7

Decolonising the Stories of Women Political Leaders in Asia and the Pacific

Camilla Batalibasi, Chandy Eng, Donna Makini, Vani Nailumu and Geraldine Valei, with Sonia Palmieri and Melissa MacLean¹

Since the United Nations’ First World Conference on Women in 1975, the situation of women in political leadership around the world has been carefully monitored, researched and championed. With increasingly powerful normative intent, international organisations have made publicly available databases of a limited range of indicators, including the number of seats in national parliaments held by women and the numbers of women heads of state/government, speakers and ministers.

Academic and practitioner researchers use these data as a starting point in the discussion of women’s contribution to political leadership at global, regional and national levels. These data have allowed a community of researchers to explain the progress and setbacks of women—on an aggregate scale—in the political sphere, and they have allowed for international comparisons. A key insight from these data has been that while women have increased their share of seats in various decision-making forums such as parliaments and executive governments,² the pace of change has been incredibly slow,³ and women’s presence at the decision-making table cannot yet be taken for granted in most countries around the world.

These insights apply to the relatively under-researched regions of Asia and the Pacific. These regions have seen extremely limited change in the proportion of women in political leadership: both have remained in the bottom half of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) regional classification of women in national parliament,⁴ and the rate of increase over the past 10 years is significantly slower than in other world regions. That said, less research has focused on the experience of women political leaders in Pacific Island countries (see Baker et al. 2020) and in some parts of Asia. Of course, this relates to the fact that there are simply fewer women to research (Vijeyarasa 2022). Yet, the much slower rate of progress in these regions raises interesting questions about not only why progress is so incremental, but also how to capture—in culturally meaningful ways—the lived experience of the few women who reach the high echelons of political power.

On this, we consider that the way research is undertaken—that is, the research process itself—can contribute to social change. An increasingly prominent cohort of researchers has suggested that a decolonialist feminist approach to research design and practice has the potential for significant emancipatory impact (Smith 1999; Leavy and Harris 2018; Tickner 2014; Harding 1987). Specifically, research partnerships between academics and practitioners across the majority and minority worlds can support a more nuanced understanding of critical problems in context and can suggest culturally appropriate solutions to address them (Greenwood and Levin 2007). Underpinning this approach is a commitment to certain forms of collaboration. In development contexts, collaborative research has been explained as ‘a way of working that provides the greatest potential to create real changes … [and] generate evidence which is usable and contributes to development effectiveness, and to inform future development of policy and practice’ (Winterford 2017: 4).

While there is considerable promise of positive outcomes, this kind of research can also be fraught with challenges and risks. These include hurdles in execution, resource limitations and, importantly, challenges related to colonialist frames of inquiry and analysis that may be built into traditional research practices (Jakimow 2020; Winterford 2017; Leege and McMillan 2016; Roche and Kelly 2014; Schaaf 2015; Thom and Cope 2016). For this reason, we suggest it is worth reflecting on the experiences of those involved in research that explicitly aims to decolonialise knowledge generation and understanding.

This chapter is structured as follows. First, we outline our approach to researching women’s lived experience of political leadership. We describe the research projects on which we have worked and the process by which we collectively reflected on this experience for this chapter—that is, our autoethnography. We present our reflections on whom we were able to research, how we undertook our research, what we researched, who we are in the research relationship and why we do this research. We find that women political leaders, and particularly the most senior women leaders in our countries, are hard to access for both institutional and personal reasons. They can be suspicious of researchers—and potentially more suspicious of local researchers—when they feel they will be judged harshly or placed in particularly vulnerable situations. We consider that where we can find physically and emotionally safe spaces in which to interview women politicians, we can deftly navigate the cultural cues that non-local researchers might not pick up on. We can see the ‘masks’ that women wear in their political settings—masks that aim to deflect from the constant sense of being observed. We also noticed that we could elicit new stories from women political leaders, sometimes divulged in the culturally appropriate silences that we maintained—stories of discomfort that tell us different answers to those of the usual questions asked of these women, and which have not yet filled the pages of history. We are not passive in these storytelling processes; we are conscious of our own positions of power in relation to these women and our responsibility, within our own communities, to keep the momentum towards gender equality alive.

