Is Inclusion the Solution? A Power Analysis of Women’s Organizations and Individual Women Activist’s Political Participation in Yerevan, Armenia
Abstract: In Armenia, women are systematically excluded from political processes and issues related to gender equality and women’s rights are not politically prioritized. In the absence of this prioritization, civil society actors play a vital role in promoting and addressing issues related to women. Inclusion is often promoted as a key element in democratization processes and this study takes a gender perspective and explores the potential of civil society as an oppositional sphere to the state. Through semi-structured interviews with women’s organizations and individual women activists, this study identified how the actors are included and/or excluded from political participation in Yerevan, Armenia. Further a power analysis enabled an understanding of the obstacles facing the civil society actors in their political participation. This study concludes that women’s organizations and individual women activists face practical, systematic and structural obstacles in their political participation, making it hard for them to be a driving force for democratization.
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