Summary

Summary Gender and Democratization

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Course
GOVT235

Institution
American University

The measurements of democracy excludes gender, particularly women. how we word the definition of democracy. While scholars acknowledge universal suffrage, often direct or indirectly exclude women in benchmarks evaluating democracy.

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Uploaded on November 7, 2024
Number of pages 2
Written in 2024/2025
Type Summary

women rights
democracy
formal representation
symbolic representation
descriptive representation
substansive representation

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Traditional definitions and measures of democracy overlook gender patterns, which lead to an
incomplete understanding of the democratization process. The chapter introduces how gender is
absent within definitions of democracy, although they use universal terms like citizen or adult.

“Theorists use gender-neutral language when defining democracy and measure democracy with
seemingly universal concepts such as the people's right to vote. But as pointed out by numerous
feminist theorists, the appearance of 'neutrality' towards gender in political theory or 'equality'
between men and women in government actually hides substantial gender inequality.”(158)

“Huntington claims a government is democratic when 'its most powerful collective decision-makers are
selected through fair, honest, and periodic elections in which candidates freely compete for votes and in
which virtually all the adult population is eligible to vote'. Huntington goes further, explicitly stating: 'to
the extent, for instance, that a political system denies voting participation to part of its society-as the
South African system did to the 70 percent of its population that was black, as Switzerland did to the 50
percent of its population that was female, or as the USA did to the 10 percent of its population that were
southern blacks-it is undemocratic' (1991: 7). Far from rendering women invisible, it appears that
Huntington explicitly includes them. In fact, in explicitly mentioning women and minorities, Huntington
is almost unique. Most definitions use generic terms such as 'adults' or 'the people' without being explicit
about who might be excluded.”(160)

“But turning a few more pages in Huntington's book reveals that women can be excluded after all. Hun
tington (1991: 16) continues by giving' ... reasonable major criteria for when nineteenth-century political
systems achieved minimal democratic qualifications in the context of that century.' One of these
operational criteria is that '50 percent of adult males are eligible to vote.' Huntington's working definition
using this criterion leads to a voting population made up of only 25 percent of a typical adult population.
And-at least in earlier historical contexts-it allows countries to be defined as democracies even if women
do not have the right to vote.”

Huntington’s definition of democracy seems inclusive, it relies on criteria that historically
marginalized women. He defines government as democratic when candidates are selected
through fair, honest, and periodic elections where candidates compete for votes in which all
the adult population is eligible to vote. He says that a political system that denies voting
participation on factors like race and gender is undemocratic.

But Huntington’s inclusive definition became problematic when he set up operational criteria for
defining when political systems had achieved minimal democratic qualifications in the 19th
century. One criteria was that 50% of adult males must be eligible to vote and this excludes
women from the definition of a democratic electorate, allowing countries to be considered
democratic even if women are excluded. This illustrates how typical definitions of democracy
rely on criteria that indirectly or directly exclude women. Huntington criticizes Switzerland for
not letting women vote, but he excludes women from his own criteria and demonstrates that of
the opposite.

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