Decolonising research through practice and voice

While women are underrepresented in political leadership globally, there are serious gaps in data collection that make it difficult to understand comprehensively women’s experience in leadership, particularly in some of the countries of Asia and the Pacific (Buvinic et al. 2014). Numerical data on women’s participation at local and subnational levels, for example, are extremely difficult to find for Pacific Island countries and are therefore notoriously underreported.⁵ These data collection gaps point to two things: first, there has been an overreliance on the numbers of women elected representatives to tell the story of women’s political leadership; and second, the true extent of women’s leadership has not yet been captured.

Accepting that the full story of women’s political leadership in Asia and the Pacific has not yet been told, we suggest that there is also a need to consider new approaches to capturing that story. Moreover, alternative approaches must be mindful of the complex and often culturally and historically informed gendered barriers to women’s election and political appointment. In our view, decolonising the stories of women’s political leadership involves two things: first, feminist collaborative research practice; and second, privileging local experience and usually unheard voices.

Collaborations between local and non-local researchers

On our first approach, we are mindful that feminist collaborative research is not yet ubiquitous across all the social sciences (see Jenkins et al. 2020). It represents an ‘innovative’ methodology in political science, but even in development studies, we still hear calls for more research that uncovers new stories and contributes to the strengthening of all partners’ research and analysis skills to improve understanding of varied contexts. The work of J. Ann Tickner (2014: 92) in defining feminist research has been a useful starting point for us. Tickner identifies four main elements: a deep concern with which research questions are asked and why; the production of research that is useful to women (and men); a commitment to reflexivity and an acknowledgement of the subjectivity of the researcher; and a commitment to knowledge as emancipation.

Since 2017, we have been involved in various projects that aim to align research with feminist, accountable, collaborative and transformative principles. More specifically, we have established research partnerships that privilege local researchers and facilitate their active participation in the design, implementation and analysis components of research.

The first project was part of a broader program supported by an Australia-based NGO with funding from the Government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.⁶ This research project intended to generate new and deeper understandings of women’s leadership pathways that would inform programs and advocacy, as well as contribute to research discourses on leadership. Camilla, Donna, Geraldine and Chandy, along with several other researchers from the region, used their personal and organisational networks in their own local contexts to reach out to women whom they knew to be political, economic and social leaders, and asked them to tell their stories. Sonia and Melissa supported the local researchers for the duration of the project (2017–20), primarily remotely from their home bases in Australia and Canada, respectively, although there were some in-person workshops held to hone research and analysis skills.

At the time this research was undertaken, none of us was employed by an academic institution: Camilla and Donna worked for the Women’s Rights Action Movement NGO in Solomon Islands; Geraldine worked for the Bougainville Women’s Federation; Chandy worked (and still works) for the Gender and Development Cambodia NGO; Sonia and Melissa were consultants. All of us had extensive experience in advocating for, and developing programs in, gender equality, but of course acknowledged significantly different levels of privilege among us, not least due to differing education opportunities. At the beginning of 2017, none of us had ever worked together; by 2022, we had maintained relationships of mutual trust and admiration through irregular but positive interactions, even after our initial project had ended (in 2020).

This project easily aligns with Tickner’s criteria of feminist research. First, the questions we asked were explicitly—and exclusively—related to the experience of women leaders across Asia and the Pacific. Second, the knowledge we produced has been used, and will continue to be used, by our organisations to support more programming on women’s leadership in our own countries. Third, through these mutually supportive relationships, we continually reflected on and acknowledged our own positionalities. Finally, we undertook this research because we wanted to improve—and expand—the pathways available to women becoming leaders.

The second project, still in its data collection and sense-making phase at the time of writing, is a collaboration between Vani and Sonia and is concerned with the effective implementation of a gender-sensitive rule introduced into the Fijian Parliament in 2014. It is connected to wider practitioner and academic scholarship on the gender sensitivity of parliaments around the world that has underpinned advocacy for cultural and policy changes in historically male-dominated and masculinised institutions (Palmieri 2019). Vani and Sonia have known each other since 2020, having regularly worked together on this and other projects. Therefore, they describe their relationship as both professional and personal. Vani conducted most of the in-person interviews in Suva, while Sonia conducted a few interviews remotely via Zoom. This research is undertaken under a more formal framework: it was granted approval by the Speaker of the Fijian Parliament and ethical clearance from an Australian university. It is expected to produce both academic and practitioner-focused outputs.

