Women’s political participation at the local level in Ethiopia: Does number really matter?

Abstract

The public sphere has been inaccessible to women in Ethiopia for a long time. The truancy of women, in particular, from politics has affected their life enormously. Politicians’ involvement is crucial because it fosters women’s direct participation in public decision-making, which advances gender equality and empowers them. Recent developments in the scholarship of women’s political participation and representation have sparked a debate on how descriptive (or numerical) representations can positively affect substantive representations. In this article, we explore the level of women’s political representation and examine how it affects their substantive contribution in two local governments in the Amhara regional state of Ethiopia. We have employed the critical mass and critical act theories to build the theoretical framework. We utilized a qualitative approach to address our objectives. The findings of this article demonstrate that women are adequately represented in the councils of the two local governments. More importantly, the influence of elected women increased in the decision-making processes, in particular, in group deliberations. Their impacts on the councils and the local governments, in general, have become very significant. Though there are still issues to be addressed, women in local government are becoming more visible in the political arena. We conclude that the number of female representatives in the councils is directly related to their political participation. As their number increases, their decision-making power and influence increase.

Keywords

• political participation
• local government
• women representation
• critical mass