Lecture #12 - Gender and Race

Gender

Refers to behavioral, cultural, psychological traits typically associated with one’s sex. Socially constructed, not biologically assigned, and related to personal experience.

Sex

Biological distinction on the basis of chromosomes and organs, etc.

Legal Quotas

Gender-based political representation quotas that arise out of constitutional or electoral laws. These quotas are not opt-in or voluntary, but legally mandated.

Voluntary Party Quotas

Opt-in quotas for gender-based political representation that arise voluntarily from within party structures.

Dimensions of Comparing Quotas

• Mandate: Who is mandating these representation quotas?

• Part of the Process: Where in the political process do quotas arise? Is it at the stage of the aspirant (nominations), candidates (actually number of candidates placed on the ballot at election time), or election to the lower house (reserved seats)

Rwandan Electoral System

• Nominally a democracy, ultimately a one-party state with pretty widespread election manipulation

• Semi-presidential system with president as a head of state and a PM as a head of government

• Gender-based quotas introduced in the 2003 constitution (legal quota)

Gender-based Representation in Rwanda

• Legal (constitutional) gender-based quota introduced in 2003 that mandates that 30% of lower and upper house seats must be reserved for women

• Emerged in response to post-genocide conditions, wherein population was overwhelmingly female, creating an increasing need for female governmental representation

• Strong link between descriptive and substantive representation — creating space for greater female involvement has led to better legislation outcomes that enhance gender equality (ex. new punishments for gender-based violence)

Federal Women’s Representation in Canada

• Voluntary party quotas only

• NDP and Greens mandate at least one woman must contest the nomination in each riding

• Liberals have an aspirational goal of 25% women in the caucus, few indicators of success

• Women are consistently underrepresented in the House of Commons

Provincial Women’s Representation in Canada

• We’ve had more premiers named John than we have had female premiers

• Not looking great

Pipeline Professions

More women in Canada have undergraduate degrees, and there’s a larger presence of women in leadership roles, as corporate executives, lawyers, etc. that often serve as pre-requisite experience to attaining elected office. Women do not face an electoral penalty at the ballot box in Canada.

Sacrifical Lambs Thesis

• Demand side explanation

• Developed by Melanie Thomas

• Suggests that parties are more likely to nominate women to stand for election in ridings where their party has little chance of winning

• Allows parties to claim numerical representation in the nomination of candidates, doesn’t account for likelihood of actually being elected

• Rates of nomination disproportionate to rates of election to office

Demand Side Explanation for Lack of Women’s Representation

• Parties and Voter Preference

• Meaningful Recruitment

• Informal Networks

• Sacrificial Lambs

Parties and Voter Preference

• Demand side explanation

• Voters overwhelmingly vote based on party preference, not gender or individual candidates. Once a party has chosen a candidate, women don’t typically face an electoral penalty.

Lack of Meaningful Recruitment

• Demand side explanation

• Women are not mentored or pushed into running for office

Informal Networks

• Demand side explanation

• Politics is reliant on social connections/networks that privilege men as candidates

Supply Side Explanations

• Pool of potential female candidates might be smaller

• Women have lower political ambition than men — less likely to report subjective political competence, or one’s own belief in their understanding of political phenomena

• More time spent on care work than men (ex. household labor) regardless of employment status

Intersectionality

• Framework developed by Dr. Kimberle Crenshaw

• Considers how multiple forms of oppression intersect to structure lived experiences

Ethnicity

• A collectivity with common ancestry, a shared past, a culture and language, a sense of peoplehood and community

• Important to political concepts of identity

• Largely about assertions that a group makes about themselves

• Defined by individual group members

Race

• Categories that emerge as a result of classification on visible physical attributes, often by the state

• Because its been imposed, has incredible social and political power

• State has a big role to play in the creation and application of these categories

Racialization as a Process

• Recognizes that social and political construction of meanings of race are context-specific

• Race is not a static category, but always perception-specific

• Considering it this way allows us to assess how racial politics and categories have evolved over time

Census Politics

• The process of classifying people into racial categories occurs through census questions, which are used as a way to police the boundaries of whiteness

“One-drop Rule”

A historical census question-based rule that would classify anyone with racialized ancestors (even extremely far back) as not white, regardless of how an individual identified.

US Census Politics

• Population counting began as a way to determine the number and allocation of seats in Congress, and to structure taxation regulations

• Post-WWII victories of the Civil Rights Movement led to important changes in how the state approached race

  • Growing awareness of the need for good quality data on race to inform anti-discrimination law and federal programming

  • Advocated for by minority rights groups, themselves

• Shows how the census can be a tool to combat discrimination and inequality — high-quality race-based data is necessary to study and address inequities in health, wealth, etc.

Statistical Directive 15 (1977)

Created racial categories used by 70 different government agencies collecting race-based data. Driven by the Federal Interagency Committee on Education. Implication for the ideational promotion of the social construction of race.

Canadian Census Politics

• Race considered “too controversial” to discuss or ask about in the census, despite general concern about equality

• As early as the 1980s, there was a general push for the inclusion of racial categories to improve data and monitor things like the Employment Equity Act

• A lot of hesitation and discomfort

Racial Politics in Canada

• Members of racialized communities possess higher political ambition than white people

• Don’t suffer an electoral penalty on election day

• Still underrepresented in federal elections — might indicate that there’s something happening earlier in the process (ie. party gatekeeping) that’s preventing members of racialized communities from achieving equal numerical representation