Like the Women’s Pathways to Leadership (WLP) project, the methodology is underpinned by a feminist lens and reflects the principles outlined by Tickner. First, the research takes a women-centric approach to the question of parliamentary reform, asking how gender-sensitive rules are applied in this institutional context. Second, the research topic is of direct use to women given that the gender analysis required in the parliamentary rule aims to identify any intended or unintended, advantageous or disadvantageous gendered impacts of policies, laws or draft bills. Third, the data collection process has required an explicit acknowledgement of, and reflection on, researcher positionalities and power dynamics given the division of labour in undertaking interviews and traditional/colonialist framings of ‘research experience’. Finally, because the process will bring together both policy designers and end users to identify, analyse and solve problems with the current process, the research explicitly aims to emancipate various groups of women (policymakers, voters, activists) in Fiji.

Privileging local experience and unheard voices

A second approach to decolonising the stories of women political leaders is to actively ‘grab the space’ in which the experiences of local researchers are broadcast. Previous research has suggested that elite interviews are among the most widespread research methods in the social sciences but are also ‘emotionally exhausting’ and ‘fraught with uncertainties and anxieties’ (Jakimow 2020: 150). An interesting body of research—primarily focused on experiences in Africa—has shone a spotlight on the challenges to local researchers in conducting elite interviews (Ntienjom Mbohou and Tomkinson 2022; Sowatey and Tankebe 2019; Gokah 2006).

In Pacific contexts, calls for Indigenous knowledge creation are longstanding but still far from mainstreamed. Perhaps not surprisingly, women have been at the forefront of change movements, eloquently articulating both the problems and the solutions to colonialist knowledge practices. Māori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith first argued for decolonialist approaches to research over two decades ago, noting:

[I]t is surely difficult to discuss research methodology and indigenous peoples together, in the same breath, without an analysis of imperialism, without understanding the complex ways in which the pursuit of knowledge is deeply embedded in the multiple layers of imperial colonial practices. (1999: 2)

In similar tones, Hawaiian scholar Haunani-Kay Trask identified the local practices that would serve her in reclaiming Indigenous knowledge:

To know my history, I had to put away my books and return to the land. I had to plant taro in the earth before I could understand the inseparable bond between people and aina. I had to feel again the spirits of nature and take gifts of plants and fish to the ancient alters. I had to begin to speak my language with our elders and leave long silences for wisdom to grow. (1999: 118)

These calls inspire us to take seriously what we know and what we have learned in conducting elite interviews in our own country contexts. We appreciate Winduo’s challenge to us ‘to return to our roots to learn the culture that our people have transmitted orally without the dependence on writing’ (2009: 2). For this reason, this chapter deliberately privileges the voices of local researchers; our voices are the data of this research.

Autoethnography—a qualitative method that ‘uses personal experience to describe and interpret cultural texts, experiences, beliefs and practices’ (Adams et al. 2017; but see also Holman Jones 2005)—allows us to reflect on our methodological practice, but it also gives us a platform from which we establish our experience, our thoughts and our practice as legitimate knowledge. We held a series of conversations via email, Zoom and WhatsApp between January and June 2022. Transcripts of our discussions were shared among the whole group by email, and Sonia created a Google document outlining emerging themes. We then added to these at our own pace. We crystallised some of the key findings in the process of presenting a paper at a conference held at The Australian National University in July 2022, for which we created a video. While Sonia and Melissa facilitated these conversations—and captured our reflections in writing—they did not contribute their reflections to these discussions. This chapter is not about their experience of researching in minority-world contexts, although we are happy to contribute to a longer reflective journey on some of our collaborations (see Palmieri and MacLean 2021).

We now turn to our lessons in relation to the access to, conduct and purpose of interviewing women.

