Understanding Third World Politics

sub-ministerial positions in the executive branch. In all regions of the Third
World women constitute no more than 15 per cent of national legislators on
average. Table 10.2 shows that there are considerable disparities between
countries in the same development category. But everywhere in the Third
World the state is a ‘gendered hierarchy’ which excludes or marginalizes
women by misogynist social and religious conventions which relegate
women to the private sphere, especially in Islamic regimes (Whalen, 1996a,
p. 13). In China levels of women’s political participation have actually
fallen during recent economic and political reforms as women have been
disadvantaged by the introduction of multi-candidate elections allowing
discrimination in favour of men (Davin, 1996, pp. 95–6).
Even after periods of democratization in which women had been signifi-
cant actors, cultures of patriarchy continue to exclude women from politics.
The return to ‘normality’ usually entails restrictions on women’s roles,
especially in politics and government (Chowdhury and Nelson, 1994).
Women in Latin America, for example, have been vulnerable to renewed
exclusion after the transition to democracy, as the power of their social
movements becomes displaced by male dominated political parties and as
governments focus on economic rather than the social objectives for which
women campaigned – a ‘remasculinization’ of politics. Latin American

238 Understanding Third World Politics

Table 10.2 Women in national politics: selected countries

Country % parliamentary % ministerial % sub-ministerial
seats held 2002 offices held 1998 offices held 1998

Low income
Mozambique 30 0 15
Bangladesh 2 5 0
Lower middle
income
Cuba 28 5 11
Morocco 1 0 8
Upper middle
income
Argentina 31 8 9
Gabon 9 3 9
High income
Sweden 43 43 24
Kuwait 0 0 7

SOURCES: UN (2000), table 6A; Inter-Parliamentary Union (2002).