This is a great article which brings up a very important question with some compelling arguments.

Without playing devil's advocate, it seems that the reasoning motivating Mitchelle's argument for quotas is the claim that women are only better represented by other women:

"Women require representation from other women who have common interests based on a shared historical disadvantage and because of the unique social roles women tend to fill such as the emphasis on their household abilities and child-bearing responsibilities."

The philosophical question that this raises is one similar to the debate about whether or not proportional representation (PR) electoral systems are better than non-PR systems. One part of the argument for quotas given hints at a belief that the composition of government matters to such an extent that parliament should be a microcosm of society. The alternative, of course, is that parliament and society are engaged in a principal-agent relationship to such an extent that what matters most are the decisions that governments make -- if these decisions are representative, then everything else is less important. We are more inclined to believe the latter. Once one starts taking the path of defining "representation" in terms of the actual people in parliament and government being a microcosm of society, then such an argument may be a slippery slope. It may begin to beg the questions: when and where should one draw the line? Should the next step then be to establish quotas along other social cleavages such as race, ethnicity, sexuality and so forth in order to get the right balance in parliament?

The above argument against quotas gains strength if one does not believe that there are any "real" intrinsic differences between men and women. Thus, there is nothing "innate" about being a woman that makes a woman a better representative for the interests of women. A man can represent such interests just as well; after all, men have women as their mothers and spouses and there is no "war" or conspiracy by all men against women. This is especially true in a world of increasingly weakening demarcations of acceptable gender roles.

We have made reference here to the controversial statements by former Harvard president, Lawrence Summers, to make the additional point that advocating for women's rights is not a straightforward process and it is easy to get into pitfalls and arguments that may open the space for more discriminatory attacks against women.

At this point, it is worth noting that that the motivation behind the arguments presented here is not to support the status quo -- there are definitely many gender imbalances in the distribution of power in Africa and all over the world that need redressing. The true intent, however, is to suggest that there is something undemocratic about advocating for any electoral system that imposes a specific composition of government, not least in the case where such a composition depends on beliefs or assumptions about differences between sexes. To be fair, Mitchelle's article emphasizes "women's issues" more than it does "representation". However, we believe there may be other ways of reaching the goal of better involvement of women without making electoral systems less democratic via the limits that any system of gender quotas would have to impose on the electorate.

I think it is interesting, when considering Kofi Annan’s legacy, to factor into consideration the general global diplomatic climate when he took to the helm of the UN in 1997. By then, the world was beginning to get tired of the 80s development mantras of "structural adjustment programs", previously purported to be Africa's ticket out of poverty. The continent had witnessed a decade of negative per capita growth yet again. Much of the early-mid 90s had also seen a general neglect of the African continent by the rest of the world.

So perhaps Annan's appointment to the Secretariat in 1997 could be read with justification as a signal of the world’s willingness to finally pay serious attention to African issues and help resolve them. To his credit, in some cases Annan rose to the occasion, for example, as demonstrated by the UN led shift away from "structural reform" and "Grand Solution" development programs to the MDG-centric approach which, in-spite of its merits being under debate, was a definite improvement over its predecessors.

As Kofi Annan departs, not only does the world have yet another set of global development mantras (read: democratization), perhaps even more worrisome, it seems at the end of his stint, the world has never been more depressed and pessimistic about Africa’s prospects. The focus is shifting to Asia, where geo-strategic interests in the Middle East and massive markets in the Far East, with super-power potential, are getting to be of more interest and importance.

So, should we see the Annan to Ban Ki-moon transition as symbolic of the global shift in interest towards the Asia and away from Africa? Is it an indication of the triumph of Afro-pessimism and by extension, when accounts balance, an indication of Annan’s failing -- by omission -- of Africa? I do not mean to suggest that the best scenario would have been having another African as UN secretary general, which would probably have been impossible anyway. I do, however, mean to point out that the bare minimum that Africa would expect from having an African as the secretary-general is that for as longs as Africa lags behind, it remains at the top of the global agenda. The cost of Kofi Annan’s failure, and to me it seems like he has failed for the most part, in this regard alone outweighs any gains from all of his other successes.

However, recognizing the legislation as such should not be reason to fail to take advantage of what could well be a major institutional shift with long run benefits. As stated by Farai, there is already what seems to be a well staffed and professional bureaucracy to manage the institutional shift. Whereas it appears that no major revolutionary change in Zimbabwe is in sight politically (and where the desirability of such change might, in fact, be questionable), it would be a big loss to let skepticism lead to paralysis and neglect.

In fact while -- as already expressed -- it is desirable for greater civic participation to inform decision making and legislative processes, the structure of most democratic institutions make true participation in the actual formulation of policy very difficult. The burden of citizenship then is to try to maximize the benefits of a piece of legislation that is recognized as good by engaging, regardless of the perceived motivations of the policy makers. At the end of the day, citizens are the greatest losers if their non-participation and disinterest reduce beneficial policies to mere political posturing and rhetoric, which might, in fact, be what the desperate policy makers actually want.

It seems to me that the framework in which you both set the discussion is based on a dichotomous understanding of development -- developed and developing countries forming two mutually exclusive sets and development being the process through which countries in the first set move to or become “like” those in the second set. While this might capture some of what development might be, I do not find it a useful way of understanding and dealing with development. You are both right though that development need not be the convergence of under-development societies to be carbon copies of developed counties today -- a developed Africa of tomorrow need not be the U.S. of today.

The fault of the framework through which you criticize the ideological foundations of popular conceptions of “development” is that it is dangerously close to being escapist. There is no denying that developing countries, especially in Africa, suffer from very high poverty levels, resource under-utilization, lack of opportunities for its young and unnecessary death from curable diseases (malnutrition, malaria, TB) which are all almost exclusively developing country problems.

Therefore, understanding the developed/under-developed countries divide in terms of an admission of tangible issues such as these that developing countries are yet to solve through a "development" process is a lot more helpful. Under this understanding, developing countries will get to be “like” developed countries only in terms of having been able to deal with these issues. I think this is beyond reproach. It means that Zimbabwe would still be a developing country if, hypothetically, on average people are as happy and live as long in both Zimbabwe and the US, yet a greater percentage of deaths in Zimbabwe are caused by malaria.

Thus, what the world considers “development” or “modernizing” can have a “neutral” and “objective” base and it would be escapist for us to gloss over and dismiss the material conditions that force so many Africans to leave Africa and come to the US in search of opportunity and a “better” life.

I also think that the HDI does provide a useful and objective measure of what is better for human development. People do care about longevity (perhaps above all). Income is more controversial but it is a reasonable proxy for quality of life (income expands opportunities and choices). About knowledge, I think literacy rates can be equated to knowledge. If we agree that that intelligence is distributed roughly uniformly around the world, then we have to also agree that it is not useful to add it to the index. What people have the potential to know (as captured by literacy) is much more useful. Admitting the importance of literacy in this sense is not “assuming the supremacy of western lifestyles” or incorporating a western cultural standard onto a measure of “development”. On the contrary it is facing up to the reality that in today’s world, is not enough to simply know everything that can be known in your own community. As with intelligence, local, idiosyncratic knowledge can be taken to be uniformly distributed worldwide -- the Eskimo know a lot about snow and the Khoisan in the Kalahari know a lot about sand -- it adds nothing to an index. The ability to know what lies outside of the familiar is a better measure and literacy is one of the best proxies for that ability.