Abstract :
The Arab region has the lowest representation of women in parliament in the world: ten percent. Yet, seen in a ten-year perspective, the Arab region has witnessed the highest rate of increase, having started from a very low position. All over the world gender quotas are being adopted in order to rapidly increase women’s political representation. The Arab world is part of this new trend, and today eleven Arab countries have adopted electoral gender quotas. Globally, women are still vastly under-represented in politics. Only 19 percent of the seats in the world’s parliaments are occupied by women, 81 percent by men (Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2010). This article will analyze the use of gender quotas in the Arab countries in a global perspective. It will show that many different types of gender quotas are in use and that it is important to scrutinize the effects of various types of quotas. It is argued that this amazing new world-wide trend rests on a new understanding of why women are under-represented, different from previous explanations which have focused on women’s lack of resources. In the new discourse, which was introduced by the Platform for Action adopted by the world’s governments at the Fourth UN World Conference for Women in Beijing in 1995, the focus is being directed towards the political institutions and the political parties themselves and the way they tend to exclude women. In this way, the complex relation between processes of democratization and the inclusion of women in public life has reached the global agenda
