Introduction
Contents
A significant factor in development is gender. It is a way of looking at the effect of social expectations and power structures on the lives and resources available to various male and female classes. Worldwide, there are more women than men living in poverty. Also, women are less likely to obtain basic education and are named nationally and internationally to a political role than men.
Definition of Gender
In terms of what it means to be female or male, gender refers to socially defined ideas and practices. There are various sets of laws, norms, traditions, and practices in different cultures by which disparities between men and women are transformed into socially constructed differences between males and females, boys and girls. Such culturally defined gender identities describe rights and obligations for women and men and what ‘appropriate’ behavior is. The two genders are often valued differently, often promoting the perception that women are underlings and subordinate to men.
Gender Equality
Gender equality includes equal opportunities, rights, and responsibilities for men and women, for girls and for boys. Equality does not mean that men and women are just the same, or that women and men’s privileges, rights, and responsibilities do not depend on where men or women are born. It means that both women’s and men’s desires, expectations, and priorities are taken into account. Women control less political and economic capital compared with men, including land, occupations, and conventional positions of power. Therefore, it is critically necessary to identify and incorporate such gender inequalities into policies and studies, both from the viewpoint of human rights and to optimize effect and socioeconomic growth.
Gender equality ensures that women should have the same life opportunities as men, including the right to engage in the public arena. This represents a liberal feminist notion that dismantling sexism in women’s resources helps them to gain equal status with men. In fact, women’s status increases are calculated against the men’s average. Equal opportunity initiatives and regulations resolve the issue by steps to improve women’s engagement in public life.
Semi Presidential System
A semi-presidential system is a dual form of government that combines the features of both presidential and parliamentarism where a directly elected president shares executive powers with a prime minister and a cabinet. It, therefore, offers a mid-way between the two marginal forms: the presidential constitutional system and the Parliamentary constitutional system. Semi Presidential system has a president elected by popular vote and enjoys the considerable constitutional authority. He is supported by a prime minister and his cabinet who have the majority in the assembly.
The aforesaid features define a dual executive where the elected president is not the only sovereign of the state and has the political and executive authority. The president in the semi-presidential system is although looked at as the head of the state but has limited powers unlike the presidential form of the government. The existence of the prime minister exhibits the features of a parliamentary form of government. The semi-presidential system has three main components: the state, the government, and the parliament. Through the constitutional or legal creation and functioning of dynamic relations of mutual understanding, the balance between these three political bodies is achieved. One body can not enjoy less prowess than any other. The semi-presidential system works best when each of its political body functions entirely within its legitimate circumference.
Gender Mainstreaming
An organizational technique for presenting everyone with a gender viewpoint elements of the agenda and practices of an agency, by the creation of the power and responsibility of gender. The ‘gender mainstreaming’ has now been adopted by most major development organizations and many governments as a strategy to move towards gender equality. Gender considerations are seen as relevant to all facets of sustainability in a mainstreaming strategy; for all segments and fields of activity, and as a central part of the planning.
Instead of being centralized in a small central unit, responsibility for the enforcement of gender policies is distributed throughout the organizational framework. This process of mainstreaming has been seen to take one of two forms. The mainstreaming policy-setting strategy aims to change the development agenda itself while prioritizing gender issues. The integrationist approach, which is more culturally appropriate, incorporates women’s and gender problems into all current policies and services, focusing on adapting administrative processes to achieve this. Gender mainstreaming means that at all stages of culture, policy, and services, all-gender problems are discussed and desegregated.
Gender and Development (GAD)
Gender and Development (GAD) relates to the approach and method of development that is collaborative and empowering, sustainable, equitable, progressive, non-violent, supportive to human rights, tolerant of self-determination, and human capacity actualization. The GAD (or Gender and Development) way to deal with development strategy and practice centers around the socially built premise of contrasts among people and accentuates the need to challenge the existing gender relations and roles.
In comparison to the Women in Development (WID) approach, Gender and Development (GAD) was developed in the 1980s as another option. Not at all like WID, the GAD approach isn’t worried explicitly with women, yet with the manner by which a general public appoints jobs, duties, and assumptions to the two people. GAD applies gender examination to reveal the manners by which people cooperate, introducing brings about nonpartisan terms of financial aspects and ability.
Two essential structures, Gender Roles and Social Relations Research, are primarily the subject of GAD. Gender jobs center around the social development of personalities inside the family unit, it likewise uncovers the assumptions from ‘maleness and femaleness’ in their general admittance to assets. Social relations examination uncovered the social elements of various leveled power relations embedded in social foundations; likewise, it’s deciding effect on the overall situation of people in the public eye. While trying to make gender correspondence, (indicating women having the same freedoms as men, incorporating capacity to take an interest in the open arena) GAD arrangements intend to rethink conventional gender job assumptions.
