For the June 2024 episode of the IGC podcast, we are joined by Marie Hürlimann, Co-Director of the foreign policy think tank foraus, and Aude Juillerat, Policy Fellow for gender at foraus. They analyse trends and challenges around increasing women's representation in politics, discuss the role of gender quotas, and highlight the importance of an intersectional approach in addressing this topic.
TRANSCRIPT
Hannah Reinl
Hello and welcome to a new episode of the IGC podcast. My name is Hannah Reinl and I'm with the international Gender Champions Secretariat in Geneva. Today, we will discuss sticky floors, glass ceilings and invisible barriers. So you might have guessed it: today we are going to talk about gender and political participation. And here to help us shed light on the topic are Marie Hürlimann and Aude Juillerat.
Marie Hürlimann is a Geneva-based Gender Champion, and, as of this year, the Co-Director of foraus, the Swiss grassroots think tank for foreign policy. Before joining foraus, Marie has spent the last six years working in the fields of water governance, sustainability, and citizen participation. She has worked in Switzerland, the Netherlands, Burkina Faso, and Ethiopia. Guided by her experience of participatory methods of collaboration, she now aims to build bridges between the different spheres of society in order to tackle the major challenges of our century, collectively. Marie holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s degree in environmental governance. Welcome to the IGC podcast, Marie.
Marie Hürlimann
Hi, thank you so much for inviting me. I'm glad to be here.
Hannah Reinl
And we are very glad to have you with us. Our second guest is Aude Juillerat. Aude is a Policy Fellow for gender at foraus. Her area of expertise - developed through her professional experience and her academic research- is focused on the women, peace and security agenda, in particular the role of women peacemakers and preventing violent extremism. After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in Swiss law, Aude completed the Master of Laws in Globalisation and Law with a specialisation in human rights at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. A very warm welcome to you as well, Aude.
Aude Juillerat
Thank you for having me.
Hannah Reinl
Today's episode is on gender and political participation, and you shared earlier with me that you would like to focus on governmental institutions and particularly on Switzerland and other OECD countries. So give us an overview: what is the current state of play and what trends have you seen emerging over recent years?
Marie Hürlimann
The first thing we can clearly state is that women are still highly underrepresented at all levels of decision making worldwide. There are different studies showing it, but if we take, for instance, the Women's Power Index, that establishes statistics for 194 states, we can see that in 2024, the average women representation at different levels of decision-making political bodies ranges between less than 1% and only up to 13%.
If we focus on the OECD now in 2023, women held about 37 of ministerial positions, and of course, among OECD countries, numbers varied drastically depending on member countries. For instance, in Finland we reach over 60% of female representation, while in Turkey only 10% for the same year. In Switzerland in 2024, women representation at different levels of the federal government political bodies ranges from 35% to 43%. As we can see, numbers are quite low, and if we look at the progress rate of the last 20 years, the global Gender Gap Index calculated that it will still take us 162 years to close the political empowerment gender gap. So, we still have a lot of work to do.
Still, although the progress is very slow, one positive aspect is that women representation worldwide has increased in the last decades. For Switzerland, whereas women's representation was as low as 19% to 29% in 2014, the representation is at a minimum of 35% today. The trend also reflects at the OECD level, with an average of 10% increase in women's participation over the last decade. So, we must have done something right. We must have differently increased the attention towards women with the goal of increasing their presence and participation in governmental institutions.
One method that is worldwide used is the implementation of quotas in political spheres. Would it be with a minimum of female candidates per election list, for instance, or a minimum of elected female candidates. But we can also clearly see that civil society has been very active in that matter. We see a lot of civil society led action, such as, for instance, in Switzerland the "Frauen-Session" (the Women's Session) in the Swiss Parliament in 2021, when during two days the parliament was only constituted of female politicians. They drafted demands and recommendations on different matters. But we also see other platforms' initiatives created with that same vision, such as the International Gender Champions. We clearly see that digitalisation has also allowed for new forms of advocacy and platforms. To conclude, I think we can say that these initiatives and the increased presence and representation of women in the political spheres have proven to better raise awareness on gender issues.
Hannah Reinl
So, I am glad to hear that there is a positive trend, albeit slow. You started out with a lot of numbers and none of them were particularly heartening, I have to say. I think we cannot stress enough to which extent we have to credit feminist civil society for the progress that we are making, and we will certainly circle back to the question on quotas. But before that, I would like to hear from you Aude. In your opinion, what are the main barriers that continue to limit equitable representation in governmental institutions?
Aude Juillerat
Well, at the risk of stating the obvious, deep rooted cultural norms still represent a tremendous challenge for equitable representation of women in governmental institutions. The existing barriers that limit women's participation in political processes are numerous and intertwined. For example, we said earlier, although progress is slow, it is still there, but to what extent? Let us have a look again at the little progress that has been made so far. If you dig a little deeper in the numbers, it is interesting to note that the link between the share of women working on certain institutional portfolios and the related subjects remain highly gendered. Relying on UN Women's statistics from 2023 and on the basis of the UN member states, the share of women working on portfolios such as gender equality, family affairs and so on ranges up to more than 80%. Portfolios such as justice, governance or defence only see a timid 20% share of women in the cabinet. This is typically where the shortcoming of the most mainstream methods for women's participation come to light. By only focusing on coaching women or increasing their participation primarily in numbers, a crucial element is left out. They need to ensure a shift in perspectives within institutions that were initially created for men by men.
