DescriptionGender and politics scholars have sought to determine whether there is a link between women’s descriptive representation, operationalized as the proportion of seats held by women in a national legislature, and women’s substantive representation, usually operationalized as laws that advance women’s rights. But, except for a few studies, the Arab world has not received significant attention which is surprising because the region has experienced a significant increase in women’s presence in politics. Further, most of this work has focused on democratic contexts, obscuring whether hypothesized links between women’s descriptive and substantive representation work in the same way in authoritarian contexts. To fill these gaps in the literature, I focus on the case of Algeria, where women’s presence in parliament increased from 8% to 31.6% after the adoption of a gender quota in 2012.
Drawing on in-depth interviews with a wide range of stakeholders, my research examines the backgrounds of women elected, constituency service priorities, legislative dynamics, and women’s agency. I argue that the “authoritarian toolkit,” i.e., the resources available to authoritarian governments to manage and control political outcomes, shapes women’s descriptive, substantive, and symbolic representation in ways that are distinct from how these dynamics operate in more democratic contexts.
While women parliamentarians reject the notion that they have an obligation to introduce and pass women’s rights laws, they invest time in helping their male and female constituents solve their everyday problems to challenge the notion that women do not belong in politics. Therefore, there may not be strong links between women's descriptive and substantive representation. However, the efforts of elected women on behalf of their male constituents may advance women’s symbolic representation by demonstrating women's abilities in the political realm.