THE FALSE CORRELATION BETWEEN PRESENCE & POWER: ALTERNATIVE CONCEPTION OF POWER TO ANALYSE FEMALE LEADERSHIP

Abstract

There has been a concerted efforted amongst nations and international organisations to reduce the gender gap in recent years. Since, the World Conference on Women was held in 1995, non-governmental organisations have started to produce annual reports, measuring gender inequality amongst nations. Majority of these reports tend to equate visibility in parliament to power. The focus of many of the reports tend to be on the numerical strength of women in parliament. However, does presence equal to power? In this paper, I seek to validate my scepticism of such an assumption. Using theories such as patriarchy and Lukes’s three-dimensional power and incorporating them into French and Raven’s five bases of social power model, I hope to provide a more nuanced understanding of political power and how it can be conceived once a female parliamentarian has been elected. This paper is applied to the context of Bangladesh. I do not assert that the reports contain inaccurate information or use an incorrect methodology. My goal is to problematise the notion that numerical strength can equate to power and be able to validate this scepticism by analysing power through a different lens.