Exploring narratives of women in leadership in post-conflict societies

Abstract

In 2014 Rwanda had the highest representation levels of women in a national legislature. South Africa ranked eighth in the world. This is in the context of diverse women’s representation levels around the world and regionally. As a result of this diversity there is a growing academic interest and literature on women and politics. Since attaining these relatively high representation levels Rwanda and South Africa have become the subject of a growing body of research on women and leadership in Sub-Saharan Africa. This study contributes to this area of research on women and politics. The aim of this study was to gather life narratives of women in political leadership in Rwanda and South Africa in order to understand the significance of life experiences in paths to leadership and motivations as women leaders. A qualitative methodology was used as it enables for a contextual and temporal analysis of social phenomena. Women political leaders from Rwanda and South Africa were interviewed about their life experiences, how they entered politics and/or government, and they were also asked about their views on instruments such as gender quotas, as well as their views on criticisms of women’s leadership in their countries. This study found that while not all women leaders benefit from gender quotas they overwhelmingly support them as a means of increasing women’s representation where patriarchal gender ideologies and structural gender inequalities exist. It was also found that women leaders’ personal experiences are the result of the context within which they occur. These are experiences that are a result of their social locations in the societies in which they grew up. Their social locations in specific contexts influenced them in terms of their access to education, their professions, and their entries into politics. For some of these women it led to the development of a consciousness of the different kinds of inequalities that exist in society and the need create a country in which racial, gender and class inequalities do not exist (South Africa). For other women it is a realisation of the necessity of having an efficient government and a growing economy to promote peace and maintain a stable society and the importance of using woman as a resource to achieve this objective (Rwanda).