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For the duration of Myanmar's experiment with electoral democracy, why did some women run for political office, and not others? What role did gatekeepers such as party leaders play in those decisions, and using what criteria in selecting candidates? How did experience of domestic violence or harassment affect women's likelihood to participate in politics, especially beyond the local level? And what implications might these earlier patterns have for a post-coup Myanmar, should meaningful elections be restored?The contributors to Putting Women Up: Gender Equality and Politics in Myanmar answer these questions by examining the internal politics of nine political parties in Myanmar and both men's and women's attitudes towards and experiences of political leadership. Drawing on extensive interview, survey, and focus-group discussion data collected from across Myanmar in 2017 and 2020, this book offers a mixed-methods approach to explain how factors from party rules to formative personal trauma to patriarchal biases to ethno-religious context shape women's and men's likelihood to join local and national politics. The findings expand on culturalist insights on gender inequality to provide context-sensitive, evidence-backed policy recommendations to promote women's political leadership, despite militarization and violence in post-coup Myanmar.

Intro -- Preface -- Contents -- Contributors -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Part I Theories and Concepts -- Chapter 1 Global Patterns and Debates in the Granting of Women's Suffrage -- Suffrage Adoption Trajectory -- Four Waves of Suffragism and Debates -- Suffragism in the Society of Civilized States -- Suffragism and Socialist Transnationalism -- Pan-American Suffragism -- Suffragism, Liberation Struggles, and Afro-Asian Solidarity -- Conclusion -- References -- Chapter 2 Gender and Electoral Behavior -- Gender and Electoral Participation -- Gender, Partisanship, and Vote Choice -- Conclusions -- References -- Chapter 3 The Political Representation of Women over Time -- Why It Is Important to Elect Women -- Women's Formal Representation -- Women's Descriptive Representation -- Women's Substantive Representation -- Women's Symbolic Representation -- The Quality of Representation Itself -- Global Patterns in the Election of Women to Parliaments -- No Change -- Incremental Gains -- Fast-Track Growth -- Plateaus -- Women in Parliament Today -- By Economic Development -- By Geographic Region -- By Level of Democracy -- With and Without Gender Quotas -- Conclusion -- References -- Chapter 4 The Impact of Women in Parliament -- Policymaking -- Conceptualizing Women's Interests -- Context and Constraints -- The Policymaking Process -- Gender Quotas -- Public Attitudes -- The Political System -- Women as Leaders -- Female Citizens and Political Behavior -- Legislatures as Workplaces -- The Division of Labor -- Symbols, Images, and Ideologies -- Gendered Interactions -- Gendered Identity -- Organizational Logic -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Chapter 5 New Horizons in Women's Political Rights -- Creating a New Global Concept -- Definitions and Manifestations -- Emerging Solutions -- Conclusions -- References.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Introduction -- Part One : Canadian Perspectives on Women in Politics -- 1 Women's Representation in Canadian Federal Cabinets, 1980–2019 -- 2 Do Women Get Fewer Votes in Ontario Provincial Elections? -- 3 News and Political Legitimacy: Gendered Mediation of Canadian Political Leaders -- 4 Adversarial Politics: Understanding the Colonial Context of Indigenous Women's Political Participation in Canada -- Part Two : Comparative Perspectives on Women in Politics -- 5 Missing the Wave? Women Congressional Candidates Who Lost in the 2018 Election -- 6 Black Women's Hair Matters: The Uneasy Marriage of Electoral Politics and (Dis)Respectability Politics -- 7 Women in the Plenary: Verbal Participation in the Argentine Congress -- 8 Women as Party Leaders -- 9 A Question of Ethics? Addressing Sexual Harassment in the Legislatures of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada -- Part Three : Responses to Women's Electoral Under-Representation -- 10 Gender Quotas and Beyond: Policy Solutions to Women's Under-Representation in Politics -- 11 Effects of Quotas, Reserved Seats, and Electoral Rules on Women Parliamentarians in Asia -- 12 Changing Minds: Canadian Perspectives on Gender Quotas and Diversity -- 13 Gender Quotas and Women's Political Representation: Lessons for Canada -- Part Four : New Research Directions -- 14 Making the Case for Women's Representation: What, Who, and Why -- 15 Women in Parliament: From Presence to Impact -- 16 Too Feminine to Be a Leader? Systematic Implicit Biases against Women Politicians -- 17 Women in Politics: Beyond the Heterosexual Fantasy -- 18 New Backlash? New Barriers? Assessing Women's Contemporary Public Engagement -- References -- Contributors