"Factors Affecting Women's Participation in Politics: A ComparativeStudy of Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, and Uganda"

Abstract: This paper is a non-experimental descriptive comparative study of factors that affectwomen's representation in politics at the national level and also covers four countries: Kenya,Rwanda, South Africa, and Uganda. The study's primary purpose was to examine andunderstand factors within each case that affect women's political participation at the nationallevel based on why in some countries, women's political participation is seen as the leader inadvocating for gender equality. In contrast, others continue to lag, despite adopting somemeasures for women's greater participation in politics. It uses deductive logic by framingfactors contributing to women's under-representation in politics and capitalizes on thefeminist social role. Leadership categorization theory explains factors that promote underreorientation. Since the study entailed finding information from archive data, such as theconstitutions of the four case study countries, it utilized a diagnostic and prognostic analyticalframework of problem identification and providing viable solutions. In all four countries, the study found that gender equality is guaranteed in theirconstitutions. Those cases have many pieces of legislation and policies adopted to improvegender equality at the national level. However, challenges remain in the implementationcoupled with the influence of socio-cultural, political, and economic factors and existingcustomary laws. Admittedly, those cases have actively fostered women's involvement inpolitics. However, there are still many challenges to be addressed to achieve the quality ofwomen's participation in Parliament. Even though the number of women in Parliament hasreached, it doesn't mean that all women in a country have reached equality. As such, there is aneed to concentrate on the effectiveness of women in political positions and promotingwomen's influence over decision-making processes at all levels, especially in investing andfixing transformational change in the system of governance concerning institutional normsand values.The purpose of the central focus was to identify the factors and strategies that havebeen successful in some countries in enhancing women's political participation at the nationallevel and evaluate whether or not these policy changes and achievements could be replicatedin others. Using the case studies, the overall objective was to examine how some countrieshave achieved higher rates of female representation in parliaments than others. All casestudies have the same constitutional commitments to gender equality and have ratified thesame instruments relevant to women's Empowerment. The structured, focused comparisonand process tracing approaches have been selected and used to assess and analyze the cases.The use of process tracing helped to test and refines the hypothesized causal mechanisms.The structured, focused comparison was utilized to explain and perform the comparative casestudies adequately. This study has used a deductive orientation to reach a logical conclusion.Therefore, five different variables and hypotheses were formulated based on the literaturereview to apply stated choice methods. Furthermore, the analysis of this work was based onthe results of tested hypotheses against empirical cases to comprehend the meaning of theresults, especially by identifying the similarities and differences among cases. In a word, theanalysis was made primarily due to interpreting and understanding the hypothesis testoutcomes.In the end, data triangulation was also utilized to improve the validity of the research.The research shows that where joint efforts from these bodies were made, huge strides weremade and women's representation in higher political offices increased. It may encourageyoung women's zeal to pursue political careers and more active political participation becauseof seeing their fellow big sisters' efforts in politics and public office.