Access, hierarchy and connections: Whom we research

While self-evident, it is worth noting that women’s relative absence from key political institutions in Asia and the Pacific makes it more difficult to study them than, say, men political leaders or women leaders in other fields (such as economic or community leaders). We noticed this difficulty in accessing women political leaders in several ways. First, we discovered that some aspiring women leaders did not wish to be part of research projects when they had not been successful in their political pursuits. Donna and Camilla shared their experience of interviewing a woman who contested a provincial election but, having lost, declined to participate further in the WLP project. Again, it may be obvious, but when unsuccessful women candidates decline to be involved in research, the sample of ‘women political leaders’ decreases still further, given that the pool of women candidates is always larger than the pool of elected or appointed representatives.

We consider that there are additional consequences of the ‘lost numbers’. This finding also speaks to the emotional and reputational cost of running for election and losing. It is worth reflecting on the emotional state of women who are unsuccessful in their electoral campaigns: might they be worried that the research team will be critical of them personally, or concerned they have little to share with researchers that can be used for wider lesson learning? Might these women be ashamed of having put their hands up for leadership? There is room for us to think through how we approach women who have expended enormous emotional energy and been defeated. ‘Research’ in this instance may not be a sufficient calling card; there may simply be a need to lend emotional support (see also Jakimow 2020).

Access issues also arise in relation to women who have been successful in their electoral campaigns. We noted that research opportunities are impacted by women’s elevation (or not) to positions of parliamentary leadership (such as committee chairs) and membership across all committee portfolios (including, for example, finance, public accounts, defence). Vani and Sonia noticed that in the Fijian Parliament project, none of the committee chairs was a woman and some committees had no women members. As researchers interested in generating more inclusive data, Vani and Sonia deliberately broadened their sample of Members of Parliament (MPs)—from just committee chairs and deputy chairs—to ensure that women politicians could have their say. While women’s absence from these leadership positions is a factor of numbers, it also speaks to the institutional norms and cultural assumptions about the capacity and skill of women to take on certain roles. A recent study of Pacific Islander students found that perceptions of leadership legitimacy are higher for women in the portfolios of health and women’s issues than in the portfolios of defence and foreign affairs (Nailumu et al. 2023).

We found it more difficult to access the most senior women politicians in our countries. In Bougainville, Geraldine was able to interview the relatively newer MPs for the WLP project, although the former deputy speaker and longest-serving of the women MPs could not be reached, despite repeated attempts. While this could be attributed to women MPs’ already crowded schedules, or a sense of being ‘over-researched’, it is also perhaps about the more limited connections local researchers have to women in political power. Donna, Camilla, Chandy and Geraldine had personal relationships with women leaders in the community and business sectors in their own countries but did not have these personal connections with senior women politicians. They were, then, less able to rely on their own networks to reach women political leaders. In our collective reflections, we wonder whether this is an indication that the more senior women become, the stronger are their ties to the political establishment; the more entrenched they are in the system, the less freedom they have in speaking even to local researchers.

While personal relationships seemed less helpful in securing interviews with women political leaders, Vani’s personal connection to an institutional interview organiser proved instrumental in facilitating access. Vani had an existing relationship, through her university networks, with a staffer in the parliament, who arranged all her meetings with MPs, including some that were conducted online. In fact, Vani’s connection set up an entire interview schedule in consultation with the Speaker of Parliament and the secretar-general:

If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t have been able to interview all the women as we had planned … [W]ith research work, [access] is a really important thing. Especially with research work here in the Pacific because … we are relational people. Especially when we’re talking about sensitive issues—like gender equality—it’s still a very sensitive topic to talk about, given our cultural context, so having a relationship with someone to help you gain access, based on your relations, is a very instrumental way of interviewing and collecting data. (Vani)

Vani’s point is that local knowledge and understanding of the local context in terms of knowing the political landscape and political party dynamics and structure are important when reaching out. Interviewing women political leaders is also easier when a recognisable institution (such as a university) makes a formal request. In the case of the Fijian Parliament project, a ‘formal’ letter of request to participate in the project drafted on academic letterhead was sent to the Speaker of the House, outlining the research objectives and methods and providing a biography of the researchers. While a similar template was prepared for the WLP project, individual researchers were responsible for preparing the letter—on NGO letterhead—and sharing this with their intended research participants. In Geraldine’s case, this approach was less effective in securing access:

