Gender Inequality in Political Representation: A Sociological Perspective

This article discusses the issue of gender inequality in political representation from a sociological perspective. It explores the causes of gender inequality and the efforts made to fight it. The article also highlights the need for women empowerment to achieve gender equality.

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Sociology
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Figure 1: Gender inequality in political representation (Dreher, Gehring and Klasen, 2015).
The aspect of inequality shown on the above picture is the gender inequality in the government
positions. Gender inequality refers to a situation whereby the two genders, that is male and
female have no equal chance in a certain scenario (Dreher et al.,2015: pp.470). From the above
picture, one can easily see that the percentage of women working in the positions found in the
local government are still below the average. What cause the issue of gender inequality vary
from one society to another. In most cases, it the perception that women are not able to perform
the way men does. However, this issue is not true at all. In many countries around the world, the
issue of gender inequality is still far from over (Fuentes-Nieva and Galasso, 2014). In many
circumstances, the government have to amend the constitution of a given country to force the
political positions ensure the gender equality. From the sociological perspective, the society is
not keen in fighting the issue of gender inequality. For instance, when referring to the above
image, what may have caused the issue of gender inequality in South Africa’s municipalities is

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the failure to empower women. Most women in the society have not been empowered
academically or economically. Only few of them get the opportunity to get the requirements
needed to fit into the positions of political representations. In this situation, men still see
themselves as superior than their counterparts. Consequently, in the recent years, the few women
who had been empowered have come out to fight for the others who have not gotten the
positions (Lombardo and Meier, 2016). The first thing they do is create awareness to the society
and try to fight the perception that women are not able as men using the slogan, “what man can
do a woman can do it better”. Using this slogan, women have tried to fight for their rights on
equality in political representation. However, the war is still far from over because most leaders
on political positions such as the head of state are still men.

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References
Dreher, A., Gehring, K. and Klasen, S., 2015. Gesture politics or real commitment? Gender
inequality and the allocation of aid. World Development,70, pp.464-480.
Fuentes-Nieva, R. and Galasso, N., 2014. Working for the Few: Political capture and economic
inequality. Oxfam. URL link https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/working-few
Lombardo, E. and Meier, P., 2016. The symbolic representation of gender: A discursive
approach. Routledge,45, Vol.3.