All around the world, women are notably underrepresented in the political arena and although in most cases, their civil and political rights are guaranteed in the same capacity as men, their participation in politics and electoral processes are minimal. According to the Global Gender Gap Report 2017 by the World Economic Forum, only 23 percent of the gap on economic participation and political empowerment has been closed worldwide (Hodgson, 2017). The report stresses the importance of bridging this gap by highlighting that “When women and girls are not integrated—as both beneficiary and shaper—the global community loses out on skills, ideas and perspectives that are critical for addressing global challenges and harnessing new opportunities (World Economic Forum, 2017).” Moreover, these claims have now been backed by research that has shown that “more women in parliaments means that more legislation regarding women’s issues and family issues will be passed” (Comfort, 2013). It is becoming increasingly evident that when women are properly represented in decision-making positions, they not only provide symbolic representation effects (Esteve-Volart et al., 2009) but also promote policies that have gender implications. These substantive impacts are observed to advance women’s interests and can be “measured in terms of policy agendas or legislative items that promote, protect, or enhance women's rights and interests” (Lange et al., 2012). In this context, as a global phenomenon, it is not surprising why countries have replaced the “incremental approach” of waiting for developmental changes in culture and socio-political conditions, and have rather resorted to a ‘fast track’ approach to counter this lack of womens’ representation in politics through the adoption of gender quotas (Bauer, 2013). 39 percent of countries worldwide have used some form of quota system to increase women’s representation in politics (UN WOMEN, 2017), and Nepal is one of them. However, although gender quotas can “jump-start” the process of achieving equal representation, do gender quotas actually make countries better off in ensuring women’s political participation? Are gender quotas an efficient way to achieve the broader goal of gender equality within a society ? How far do gender quotas go to fully address the systemic issues that result in the gender gaps?

In the context of Nepal, the government has acknowledged the importance of women’s political representation and has guaranteed numerous gender quotas to achieve this. Article 38(4) of the Constitution of Nepal (2015) stipulates that “women shall have the right to participate in all bodies of the State on the basis of the principle of proportional inclusion”. The constitution guarantees 33 percent of seats to women in the Federal and Provincial Legislatures. Similarly, the Election Commission Act (2017) prescribes direct proportional inclusion and the adoption of gender-friendly processes of conducting local elections with the aim of bringing women forward. Election Commission mandates that at least 40.4 percent of total nominees be female, including a rule mandating that the chief and deputy chief nominations put forth by each political party in each local unit be gender-even (Asia Foundation, 2018). However, even with these affirmative action policies, men outnumber women in the political sphere by a large degree (Paswan, 2017).

According to The Global Gender Gap Report 2017, women hold 29.6 percent of the seats in the parliament as of 2017 in Nepal and constitute only 3.7 percent of ministerial positions (World Economic Forum, 2017), that is, after said quotas have been utilized. With the country transitioning into a federal governance model, the efficacy of gender quotas in Nepali politics face more scrutiny as “in theory” more women are supposed to be nominated and elected. Moreover, these policies that aim for gender parity are still based on the Women In Development (WID) perspective, and to a large extent, it can be argued that in a country that has long silenced the voices of women, and hindered their agency to hold decision-making positions, gender parity oriented laws are still huge progress. However, a huge backlash to this deliberate effort of advancing gender parity is the potential compromise in the quality of elected women politicians and the contribution they will make to the government during their “leadership” due to asymmetric information problem, their limited education, and inadequate mentoring and support systems. Even with empirical evidence that illustrate how the gender of the legislators impacts policy choices, more efforts lie in increasing numbers anyhow and less priority has been given to investigate into why such inequality exists. The marginalisation of women in politics and decision-making positions reflects entrenched patriarchal attitudes towards women (Delaney, 2011), a recognition that the WID approach fails to make. In this light, the aim of these policies will only be achieved if the essence of the Gender and Development (GAD) that acknowledges socially constructed differences between men and women and stresses the need of instrumental empowerment of women for meaningful development is brought into it.

WID is a school of gender thought, a normative perspective that women “should be” economic contributors in the global economy. Having said that, this approach recognizes that women face significant impediments in their pursuit of accessing education and economic productivity, and are often resource constrained. Women’s representation in politics, alongside the need for their education and economic productivity are crucial for development, are fundamentally the pillars of the WID perspective. Moreover, one of the basic tenets of WID was its aim to “tackle the gender gap” (Unterhalter, 2007), and this approach is seen to equate equality to parity; a consequence of which, the measures of progress for much of the efforts with this approach was aimed towards equal numbers. The WID approach thus, often assumes that social relations are similar in all contexts.

