Institutional and Procedural Bias for Women Access to Electoral Candidate: A Case of Nepali Congress Party in Nepal
As an insider participant political process and political ethnography, I seek to answer why women are often excluded in the political leadership in Nepal. Taking the case studies of Nepali Congress party, the article minutely discusses the structures, process and context that often excludes women in political leadership. First, structural – both social and political structures exclude women in the political leadership for instance, patriarchy, masculine social structure, and parties’ internal structures avoid equal and women friendly space for women to participate for political leadership. Second, parties often exclude women in the process of their political involvement, membership and other political activities. For example, only selected women who are mostly a relatives of leadership are given party membership. Finally, parties’ decisions are often influenced by the social and political contexts such as what other parties are doing and likely to do, how they are acting. For the article, the data are mostly taken from the Nepali Congress central and provincial offices. And most importantly, the data of process and context are collected from political ethnography, author’s self-involvement in political process from ward to central committee convention and process of selection of women for local, provincial assembly and house of representatives.