My initial approach was drafting [each woman MP] a letter explaining the research work and time frame. It didn’t really work for Honourable Francesca as she was always busy and I never found the time to interview her … [T]he letter and knowing Honourable Francesca personally didn’t really work for her … I sensed that [she thought] I was trying to be political by trying to find out about her [experience]. (Geraldine)

The paucity of women political leaders to interview in our regions and specific challenges inherent in accessing the most senior women speak to the nature of the job women sign up to when they become politicians. It tells us—unsurprisingly—that the high demands on their time for research purposes exacerbate women leaders’ existing time poverty. In some of our countries, where the community is particularly tightly knit and elites are well known, research requests can also appear to be nosy to women who are already in the spotlight (and often face harsh criticism), rather than serving a more noble purpose of knowledge generation and sharing.

Respect, safety and vulnerability: How we research

We found that women political leaders need to feel physically (as well as emotionally) safe in the research relationship. Through trial and error—and sometimes by chance—we came to realise that the physical space in which the interview is conducted affects the kind of information women political leaders share, as do the initial set of questions and the language in which we conducted (and organised) the interview. We worked hard to establish a comfort zone, both physically and emotionally.

The location of the interview set its tone. Geraldine’s chance encounter with two women MPs while all were travelling meant that an interview could be held in a relaxed and comfortable environment:

I happened to meet them in the same guesthouse that I was transiting through at that time. When I had a chat with them during dinner time, both women MPs were willing to share their stories with me. That was when I started to interview them. (Geraldine)

Chandy deliberately relocated some of her interviews away from the office to elicit different kinds of information and stories:

I normally [interviewed them] in their office, but on some [issues], they didn’t want to speak in their office, so I said maybe we could talk later at your home, or private coffee shop room, and then they agreed, and … they were hungry to tell the story. So, they felt like I understood about them sharing the info that is confidential and that they didn’t want to talk about it in the working space, so I chose different locations for them. (Chandy)

Conversely, parliamentary settings established a more formal and, at times, intimidating interaction:

[T]he environment I was in [made a difference]. We were inside the conference room at the parliament, one of the highest policymaking institutions in the land. I had only heard about these women in the news. And to sit across from them [in that room], I would say that I was intimidated. I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m going to interview this MP!’ (Vani)

In this more formal environment, Vani had the sense that MPs were keen to answer questions ‘correctly’. The Fijian women MPs always requested that a research officer be present for their interviews and regularly looked to them when giving their answers as a way of ensuring they gave accurate information. Reflecting on this experience, Vani considered that the interviews would have been quite different had they been conducted in less formal settings, as had been Geraldine’s and Chandy’s experience.

We also created that sense of safety by communicating with women in our local languages:

In the Melanesian context, such as Bougainville and PNG, speaking the local Tok Pisin language and local dialect where appropriate can be key to enabling a researcher to collect the information we are seeking from the women leaders. (Geraldine)

But this also imposed some challenges on us as researchers when we needed to translate back and forth from English because the common language of the projects on which we were working—and of shared project tools such as questionnaires—was English.

I admit that I lost some interest in speaking with older women political leaders who cannot read or write well or cannot understand English, because I had to spend so much energy to get to know them in the interview. During the interview they keep asking me again and again about a question, and it was hard for me to frame it [in Khmer language] and make them understand. (Chandy)

There is significant potential for misunderstanding questions and for increasing the administrative burdens on researchers when interview formats are developed in a foreign language (that is, English), and this can be detrimental to data collection and systematic analysis (see also Palmieri and MacLean 2021).

These experiences demonstrate the dexterity of local researchers in understanding and acting on social cues and cultural nuances that non-local researchers may miss or misunderstand. The finding that women can be more circumspect in their parliamentary environments speaks to the political cultures in which we live, some of which can be characterised as more authoritarian than democratic. In these cultures, women may feel observed in formal settings, prompting the wearing of ‘masks’, particularly while they are ‘on duty’.