Amongst others, women keep on facing immense barriers in the form of sexual and gender-based violence. Sexual and gender-based violence remains an important barrier to women's full, equal, and meaningful participation in the political sphere, but also in governmental institutions or more broadly, in their engagement in civil society. Digitalisation and the growth of online presence has in parallel brought the spread of online SGBVs. Publicly exposed women such as female politicians, journalists, activists have an added visibility and often are the target of increased threats and acts of violence and often across multiple platforms. It is often understood that being a female public figure comes with online and offline SGBV. Recently, an IPU study in 39 countries showed that about 82% of the Soviet women in parliaments have experienced a form of psychological violence, 44% have received threats of death, rape, beating and kidnapping, and more than 25% have experienced physical violence.
We observe other similar trends that target women, such as gendered disinformation. That is an online practise that targets women with the aim - amongst others- of discrediting their work and the purpose of their presence in politics and obviously with the aim of driving them out of the political sphere. Such behaviour also perpetuates the gender inequalities, gender stereotypes and norms on a very large scale. So, to summarise we have to note that the issue that women face at the public level are the same that at all other levels. So, a lot still has to be done.
Hannah Reinl
So, social and cultural transformation of gender norms is clearly at the heart of this conversation. The question that reminds is how do we turbocharge this transformation? And something that is frequently brought up in this context is the matter of mandatory quotas. They are celebrated by some. They are slammed by others. I personally would even go as far as to say that the question of whether quotas can help to address gender disparities remains one of the most contested issues in the gender equality sphere. So, what are the key aspects or the nuances that we should be aware of when discussing gender quotas?
Marie Hürlimann
This is a very complex question because what we can see is that there is a global trend since the 90s in more than 100 countries where quotas have increased exponentially across all the different regions. Quotas may have different types of impact. Looking at, for example, descriptive impact, that means, for instance, the number of seats or substantive impact the types of policies, although it does depend on context and types of quotas. Studies have shown that quotas may have the capacity to shape beliefs, so we can agree that there is a connection between presence and influence. But of course, it is not a clear image.
There are different things that should be nuanced. For instance, all cultures are not the same, and this may have very different effects. We have, for example, candidate quotas or also known as legislative quotas, requiring some percentage of candidates or nominees be women, or we also have reserved seat designating a number of proportion of seats for women. There are also differences in institutional features defining how strong they are and the visibility they generate. I mean it is obvious, but a quota of 5% versus 50% clearly have a different effect. And we also see different enforcement mechanism, meaning what happens if the quotas are not respected and this also affects their effectiveness. If you are interested in that matter, I would highly recommend the research from Jessica Kim and Kathleen M. Fallon in their article published in 2023 by Cambridge University Press.
But those are not the only nuances I would like to add here. We also have a lot of backlash in some contexts as quotas' main criterion is the gender aspect, women could be perceived as incompetent or unqualified, leading to women not being taken seriously or even being sidelined. This can be caused by a mismatch between the objective of such policies and the perception and the understanding of it. But the other important aspect we would love to focus here is that the implementation of quotas does not encompass the intersectionality factors that influence participation and representation. Indeed, quotas mainly encompass female and male criteria, overshadowing other underrepresented groups, such as ethnic minorities.
Hannah Reinl
Thank you for sharing this very interesting angle to the conversation, and particularly also for highlighting the importance of adopting an intersectional approach. That is certainly something that we cannot afford to lose out of sight as we are discussing quotas. Aude is there something that you would like to add?
Aude Juillerat
Yes, as a little wrap up, I would like to point out, so we see that there are still a lot of factors to take into account if we want to achieve meaningful and equitable participation of women in institutions. We have discussed the pros and cons of quotas and it is clear that efforts involving political developments and the integration of key gender equality concepts in national and international policies are still much needed. In Switzerland, concepts such as feminist foreign policy or intersectionality are still approached with caution. Once they transpire at the national levels, international agendas, action plans and strategies on gender equality remain fragmented, and it is important to understand and accept that the challenge is in fact multifactorial. We cannot only focus on actions targeting women to ameliorate this situation. We also have to work on shifting perspectives and shifting narratives.
Hannah Reinl
I could go on forever. Unfortunately, we have to wrap up. So maybe in one last sentence: What would you like our Gender Champions and other listeners to take away from today's conversation?
Marie Hürlimann
I believe that the real victory will come when our mental images of politics and leadership are not just one face but a multitude. And I guess that is only when we will have made real progress.
Hannah Reinl
That is a beautiful image to end on. Marie, Aude, thank you so much for joining us today and for highlighting the connection between presence and influence in the political sphere.
Marie Hürlimann
Thanks so much for having us.
Aude Juillerat
Thank you!