Tanya Jakimow

There are several self-evident truths when it comes to achieving gender equity in local government. Increasing women’s political participation is the first step and an unproblematic good. The focus must hence be on removing barriers to ensure elected bodies are representative of the broader population. When gender parity is achieved, political institutions will change, to become more gender sensitive, more deliberative, less conflictual.

More than thirty years after the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action towards gender equality, these axioms are looking shaky. Why have substantial increases in women’s participation as party members, candidates and local representatives not significantly challenged men’s political dominance? Inclusion is not enough, and sometimes, it may even be the problem.

Research from parts of Asia, Africa, Latin America, shows that women are not absent or excluded from democratic life, they are active participants. Put differently, women make important contributions to local politics but in ways that are rendered invisible, unrewarded, taken for granted, and exploited. They are included, but on disadvantageous terms.

Challenging the political dominance of ‘majority’ men hence requires going beyond addressing women’s exclusion to examine the terms of their incorporation: the contributions women make to democratic life and electoral politics; what they receive in terms of political opportunity or power; against the costs and burdens of their participation.

Take for example Gayatri*, who has been a loyal party worker in Dehradun: a city in North India. For two decades she has invested time, energy and money to her party, organising ‘supporters’ to attend rallies, connecting residents to government entitlements and campaigning during elections.

These activities generate significant positive political sentiment towards her party, but are often invisible, under-recognised, rendered ‘outside of politics’, and hence unrewarded. When she requested the party ticket to contest municipal elections in a seat reserved for women, the party instead selected the wife of a new party member. Gayatri declared: “This is exploitation! I will never work for the party again”.

Or Ibu Dewi*, who was approached to be a candidate in Medan’s 2024 local elections in Indonesia. The party needed her to fulfil gender candidate electoral quotas that require every third position on the ballot to be a woman. For over three months, Dewi spoke to small groups of women, organised campaign events and went door-to-door, promoting the party, then the presidential campaign, and only then her own campaign.

Dewi expended her physical and emotional resources, and depleted her household savings. For her efforts, she received less than 300 votes in a ward of 20,000 voters. She was heartbroken, and furious: ‘All this effort for what? Only the parties benefited from my campaign.’

Even as elected representatives, women often do more for less recognition. Sarah* was elected as a councillor in Sydney, Australia, on the basis of her community advocacy. After her election, she got to work reopening a swimming pool: applying for the government grant, chairing the committee, and liaising with community to redesign the facilities.

When it came to cutting the ribbon however, it was the Mayor who took centre stage, inviting his political allies alongside him. His party claimed this achievement in their re-election campaign material. Across councils in my home state of New South Wales, community members, council staff and councillors reported women as being diligent, putting in the work but not receiving the credit. This under-recognition has electoral consequences; Sara was not re-elected.

My comparative ethnography of local politics in India, Indonesia and Australia shows that the terms of women’s incorporation at each stage of the ‘ladder of political recruitment’ is often inequitable, and at times exploitative: women do more, bear more burdens, for fewer returns, compared to men. This is the case not only for women, and not all women equally. Structural relations of power such as white supremacy, religious majoritarianism, caste, ableism also shape the terms of incorporation into local politics.

I am not suggesting that we should not strive to achieve gender parity, or better put, to ensure that people of all genders are present and have influence within political systems. Inclusion remains an important goal, as are removing the barriers to exclusion. But reforming electoral democracy only through inclusion is insufficient. There is an equal need to transform its underlying value-system towards genuine democratic practice in which everyone participates on equal terms.

*All names are pseudonyms

Tanya Jakimow is a professor of anthropology in the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. Tanya’s current research concerns the enduring problem of political over-/under-representation in local government in India, Indonesia, and more recently, Australia. https://researchportalplus.anu.edu.au/en/persons/tanya-jakimow/