Women in politics : a historical analysis of four small island states in Europe

Abstract

This is a comparative historical analysis of four island states to find out how the discourses and political alliances across the ages impacted in the promotion, or lack of it, of gender equality, with a special focus on the promotion of women in politics. Republic of Iceland, Republic of Ireland, Republic of Cyprus and the Republic of Malta were chosen due to the fact that they share a number of geographical, social and cultural characteristics: a history of colonisation, a strong religious following, and mainly because they are also small island states at the periphery of Europe. This study will look at the historical political involvement of women in these four small island states by analysing the cultural, socio-economic and political structures in each country to see how these are implicated in women’s political participation. The research will follow the polytemporal model as proposed by Browne (2013) which states that there needs to be an open dialogue between past and present feminisms in order to positively transform the present and the future. The four islands all had a history of colonisation which affected differently the interplay of cultural, societal and political identities. Iceland and Ireland were the first to obtain independence in the early twentieth century, and amongst the first to extend voting rights to women. They have also been the first two countries within this sample to achieve a substantive female presence in parliamentary structures. In Iceland this happened ‘naturally’, whereas Ireland had to introduce legislative gender quotas to numerically increase the number of women who make it to parliament. Cyprus, Malta and Ireland were British colonies. The first two gained independence during the mid of the twentieth century and are still lagging behind the gender equality measures achieved by Iceland and Ireland. It seems that the countries’ political ties with the European Union helped jump start gender equality in these three countries more than their previous links to Britain. Iceland did not need its political alliance to the European Union since its geo-political positioning provided it with better role models where gender equality was concerned. This historical analysis underlines that culture, particularly religiosity and patriarchal structures, political alliances coupled with civil society activism had an impact on the promotion of women’s rights and political engagement in these four countries.