Women in Politics: The Correlation between Women's Representation in The Political Leadership and their Social Status

Abstract

Women have been discriminated against by society throughout human history in different fields. In most cultures, women had no legal standing and little access to education and financial sources. Nowadays, women’s rights are being violated daily in different aspects; they experience violence, sexual harassment, wage gap, and educational steering, and their social status, in general, is still weak in comparison to males. Politics, though, is one of the most prominent fields in which women are discriminated against. Until the nineteenth century, they did not even have the right to vote, and nowadays, they are a minority or absent in the political field of leadership. This paper relates to how this social phenomenon of minor representation of women in leadership contributes to weak social status and rights violations of women, manifested in the lack of reinforcing women’s rights and in not enacting laws to protect them, as well as not having an impact on government decisions in favor of women. This paper relies on data from different formal governmental and academic sources. It compares women in the western world and women in the Middle East countries and Gulf states in terms of political representation to emphasize the correlation between the strong attendance of women in leadership and their social status.