The influence of women’s political representation on political decision-making: qualitative case study of Azerbaijan

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.