The influence of women’s political representation on political decision-making: qualitative case study of Azerbaijan
Date
2023
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
Gender inequality issues persist in both the descriptive and substantive representation of women
in the political arena. Even though the developed countries have made significant improvements
in addressing gender inequality issues in politics, the issue is still at a critical level in developing
countries. Azerbaijan is a post-Soviet country where most of the population is Muslim. High
levels of the gender wage gap, underage and forced marriage issues, domestic violence, and
social stereotypes against women in Azerbaijani society create a need for improvements in the
substantive representation of women in politics. Additionally, the descriptive representation of
Azerbaijani women is still low. In this research, the author aims to identify the link between the
descriptive and substantive representation of women in politics in the case of Azerbaijan. By
doing so, the author will clarify if there is a need to increase the number of female MPs in the
Azerbaijani parliament, to increase women’s substantive representation in politics.
Using the qualitative data from the Codes of the Republic of Azerbaijan, the transcripts of
parliamentary meetings, interviews, and surveys, the author identifies how female MPs impacted
the policy agenda and output on women’s issues and to what extent male MPs represented the
issues of women. The findings suggest that female MPs bring more issues of women to the
political agenda and can affect policy output on women’s issues more compared to male MPs.
Without female MPs, male MPs do not represent women’s issues enough. While male MPs
discuss more on unemployment of women, women’s reproductive health, human trafficking, and
violence against women, they do not represent health issues of women other than reproductive
health, forced marriage, underage marriage, women’s participation in political decision-making,
unequally divided household responsibilities, and social stereotypes against women.