Gendered Spaces in Party Politics in Southern Africa: Progress and Regress since Beijing 1995

This paper was written as a contribution to the review of progress toward gender equality since the 1995 Beijing Conference with specific reference tot he southern African region. It recognizes that in the African context, a review of this nature is necessarily also an assessment of how far institutions and processes of accountable governance, reestablished in the 1990s in most African states, are taking sufficient root to enable the realization of declared commitments to enhance the quality of life for any segment of the citizenry. The stocktaking focuses on political parties both as possible instruments and as sites of negotiated power, against a historical background where they have also been instruments of coercion and exclusion. They have thus embodied tension, as on the one hand products of repression, and on the other, symbols of a breakthrough to a future promising the African citizenry liberties and democratic rights coupled with improvements in material well-being. Therefore, a review of southern Africa's performance regarding progress towards gender equality cannot just be about the degree to which women are now represented in decision-making. Rather, the process of enhancing women's status is inseparable from the process of rebuilding democratic institutions and practices. This paper starts from the premise that the outcome of that institution-building is informed interactively by the nature of the struggles of the people or groups involved, in character, form and content. The question then is how the history of the southern African countries and the struggles waged therein have defined, and continue to shape, the type of institutions and the manner of political power-sharing and women's representation.