Leiden University Student Repository

Burg, Laure (2020)

Gender Quotas and Female Empowerment in African States

Bachelor thesis | International Studies (BA)

Since the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the strive for gender equality and female empowerment has gained momentum. Yet, how to achieve gender equality and female empowerment remains debated – especially in the realm of politics. African countries are increasingly resorting to electoral gender quotas to reach higher female representation in national legislatures. While scholars have analysed the effect of political regime structure on female representation, they have not accounted for the effects of gender quotas. Thus, this thesis assesses the impact of political regime structure on gender quotas in empowering women by comparing authoritarian Rwanda and democratic Senegal. Female empowerment is measured through an in-depth analysis of descriptive, substantive and symbolic female representation. The paper finds that women in both Rwanda and Senegal have become increasingly empowered as a result of gender quotas.

gender equality

female empowerment

electoral gender quotas

democracy

authoritarianism

Author

Burg, Laure

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

Africa

Supervisors

Smith, Karen

ECTS Credits

15

Language

en