How does women’s security constrain or encourage women’s political empowerment (henceforth referred to as WPE in this chapter)? How does incorporating women’s security variables help us develop a more comprehensive approach to assessing women’s political empowerment worldwide?
Melanie Hughes summarized the main challenges related to our research: The rise of women to political power in non-Western and less-developed countries is difficult to explain, mainly because women’s representation does not operate the same way in less-developed states (Hughes 2009).
And yet, our goal is to determine the status of WPE globally. With a view to capturing the situation of women’s empowerment worldwide, one must consider factors that enable women to feel or become empowered. We argue that, firstly, women’s security often remains invisible
in traditional studies on women’s empowerment. Secondly, insecure women will neither feel nor become empowered. Alexander et al. previously discussed how the concept of women’s political empowerment has emphasized that “women’s empowerment starts from a place of disempowerment” (2016, 432). We argue that the condition of disempowerment is the starting point, and that this is related to insecurity that prevents women from becoming empowered. We also consider that insecurity is a product of prevalent male dominance hierarchies as the primary source of social organization. As researchers for the WomanStats project, we contend
that a more equitable treatment of women overall will provide higher opportunities of political empowerment. This is what we demonstrate in
this chapter.
Authors:
Senem Ertan,
Catalina Monroy,
Juan Pablo Vallejo,
Germán Romero,
Ana Catalina Erazo
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