The Involvement of Malagasy Women Parliamentarians for a State of Law allowing the Development of Women

The exclusion of women is at the heart of the modern political order, despite the gradual recognition of formal equality between men and women in the exercise of political rights. The evolution of the political culture has nevertheless allowed the gradual access of women to power. Yet in the case of Madagascar, gender consideration is not limited to the integration of women in power, but several challenges lie ahead for the country in terms of women's rights. Women parliamentarians through their roles can advocate for women's rights. But the question is how these women parliamentarians advocate for women’s development rights do?Women's development requires respect for their rights, and women parliamentarians, when designing and passing laws, have the opportunity to fight for women's rights, which generally boil down to the right to health, safety and work. The aim is therefore to highlight the capacity of women parliamentarians to establish a rule of law that allows women to develop.
 Women's participation in the proposals and discussions of laws can play an equal part in promoting women's rights and women's development.


INTRODUCTION
The Malagasy Constitution affirms its adherence to the International Bill of Human Rights, the African Bill of Human Rights and the Conventions on the Rights of Women and the Child, while considering them as an integral part of its positive law. Madagascar has a regulatory, political and strategic framework for gender promotion as well as related institutional mechanisms. However, the effectiveness of their functioning has fluctuated according to successive governments, indicating insufficiently assumed political will, but which lends itself to positive actions with sustained encouragement and support Some groups (especially women) may be deprived of their right to access certain goods or services. This is known as accessibility poverty.
In addition, capability poverty expresses a lack of accumulation in the areas of health, social relations and politics. Capacity building is a central axis of development policies and more particularly of policies to fight against poverty and inequality.
The full integration of women in development will only take place when the human resources that women represent are no longer wasted; when health and other social services are applied to the issue of integration; and when a system of education, training and employment that benefits women is put in place.
Over the past decade, efforts to promote gender have increased in Madagascar. In particular, the country has put in place various instruments for the promotion of women, with a view to increasing the representation of women in decision-making bodies. The evolution of the political culture has nevertheless allowed the progressive access of women to power. However, in the case of Madagascar, the consideration of gender in politics is not limited to the integration of women in power, but several challenges await the parliament in terms of promoting women's rights.
The respective missions of the national assembly are, first of all, to legislate, to vote tax revenues and expenditures, to control the action of the government within the framework of the national budget and others, to control the policies of the executive, to ratify and vote treaties, or to authorize its ratifications, to debate issues of national and international importance, to hear and even to listen to the desires and grievances of the people. Also, the proposal and discussion of laws to protect and vindicate the rights of all citizens are an integral part of the roles of parliamentarians.
These different situations lead us to wonder how the involvement of Malagasy women parliamentarians in the fight for rights could promote the development of women?
The development of women requires the respect of their rights, and women parliamentarians, when designing and voting on laws, have the possibility of fighting for women's rights, which generally boil down to the right to health and safety This research aims at demonstrating that women parliamentarians, by intervening for the rights during the proposals and votes of the laws, will be able to improve the development of women.
According to Dubois J.L. (2004), 1 in general, any increase in inequalities hinders poverty reduction. Gender inequalities create constraints that make women more vulnerable to external shocks.
Human development is defined as a process of expanding people's choices to meet their needs in a sustained and sustainable manner. Socioeconomic structures place women in an inferior position compared to men, yet women do not live, work, or function in isolation. Framing their functioning and evolution with concern for their rights will promote women's development.
Our research work to identify the ability of women in parliament to advocate for women's development rights requires a demonstration essay that goes from analyzing the nature and struggle of women parliamentarians for women's rights to assessing improvements in women's development. The use of analytical and statistical methods is necessary for the realization of this work, in order to allow the verification of the hypothesis. The use of these methods requires the use of certain techniques that have also facilitated the collection of the data necessary for the writing of this work.
For example, an opinion poll of some 60 women parliamentarians elected in the last four terms will make it possible to assess their positions on the struggle for women's rights and development.

