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Contribution short abstract

The study seeks to contend that statistics by themselves do not ensure substantial shifts. It makes a distinction between leadership that drives change that really affects policy and peacebuilding results and tokenistic presence.

Contribution long abstract

Africa's 27.6% female parliamentary participation is cause for celebration, but it presents an unsettling question: when does presence equate to power or actual impact? This research will evaluate how women's political power converts into meaningful influence on development, peacebuilding, and security reform or does not. The study will create a paradigm of "operational restructuring" that separates symbolic inclusion from actual policy effect via comparative analysis across these governance typologies in Ethiopia, Rwanda, South Africa, Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen. The dichotomy is striking: authoritarian settings may sometimes provide aberrant substantive leadership, while democratic institutions, which are thought to be beneficial for women's progress, can produce exquisite tokenism. Leadership pipelines, decision-making frameworks, accountability systems that prevent violence, resource mobilization, and normative shifts that challenge patriarchal societies are the five institutional elements that stand out as being crucial. However, their effectiveness varies considerably depending on the governing setting. Under military or customary rule, strategies that work well in democracies may implode. Therefore, the proximate mechanism is still not entirely understood whether women's involvement in peace talks is correlated with less conflicts. By operationalizing the difference between substantive impact and representational presence, this study through desk research contributes to the debate of the divide and asking not whether women lead, but whether leadership translates into institutional change that endures.