It is needless to say that WID influenced policies “accelerated a cultural shift” to enable more women in the political arena, however, the problem is that it took it just this far. Gender parity remains the chief indicator in most global development indexes, some of many are the Millennium Development Goal (MDG), the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), Gender Parity Index, and the Global Gender Gap Index. Looking at the issue of lack of women in decision-making positions and politics strictly through a WID lens presents the issue in isolation and deprive us of insights into gender relations, and why women are not in these positions despite much efforts and opportunities. These indicators that measure gender equality in terms of parity needs to be broadened such that measures of progress consider the endemic socio-cultural issues and inequalities regarding gender (Subrahmanian, 2005), how that and the level of access/constraint in resources and support affect men and women differently, and ultimately how that manifests in disparate numbers, in this case, lower number of women in politics.

Gender and Development framework is a progression of WID approach. The GAD perspective attempts to look beyond parity by looking into gender relations, entrenched gender inequitable power structures that are often oppressive and disempowering, both inside (political) institutions and outside in the social sphere, in order to explain why gender equality more than just equal numbers. It is irrefutable that the representation of women in the political arena allows women to address “inequalities from the inside out” (Kabeer, 2005). While much efforts have been directed towards increasing the number of women into politics, what is less worked on is helping them engage, progress, and thrive in a ‘money and muscle’ political industry, largely governed by “patronage networks” (Limbu, 2018), and where patriarchy is reproduced as a social norm (Shah, 2011). To counter this kind of implicit constraints for women and break the hierarchical and patriarchal status quo, the GAD framework emphasizes on women’s empowerment, both instrumental and intrinsic (Shah, 2011). In this context, instrumental empowerment would be women’s participation in government decision making whereas intrinsic empowerment would be building her “autonomy, self-confidence, awareness, and strength” (Shah, 2011) to address social inequalities, both at home and in the political environment, and fight off the status quo. It is these immeasurable empowerment that interventions should be aimed at.

According to the Global Gender Gap Index, Nepal holds the 80th position worldwide in terms of women’s political empowerment, a drop of 12 positions from its 68th ranking in 2016 (World Economic Forum, 2017). Clearly, even with legislated affirmative action policies, Nepal has been relegated in the global rankings for political empowerment. Regardless, these numbers from the WID framework would mean very encouraging towards parity, however, when we view it through the GAD approach, we find that women remain underrepresented (2 percent) in key political (non-quota) positions such as mayor/chief and ward chair, typically held by majority group (Khas Arya) men (Limbu, 2018) mainly because women do not even get nominated for such positions (Paswan 2017). In this sense, a narrow parity intervention may get us the numbers, to an extent, but seems to fail in “reconfiguring existing power structures” (Limbu, 2018).

In a research conducted by the Asia Foundation with 190 elected women representatives in 20 rural/urban municipalities, only 4 percent of the participants reported to have a complete political background before being elected. 8 percent were involved in social work, and the rest were involved either as labors, in agriculture, in business, or as housewives. With a majority of respondents coming from a background other than pure politics, 53 percent of the participants confided that they faced some kind of challenge or problem while exercising their role. Challenges included not being able to manage time between home and work, financial problems, caste/gender based-discrimination amongst others. These challenges manifest in various ways and forms. On May 3rd, 2018, freshly elected Deputy Mayor of the Godavari Municipality Muna Adhikari reported a case of domestic violence against her husband. The next day she went to the police requesting to release her abusive husband, under the pressure from her family (Ojha, 2018). This case exhibits how women representatives bear the brunt of patriarchal structures both at work and at home, that constantly challenge the retention and continuity of women in powerful decision-making positions. Moreover, challenges also lie in prevailing patriarchal mindsets that manifest in elected male representatives vocalizing prejudices against their women counterparts, of how they think women were undeserving and “just filling numbers” (as said in FDGs of the Asia Foundation research, 2018) and in women representatives reinforcing this prejudice by “internalization of gender stereotypes that keep them subordinated” demonstrated in their insecurities of feeling incompetent due to lack of confidence, technical knowledge about laws, policies, finance and budget management, and other skills (Asia Foundation, 2018).

