+ and women's rights to obscure blatant and broader violations of human rights – including those of women and LGBT+ folks. In addition, policies and perspective that challenge heterosexual and cisgender men's privilege –what Friedman calls 'countercultural' policies – not only did not significantly advance during the left turn but in some cases were reversed. What explains these variations? Seeking Rights from the Left finds that state institutionalization and alliances between the left and religious forces are key determinants in the types of gender and sexuality policies that governments adopt. But good will and strong institutions are not enough. Rather, the strength of women's, feminist, and LGBT+ movements, and their ability to make alliances among themselves and with state actors in women's policy agencies and anti-discrimination institutions are key for advancing the policies with the [End Page 243] most potential to undermine heteropatriarchy. Importantly, Seeking Rights from the Left shows that improvements in the descriptive representation – that is, increased numbers of women in politics – are not an indicator of a country's move toward significant and transformative policy changes in support of women and LGBT+ rights. Despite these limitations, there were some important transformations promoted by some of the governments of the Pink Tide. In the recognition and protection of women's and LGBT+ rights, Uruguay stands out as the country with the most significant progress. Despite few women in Congress, feminist and LGBT+ activists used a variety of mobilizational strategies and built alliances to secure protections for some rights, including abortion, affirmative action for trans folks, and marriage equality. Even in this more welcoming context, poverty-relief and social welfare policies still relied and entrenched traditional gender roles. The limits of the left turn are even more evident when looking at the most radical governments: Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Although all these countries made important advancements in reducing poverty and inequality, progress relied on the instrumentalization of women's organizations and the reproduction of maternalist and heteronormative views of the state and the family. In the two most extreme cases, Nicaragua and Ecuador, the Left turn not only failed to transform gender relations, but significantly reversed women's rights – despite international praise for (very limited) advancements in the protection...

This paper focused on the political opportunity to empower women in Nakuru and Narok counties of Kenya by conducting comparative evaluative research. Feminist Theory informed this study, which focuses on gender disparities and how political, economic, and social factors dictate women's roles and engagements. This research aimed to assess the KB clown sketches and their impact on women's political chances. A purposive sampling procedure was adopted in which 335 participants with critical informants, ordinary citizens, and young women interested in leadership positions were sampled. Quantitative and qualitative research was used, and questionnaires, interviews, and focus group discussions were used to collect data among women to understand the current political situation. Data analysis was done in two ways, which include descriptive and thematic analysis. The quantitative data from the administered questionnaires were analyzed descriptively to produce frequencies and percentages for the findings on women’s political participation opportunities. The information collected from interviews and focus group discussions was analyzed through thematic analysis to develop trends and findings on socio-cultural perspective, policy understanding, and institutional support for women in politics. Research outcomes revealed that despite the improvement in electoral democracy and female representation in the political process, barriers including but not limited to inadequate resource mobilization, conflict of cultures and practices, and unequal/ irregular championing of gender mainstreaming policies and frameworks still inhibit inclusion. These policies were deemed critical because they informed women as to how they could extend effective democracy in political systems while also ensuring that people in a community understood the gains that could be derived from having women's leadership. Research concluded that this can be achieved through efforts to strengthen mentorship programs, increase public appreciation for the importance of women's participation in leadership and governance, and improve the application of supportive policies and laws. Some recommendations focus on political capacity-building and gender sensitization training to empower women for political positions and call on the political parties to encourage gender parity on their list of candidates. Using media and technology in leadership and management to promote role-modeling to women leaders is also essential in establishing relationships and collaboration with other regional and global organizations on lobbying for women's political rights. Research into these matters should be conducted with backup data for a substantive approach to the progress of Nakuru, Narok, and other counties. Individually, these measures present a trajectory toward improving the environment of women's political participation in Kenya.

Traditional history locates the birth of the women's rights movement in the nineteenth century, coinciding with the development of a women's political rights movement. Viewing any woman's written expression or individual action that strayed from the traditional patriarchal definition of female roles and behavior, however, feminist historians have broadened this scope in the last thirty years. They have shown that, though women's resistance to patriarchal dominance has not always been a movement, a level of consciousness, a firm stance, and an attitude of confidence, has done just as much as the organized, collective effort in challenging oppression. The oppositional efforts of women in the United States began with isolated radical insights and sparks of feminist consciousness expressed through the actions of individual women long before the nineteenth‐century birth of the women's rights movement.

Conservative feminism in Australia: A case study of feminist ideology

Women's political rights and how they participate in the public sphere in contemporary Iran are always challenging, given the frameworks derived from the religion, tradition, culture and custom that govern society. From this perspective, the explanation of the main question of this article is due to the lack and capacity of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran for the presence of women in politics. The structure of the research is based on telling the history of women's participation and presence in the public arena from the constitutional era until now, the position of women's political rights in the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, women's performance and presence in the public forces of Iran (by the country's basic institutions). Has been. Also in the field of theoretical framework, in addition to the subject laws, some views opposing women's participation in public affairs have been raised and criticized. In this process, the research method is descriptive-analytical; The purpose of this article, in addition to recognizing the capacities of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, is to examine the challenges and shortcomings in the theoretical and practical field. Also, in this regard, relying on the high power of the epistemological frameworks of Islamic laws and considering the conditions of the present era, practical and appropriate contexts and solutions to address this issue in the field of politics and legislation are examined.

There is widespread discrimination against women in the political system and with regard to their political empowerment. The harsh and strict traditions and practices of rural life generate significantly more suffering for rural women. This study was conducted in Wari, district Dir Upper, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan to evaluate the role of pressure groups in the political rights of women. Primary data regarding the objectives of the study were collected from 205 participants. Moreover, the relationship between the dependent variable (women's political participation) and independent variable, (Pressure groups) was examined through a Chi-square statistic test. It has been observed that Women's political participation has an inverse relation with pressure groups. The Pakhtun elders act as a pressure group against the rights of women, according to an investigation of the respondent's perspectives. The study concluded that starting developing general knowledge of women's rights and their contribution to national development by enlisting the help of political, religious, and social leaders to outlaw pressure group propaganda and promote women's involvement in political activities. putting into practice judicial rulings that election results should be canceled whenever there is evidence that women were not allowed to vote.