Gender sensitive initiatives in parliaments, governments and parties in the Global South

Abstract

Recent academic scholarship on gender sensitive parliaments has largely focused on the opportunities and drivers of normative and procedural change in the parliaments of the Global North (Childs 2016, 2020; Erikson and Josefsson 2020; Palmieri and Baker 2020). These opportunities and drivers, whilst instructive, are not necessarily replicable in those parliaments defined as in a phase of development. Moreover, gender sensitive parliamentary reforms implemented in the Global South have sometimes benefited from the very opportunities and drivers afforded by their specific local context. In this panel, presentations will illustrate and examine gender sensitive changes and their importance in the parliaments and governments of India, Fiji, Samoa; whilst also showing how floor access remains uneven in Ghana and South Africa. The civil service in Brazil is also analysed as a gendered workplace for progression, a key institution supporting the executive. Finally, parties are important actors in parliaments and we explore how gender, race and ethnic interests are represented in Latin America. In sum, we aim to canvass more localised approaches to gender sensitive reforms and ask: what are the sustainable, local pathways to change in these parliaments? Which actors – or combination of actors - in the Global South drive gender sensitive reform and are there tensions with actors in/from the Global North? Are lessons transferable from South to North, or vice-versa?

Title	Details
Gendered formal and informal rules in the Brazilian Senior Executive Service.	View Paper Details
‘Tokenism’ or ‘common sense’: Rule change in parliamentary gender mainstreaming in Fiji	View Paper Details
Parliaments as gendered workplaces: Achievements, Challenges, and Lessons from the Indian Parliament	View Paper Details
Parties and Political Inclusion: Representing Gender, Race, and Ethnic interests in Latin America	View Paper Details
Who gets to speak? Gender and parliamentary floor access in Ghana and South Africa	View Paper Details