ISLAMABAD: Women remain underrepresented in elected positions and senior ministerial posts in most developed and developing countries, says a study jointly undertaken by the World Bank and the Women in Parliaments Global Forum.

Titled ‘The Female Political Career’ and published on Wednesday, the study is based on a survey from male and female parliamentarians in 84 countries around the world. It is designed to understand the hurdles women face in launching and sustaining successful political careers.

Read: What are female politicians doing for women?

It finds that only those women who have supportive families run for office whereas men are more likely to do so despite discouragement from their families.

It suggests systematically different levels and types of networks of political support. Women politicians receive fewer private donations on average than their male counterparts and rely relatively more on party sponsorship and support.

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Media portrayal and voter perceptions of “the woman’s place” seem to cast a longer shadow over women politicians’ decisions about whether or not to run for office and pursuing higher office.

While both men and women express concern about pitfalls of political campaigning, women are more worried, particularly about gender discrimination, difficulty of fundraising, negative advertising, loss of privacy and not being taken seriously.

Also read: Report on ‘women in politics’ launched

The study concludes that many women have attained successful political careers but almost nowhere in numbers that reflect their share of the population. Even in countries with relative gender parity, there is a higher attrition rate for women than for men into the top party ranks.

The study has uncovered several striking patterns. The first is that there are serious selection effects on women candidates. Many women, who may excel in political careers, do not run because of obstacles they see ahead of them – higher, in most cases, than in the way of their male counterparts.

Once in office, women continue to be caught in the double bind between the additional claims on their time from their gendered roles at home and gendered social expectations, which mean that they should be spending more time at home. Women politicians operate within narrow bands of acceptable behaviour, the boundaries of which are relentlessly policed by party leaders, colleagues, voters and the media.

The survey for the study provides evidence that women legislators continue to be disproportionately burdened with family work. The finding reveals the challenges women politicians face in achieving career success.

Published in Dawn, January 29th, 2015

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