Conceptual framework of the study
The genesis of gender studies in Madagascar dates back to the early 19th century, by European missionaries and explorers. They argued that Malagasy women at the time were oppressed, even though they played important roles in certain strategic areas related to the practice of traditional religion. Despite efforts to promote women's rights, several challenges await the country to enable women to develop in a healthy way.
The unemployment rate for women reflects the preference of employers for men. Indeed, economic operators prefer to recruit men rather than women, citing the problem of endurance, physical strength or availability. Business leaders blame women for higher absenteeism due to maternity or family responsibilities. Thus, women have more difficulty finding a job than men, which explains the fact that female unemployment is slightly longer than male unemployment.
In a poor country like Madagascar, where there is no system of unemployment benefits, very few people can afford to be unemployed for any length of time, which is why the unemployment rate is relatively low. The majority of the population has to engage in some form of economic activity at all times, however inadequate. In order to be able to reconcile work and family life, women often work part-time or flexible hours. This would explain why one third of women are visibly underemployed in Madagascar, i.e. earning less than the minimum wage.
Domestic activities account for more than 56% of women's working day in the city and more than 47% in the countryside. Among women's domestic activities, meal preparation and dishwashing take up nearly 48% of the time spent on these tasks by women in the city and more than 56% in the countryside, followed by other housekeeping tasks and shopping in the city and housekeeping and laundry in the countryside. Childcare and care of other people account for 12% and 14% of women's domestic chores in urban and rural areas, respectively.) For men, domestic work is limited to maintenance and repair tasks, as well as meal preparation.
The gender and education report in Madagascar indicates that many teachers have different perceptions of girls and boys. Girls are "naturally" docile and disciplined, and boys are rambunctious but creative and "smart Thus, boys are more often asked than girls in science subjects, and have many opportunities for leadership. Girls are more encouraged in literary subjects, and are asked and questioned significantly less than boys, and have fewer opportunities for leadership development.
At the family and community level, the same types of perceptions (about serious girls and undisciplined but intelligent boys) are also noted.
Beliefs about the "proper" qualities of girls and boys guide the behaviors of both teachers and students. The possibility for girls to pursue long studies is compromised by the fact that marriage must take precedence over school and that they are perceived beyond a certain level as less good students than boys. Girls themselves have relatively modest ambitions.
Despite recent progress, girls' enrollment rates remain lower than boys' in most sub-Saharan African countries. In this context, Madagascar is often presented as an exception: enrollment rates are high and there is a high degree of parity between girls and boys. However, within the schools themselves, girls and boys are not treated in the same way.
It is remarkable to observe that from primary school onwards, Malagasy children have completely integrated the stereotypes transmitted by the school, the discourse and practices of teachers and outside the school by the family and society in general. For girls, school is more rarely a springboard to greater autonomy or social advancement than for boys.
In the Grande Ile, customary practices dictate that girls marry early, while marriage is sometimes seen as a protection mechanism for minors or a family survival strategy. More than one-third of girls between the ages of 15 and 19 are married in Madagascar, which is a sign of early pregnancy. One out of every two girls by age 18 has already begun a fertile life, having already given birth to a child or being pregnant with her first child. "Education is one of the most effective strategies for protecting children from marriage. When girls are able to stay in school, a change in attitude can also occur within the community. Girls' puberty and especially unwanted pregnancy remain a particular fear for families. For this reason, girls are sometimes encouraged to marry. Families prefer to send boys to school rather than girls if the cost of schooling is too high for them.
Gender inequality remains a reality in various aspects of social life. Gender inequality is reflected in the silent exclusion of women from the spheres of political power and also beyond, economic, social and professional. Malagasy society is far from having an aspiration for the principle of equality.
The distribution of roles within society is vertical. Whoever does not act as one has always done is not only a fool, but above all someone who risks seriously undermining the harmony -real or presumed-of the world and of society, this deviance risks leading to social reprobation. This rigid hierarchization of society, guaranteeing the privileges granted to the dominant group, establishes another form of violence, that of the obligations and prohibitions that the group imposes on its members. This unequal social determinism is often decried as a kind of "cultural slavery" since the social constraint obliges everyone to conform to his or her predefined social status.
