Women in anglophone Cameroon : household gender relations and participation in local governance

Most current feminist and development scholarship asserts that women’s numeric presence in local government is a necessary but not the sole condition for creating women-friendly legislatures. Such legislatures are possible only when women’s numeric presence complements the effective participation of women in policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation. Many efforts examining the conditions under which these numbers translate into meaningful participation pay little attention to whether and how household-based gender relations affect women’s effective participation in local government. This case study attempts to change the direction of this trend in its examination of women councillors in Anglophone Cameroon. Its findings reveal that the women surveyed tended to have greater influence in council decisions and projects when they were similar to decisions over which the women exerted some control in their household. In addition, the experience of serving on a council enhanced women’s influence over decision making in the home