It is to address such gaps in the achievement of numbers and the achievement of empowerment and equality that we require interventions and programs that help change the socio-cultural environment in which elected women representatives have to operate (Asia Foundation, 2018). One such program is the “Building Gender Responsive Democracy” by DidiBahini, a leading NGO that campaigns for Women’s Equal Political Participation in Nepal. With a mission to promote and contribute in building a gender equitable and socially just society, DidiBahini’s focus areas include social inclusion through women’s social, economic, political empowerment and capacity building. To achieve this, DidiBahini has been closely working with different stakeholders like the government, various ministries, I/NGOs, legislators, and political parties to institutionalize and mainstream Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) and Women Empowerment agenda for over a decade now. This particular program has been done annually for two consecutive years now and is done in joint collaboration with South Asia Women’s Fund (SAWF) (DidiBahini, 2018).

DidiBahini functions in a political environment that has witnessed rapid socio-political transition in the last decade. The political system of Nepal has evolved from a Hindu monarchy to a secular and then to a federal republic form of government and has accomplished two elected Constituent Assemblies (2008, 2014), a progressive constitution (2015) and the recent local election (2017). Given the context, the main purpose of the said program is to enhance decision making and leadership skills of women representatives post-elections for strengthening their bargaining power to secure their position in program formulation, to strengthen skills of women representatives on Gender Responsive Planning, Budgeting and Monitoring for gender equality and social transformation, and to generate common perspectives and collective voice on gender responsive local governance laws and policies (DidiBahini, 2018). In order to meet the objectives of the program, DidiBahini organizes a number of activities, which align with the needs assessed by the elected women representatives discussed in the research conducted by the Asia Foundation. This program constitutes of various levels of intervention. In the initial phase, training on leadership development and advocacy, and trainings on skills on gender responsive planning and management in the context of decentralized federal local government are conducted. These trainings are aimed at facilitating capacity building and intrinsic empowerment of elected women representatives, such that they are in a better position to understand their roles and operate in the workplace. In the second phase of the program, a national consultation is held with federal local government representatives on federal local laws and policies, political party women wings, feminist and women right NGOs, Local governance experts, related line ministries and local unit representative (Mayors) in issues relating to GESI and how to make the political space more friendly for women. The idea behind the national consultation is to bring together interested partners and stakeholders to collaborate for mutual cooperation, networking, coordination in facilitating knowledge and attitudinal changes of men/women in power on gender related issues. In addition, this consultation aims to utilize the advantage of having such a diverse group of stakeholders to critically review and provide collective professional inputs in the formulation, development and implementation of new gender responsive federal governance act. The third and final phase of the program involves the designing, developing, and disseminating of training packages developed during training phase to other NGOs/ government for wider replication so that there are more of these trainings for elected women all around the country.

There is no doubt that this program, that has been designed carefully to intervene at multiple levels of the issue, is something that GAD strongly advocates for. While this kind of program is instrumental in the empowerment of candidates side of the issue, it still falls short in the changing of attitudes and cultural stereotype aspect. The “intersectionality of gender with caste, ethnicity, religion, education, geographical location, age, among other factors” is yet another uncharted territory when it comes to programs like these (Asia Foundation, 2018). It is evident that women now bear a triple gender burden due to their new “management” roles as elected women representatives of the community. The symbolic violence underscored in the response of the male representatives in the FDGs (Asia Foundation, 2018) and the case of domestic violence of deputy mayor Muna Adhikari (one of many cases, most of which often go unreported) shows how women continue to be treated as unequals despite a show of parity. In this sense, using the GAD framework would also entail challenging hegemonic norms of gender that accepts and implicitly dictate politics as a men's domain. This transformation of attitude and structure requires a parallel intervention focusing on the men in the lives of these elected women representatives, which means both the men they work with, and the men in their families. Unless men are involved in deconstructing the notions of politics being a “masculine” space, women will continue to face challenges to hinder their agency towards decision-making positions.

The thing about gender quotas is that it gives instantaneous results; the political workforce will see a certain percent of women right after elections. However, what guarantees their meaningful engagement, retention and continuity? Legislated Gender Quotas (WID framework influenced) have been portrayed as one single answer to a multi dimensional problem. Undoubtedly, many socio-economically backward countries around the world, including Nepal, hold relatively higher rankings on the political empowerment subindex of global gender parity indicators than most developed countries (Rosen, 2017) due to mandatory gender quotas ensured through various means. However, despite such reservations, the reasons they still do not hold the top ranks is perhaps a lack of “gender-equal attitude and a tradition of women’s empowerment in the political sphere” (Sanandaji, 2018). Moreover, unlike the Nordic countries who outperform the rest of the world, there is a lack of a safety net for female leaders at decision-making positions that can only be ensured through strong social security policies.