Lost stories, comfort and discomfort: What we research

In our interviews with political leaders, we discovered that we needed to demonstrate a sense of openness—that is, we had to be ready to listen and respond appropriately. We tried to create a safer space by sharing our own positionality: who we are and where we are from (for example, our province and family name). We asked them for a little personal background or what Donna and Camilla referred to as ‘starting to stori stori to make them comfortable’. Chandy had a similar strategy to encourage a more familiar interview conversation:

The first two political women leaders I interviewed, I felt this [awkwardness]. Then later I learned how to get away from that feeling by starting with [their] personal interests, not jumping straight into the interview questions, but starting with questions like, ‘How are you? How is your family? Did you go anywhere during holiday? Do you know any good places to go? If you could travel, what country would you want to go [to]?’ When you talk about food, going into personal interest, they feel good. Some of the women knew the director of my organisation, who is the same age as them, and I would talk about her, because they feel the same, and I would tell them, ‘She really misses you, too. I will tell her to call you.’ (Chandy)

These accidental personal stories were some of the most interesting of the entire research process:

It was an enjoyable experience interviewing these two women MPs as I learned a lot from them, especially on their personal leadership journeys … I was inspired by the way these women overcame those challenges in bringing about change in their communities. ‘From a village woman entering the Bougainville House of Representative Parliament’ is how I can describe Honourable Marcelline Kokiai. She had the heart of her people because of the Bougainville crisis and ensured help was sought for the displaced mothers, children and loved ones when it was needed the most. It was an act of courage and bravery. (Geraldine)

While important, these stories were also hard to hear:

One interview [went for] three hours; I just listened to their painful moments. [She told me about] some women in the Khmer Rouge region who had difficulty when they had their period—none of that kind of information is ever mentioned in the history that was written, there is no publication about that. When I interviewed her, I was so interested and kept asking about all these issues, the kind of secret moments. They told me that some women cried and talked about abandoned kids. They had to escape as a group into the forest, and suddenly the baby cried. They feared a Khmer Rouge soldier would follow and kill the whole group, so they had to choose so many different ways to deal with that: some had to abandon the kid; some even left the kid with someone to kill them. Those painful moments, I don’t think they were used to sharing them with others; they are political leaders, meaning they have to keep some secrets that might affect their life and position. [Sharing these stories meant] they spent so much time, a longer time [with me] because they had to pause to cry, not speak, think about their past. But I said nothing; I just kept silent, looking at them, giving them a tissue, and left it as a moment for them to feel that I was there and they could talk to me, confident that the information would [not be used against them]. (Chandy)

Women political leaders have more to tell us than their responses to predefined questions. These are the lost stories that have not yet been captured in the history books; the stories that fill the gaps in our understanding of women’s leadership. In part, this speaks to what we consider to be ‘knowledge’. Traditional narratives of women’s political leadership commonly invite women to talk about their pathways to politics and their parliamentary impact. In our majority-world contexts, however, these narratives may have less resonance to women leaders themselves. Their personal stories of discomfort keep them motivated as politicians and as change-makers. As local researchers, our role must be to find—and hold—the moments in which these difficult stories can be shared. Otherwise, we risk losing these stories forever.

Power, patience and responsibility: Who we are in the research

As researchers, practitioners and activists, we have found that engaging women political leaders as research subjects comes with significant power imbalances, perhaps more so than with other women. In our conversations, we all reflected on the power dynamics inherent in interviewing women political leaders. Geraldine considered that navigating power imbalances was a core part of the research process itself: ‘First, one has to understand the local power dynamics that exist between individuals in trying to strike up a conversation.’

Power imbalances had various consequences. Perhaps most obviously, by virtue of their elected position, political leaders command a certain degree of social and cultural respect. In the Fijian context, Vani related that MPs with a chiefly background commanded even greater respect:

[I]t was a bit intimidating and challenging talking to women MPs who were from a certain social standing—like, had a chiefly background. With our culture, our iTaukei culture, that’s what I had in the back of my mind. I had to reinforce my thinking—‘remember, she is a marama’ [a marama is like a chief]—and I still had to act accordingly. So … I would say, I had to ask questions in a very respectful way. Just because of that dynamic. I was still very mindful of that dynamic. (Vani)

For Chandy, the power imbalance had a different and potentially more serious consequence: navigating, and indeed accepting, the power inequality was necessary not only for the data collection process, but also to sustain an institutional relationship between her organisation and the political leader: ‘I felt the power imbalance: they are older, richer, more powerful, and I know if I did something wrong or said something, it would affect the relationship of my organisation with the government.’