GAD centers around the social or gender relations (a division of work and so forth) among people in the public eye and tries to address issues of access and authority over assets and force. It accentuates both the regenerative and beneficial part of women and contends that it is the state’s duty to help the social propagation job (generally played by women) for mindful and sustaining of youngsters. GAD regards improvement as a perplexing cycle that is impacted by political, social, and monetary factors instead of as a state or phase of improvement. This methodology is tied in with engaging the individuals who are burdened locally and upgrading and transforming themselves to improve things.
Gender Development Index
Gender Development Index (GDI) examines the disparities between men and women with respect to the various aspects of human poverty. It helps the HDI (Human Development Index) to be balanced for gender inequality.
Gender Empowerment Measure
In important fields of economic and political engagement and decision-making, this evaluates gender inequality. Thus it differs from the GDI, which in the primary indicators acts as the indicator of gender discrimination.
Women’s Empowerment
In the literature on gender and development, the idea of women’s empowerment is prevalent, and many development initiatives not only seek to improve income and properties but to also empower women. Empowerment is described by the World Bank’s Empowerment and Poverty Reduction sourcebook (Narayan 2002) as the extension of freedom of action and choice. Feminist theorists point out that the liberation of women requires specific additional components. Not only are women one category of many disempowered subsets of society, but they are also scattered across all types of disadvantages, including caste, class, race, and ethnicity. Secondly, in a way which is not relevant for other disadvantaged communities, household and interfamilial ties are a core locus of women’s disempowerment. Around the same time, empowerment of household ties, societal norms, and business and government structures needs structural change.
In the unitary presidential system, as it is evident, the supreme power lies in the popularly elected president. The president is the center of all the decision making and without his consent and willingness, the executive and legislature can not function on their own might. He has command over the center, the states, the external and internal affairs, the defense, and all major stakes of the country. There is an immense power vested in the president, as can be referred to in the United States of America. Although, this centralized absolute power is the very matter of concern as at times the decisions seem to be autocratic in behavior.
There is no distribution of powers in the constitution. All powers belong to the president. The constitution is rigid and could hardly be amended. The laws once made remain unchanged because of the sovereign powers of the president who may use them to satisfy the nature of the chair he holds. As there are no checks, the system may become despotic. Although these might be the apprehensions, the unitary presidential system can be quite responsible and accountable within its defined institutions and towards its citizens.
Merits Of A Unitary Presidential State
- The unitary presidential state can promote national unity.
- It is beneficial for the nations which are smaller, culturally even, and socially not divergent in nature.
- There is a good chance of running the country economically smooth as there are fewer conflicts.
- The unitary system promotes harmony in its ethnic groups.
- The unitary system allows for swift decision-making due to single-window decisions.
- The stability of the government counts the most as it allows the growth of the economy and financial wellness.
Demerits Of A Unitary Presidential State
As the government is solely accountable to the president, the public rejoinder is quite sluggish in the unitary presidential system of the government. For example, there are no state defense forces that could be dispatched in cases of emergency. The armed forces are stationed and ordered by the supreme authority of the government. It also easily loses track of local issues. This system enumerates the possibility of competition among the components for prime roles and key positions.
- There is a burden on the president and the center for every work since there is no division of work and all the decisions are concentrated in the supreme chair of the president.
- There is every possibility that the president becomes a dictator.
- There is little room for analysis of the performance of the government led by the president. The loopholes and the pitfalls of the policies would hardly be argued in such a system.
- There is a possibility of the negligence of the minority communities. Since some regions might be neglected for political reasons.
- Many citizens under unitary governments may keep waiting for the central government to initiate and implement policies and this could smother local initiatives.
Presidential Republic Observation on Some Nations
These are the different forms of the Presidential system observed by many democratic nations of the world. The following are the key features of constitutional democracy of the United States, the United Kingdom, and France for reference to the working of the different systems under the Presidential form.
The United States
- The executive branch constitutes of a separately elected president, a cabinet nominated by the president and confirmed by the legislature.
- The legislature can not remove the president. The president cannot dissolve the legislature.
- The upper house is called Senate. the cabinet and legislation draft the various bills which can be vetoed by the president.
- The bills of the legislation must be introduced by a senate member.
The United Kingdom
- The prime minister and the cabinet are elected by the popular vote. The state is headed by the royal entity.
- The elected government can be dissolved through a no-confidence motion. After which an election must be announced to form a new government.
- The Upper house is known as the House of Lords and the lower house is the House of Commons. The cabinet, prime minister and the bureaucracy form the government.
- The bills can be amended by the executive branch. The houses have limited rights and can suggest amendments only on technical grounds.
France
- The president presides over the cabinet and is separately elected. The president has major powers including the appointment of the prime minister and his cabinet.
- The upper house is known as Senate and the lower house is the national assembly.
- The president can dissolve the lower house.
- The legislature can remove the prime minister and dissolve the cabinet.
- The bills are drafted by the executive body and both the houses.