In our reflections on these interviews, it became clear that we often felt responsible for managing these power dynamics, even though we were the more disempowered party. Vani, for example, explicitly put herself in the shoes of a woman political leader:

I [understood] to an extent these women—they are in a male-dominated space—they have to put up those barriers. They would be like, ‘Who is this person coming in to interview me?’

Chandy was critical of herself in the way she managed some of the women she interviewed, while Geraldine gave some thought as to how she would do this differently in the future:

I felt scared somehow, and I had that moment of thinking, ‘Oh, my God, can I just finish this interview right now?’ And that’s bad because the skills to listen to people, my skills of listening to people of different ages and views, are not yet fully … [I]t’s very, very important for local researchers to be patient enough to get away from the power imbalance. (Chandy)

If I were to do another interview with women political leaders, I would bring them together in a panel video interview. (Geraldine)

Women political leaders are not always free to share everything, and we sometimes felt that we were not getting the full story. We felt that there were double standards between community expectations and ‘keeping them accountable’:

I interviewed a young woman political leader, and she started to tell me something and then stopped. I didn’t know if it was enough, but then later I realised she might have something more to tell me. And she told me how she got there in her position because of the network of her father—so, I guess it is like nepotism—but it was also because she’s skilled and knowledgeable. She got there, not only because of her father, but because she’s also smart, that’s why she’s there … It’s very hard when talking with women political leaders. I always had the feeling of needing to be cautious, making sure they are okay, [especially] with problems in their political party or [with] their party leader. (Chandy)

The finding that local researchers feel responsible for managing power dynamics in which they are inherently disadvantaged requires further consideration. Specifically, discussion is warranted about the kinds of supportive tools and processes required to navigate power dynamics so that researchers are not placed in vulnerable situations, and about the perception that their behaviour could jeopardise a research project, development program or an entire organisation.

Yet, the finding also speaks to the often precarious nature of the leadership positions women hold, and their dependence on others—usually men—to keep those positions. Women can feel, as Puwar (2004) eloquently phrased it, like ‘space invaders’, working in institutions that traditionally have not welcomed their inclusion. In our countries, this experience is muddied by the perception that women have achieved their positions of leadership through non-meritorious processes: the ‘nepotism’ implied in Chandy’s example, but also the common framing of temporary special measures as ‘discriminatory against men’ (Palmieri and Zetlin 2020). In these cases, job precarity mixes with a special kind of imposter syndrome, resulting in another set of emotions for the local researcher to manage.

Gender and sensitivity: Why we research

On reflection, we consider that the research topic of gender equality itself can be very sensitive in our local contexts, particularly if it is being researched by individuals in NGOs that have an advocacy role. In the WLP project, for example, Camilla and Donna had been asked to try to interview women ministers with whom they had had separate interactions on temporary special measures (TSMs) to increase the representation of women in parliament. As staff of a feminist NGO, Donna and Camilla were expected to engage with women who they knew would not consider themselves feminist and who had publicly rejected calls for TSMs for women in politics. This history immediately established a difficult position from which to undertake research, especially since that research was also interested in understanding women’s gendered pathways to leadership in politics:

When you’re trying to share information, they say, ‘You’re bringing in a foreign concept.’ You know, it’s issues we face every day. They should know: as duty bearers, that’s their role; we are here to hold them accountable. It’s not like we are putting the blame on them. (Donna)

Political will. This is the biggest thing, the non-sensitisation of people around gender. This needs to be strengthened, because when you throw it on the table … it’s already seen as something like, ‘What are these people doing against the cultural mindset?’ (Camilla)

Vani also noticed that addressing the topic of gender equality can be a barrier to eliciting women political leaders’ lived experience:

I would also attribute it to the fact that they have to put up their guard; they are always in the limelight. They are not afraid of me! But it’s more about the nature of the topic—gender equality—yes, it’s the subject matter. Women MPs who are more conservative, I would say they were … more reluctant, more guarded—yes, guarded about some of those questions. Other women MPs who are bit more easygoing and approachable, they didn’t hold back, they explained that this is their reality, and we should do more. Those women who are a bit more conservative and formal, they were a bit more diplomatic in how they responded to our questions. (Vani)

In part, this challenges the assumption that women political leaders are inherently interested in promoting gender equality. We found in our local contexts this is not always the case. For us as gender equality advocates, however, it remains our fundamental driver for further research on and with women leaders. This suggests that there is a space between us that we still need to bridge. We must build that bridge.

Conclusion

The numerical focus on men’s overrepresentation in formal political institutions, particularly in Asia and the Pacific, has eclipsed a more nuanced appreciation of the lived experience of the women who do succeed in politics. Yet, as we have argued in this chapter, authentically capturing this lived experience requires research partnerships that privilege the experience and contextual understanding of local researchers.

Our collective experience in interviewing women political leaders paints a valuable picture. Their limited numbers mean that they are in high demand, exacerbating their existing time poverty, but also potentially exacerbating their sense of vulnerability. Women are already subject to harsh criticism and, without a clear sense of what they will be able to contribute to the research, they may be suspicious of us. When we can connect and find emotionally and physically safe spaces in which to speak with them, women politicians share new—and sometimes difficult—stories with us.

We reflected that in these moments, we have taken on the emotional labour of ensuring women MPs’ safety in the research relationship. We find strategies to keep women at ease, whether by personalising the initial moments of an interview or securing a location that will encourage a sense of security. Our finding that gender equality as a research topic can sometimes heighten tension between researchers and research subjects also suggests that we may be asking more of these research relationships than we had perhaps previously envisaged. When emerging local researchers engage in research about or with women leaders, in places where this leadership is especially contested and tenuous, the research itself becomes a site for or process of intersecting power dynamics. Both the researcher and the research subject are powerful and vulnerable in different ways—in relation to each other and in relation to the structures and gatekeepers that influence or constrain them, including Western academic and development funding structures, patriarchal political institutions (parties and legislatures) and social norms and voter perceptions.

We find that both researchers and research subjects put themselves on the line in this process—in personal, political and professional ways. This becomes particularly problematic when there is no shared ideology or value system to support the research relationship—specifically, when not all women leaders are in favour of promoting gender equality or identify as feminists. Yet, we often premise effective research in local contexts on the ability of researchers to create connections and establish safety and security, to elicit the lived experiences of women politicians. This ultimately suggests that research projects must consider and manage the conditions required for both the researchers and the subjects to be motivated and feel safe so that the requisite openness can occur, without unintended consequences to the individuals involved or their institutions and wider communities. There is significant scope to consider these conditions much further.

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1. 1 The authors gratefully acknowledge the generous and instructive comments of Tanya Jakimow.

2. 2 The global average of women in national parliaments has more than doubled in the past 25 years, from almost 12 per cent in 1997 (when the Inter-Parliamentary Union began publishing monthly data on its website) to just under 27 per cent in 2023 (IPU 2023).

3. 3 The IPU’s yearly analysis of women in national parliaments has reported the annual rate of change since 2004. The past few years have seen minimal change in women’s share of seats in national parliaments. Indeed, in 2015, the headline of the analysis referred to a ‘plateau’ in the numbers (IPU 2015).

4. 4 After a decade of being the region with the lowest proportion of women in national parliaments, the Pacific was replaced with the Middle East and North Africa in July 2022, following a general election in Australia that resulted in an increase of women MPs in both houses. Without the inclusion of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand in the regional classification, however, the Pacific has the fewest women MPs in the world (IPU 2023).

5. 5 In 2023, UN Women’s ‘Women in Local Government’ website, dedicated to women’s representation in local government (localgov.unwomen.org/), had no data for more than half the Pacific Island countries listed in its database.

6. 6 More information about this project, including its final report (IWDA 2020), are available from the website of the International Women’s Development Agency, at: iwda.org.au/resource/wpl/.