However, the social inequality suffered by women concerns several aspects of societal life. Several factors justify this observation, including the patriarchal character of Malagasy society and the gender stereotypes that accompany it, exacerbated by the survival of discriminatory customary practices, generally to the disadvantage of women.
In this sense, this unequal system constitutes a major obstacle for women to leave the family circle. In general, a large part of the fundamental rights remain inaccessible for the majority of Malagasy women. Gender inequality generates several forms of violence, both physical and moral. Obviously, the opening up of society goes in the direction of an aspiration to equality and freedom. The law constitutes a means to consolidate this change in social norms.
But it should be noted that unlike physical slavery, cultural servitude cannot be abolished by law. The law needs time to change the inequality practices that are deeply rooted in Malagasy society.
The first form of civic engagement concerns the access of each individual to citizenship. The provision of a National Identity Card (CIN) constitutes the indispensable passport for an individual to avail himself of his political rights. The non-acquisition of the CIN leads to the loss of citizenship. Exclusion from citizenship is considered a form of discrimination since the difficulties in acquiring the CIN are generally due to the failure of the Malagasy State. In fact, it is young girls who are the most affected by the non-registration of their birth before a civil registrar. The lack of infrastructure and awareness means that mothers do not care about their responsibility towards their children. In the absence of a CIN, at each election a significant portion of the voting age population is not registered on the voters list. The number of voters registered on the voter's list disaggregated by sex shows that the percentage of women registered is always higher than that of men, although it is estimated that women represent a high proportion of the general population.
Given that the productive use of human resources is essential for development, much more attention should be paid to the role that women play, or could play, in development.
The full integration of women in development will only occur when women's human resources are no longer wasted; when health and other social services are applied to the issue of integration; and when a system of education, training, and employment for women is in place.
The integration of women into the development process is of paramount importance for economic success. If the work potential of women is neglected, it will be seen that not only the development initiative as a whole will suffer, but also that children and family life in general will be subjected to unnecessary effort and strain.
Any change in the system whereby women have not been able to participate effectively in the development process involves, among other things, changes in the important perspective of giving women the rights that will enable them to flourish.
Parliaments have a law-making function. They have the right to propose legislation. In parliamentary systems of government, this right is often given to the government since it represents the majority in parliament and the likelihood of the law being passed is greater in this case. As a rule, a relative majority is sufficient to pass a law. Thus, the presence and involvement of women in parliament could be used to advocate for women's rights.
In order to shed light on the efforts of women parliamentarians to advocate for women's rights with a view to improving the development of Malagasy women, the analysis will focus on the involvement of women parliamentarians in the fight for women's rights and the development of Malagasy women. By analyzing respectively their positions regarding women's rights and their efforts to claim them in favor of women's development.

Women parliamentarians and women's rights
At the base, the Constitution is the main pillar on which the different programs, texts and actions of the Government are based. In its article 6, "All individuals are equal in rights and enjoy the same fundamental freedoms protected by the law, without discrimination based on sex, level of education, wealth, origin, religious belief or opinion.
The law shall promote the equal access and participation of women and men to public employment and to functions in the field of political, economic and social life.
It contains provisions relating to women's rights. A number of laws for the protection of women and the promotion of gender equality have been introduced since the early 1990s. These include, among others, in 1990, the law instituting the legal regime of the division of property between spouses by half and the law authorizing spouses to determine the common residence by mutual agreement 2 ; in 1995, the law reaffirming equal pay for equal work and qualifications and the law on the tourism code repressing sexual tourism 3 ; in 1996, the law punishing adultery of men and women with the same penalty 4 ; in 1999, the law repressing pedophilia and the law on the legal mortgage of married women 5 ; in 2000, the law aggravating the penalties for domestic violence and repressing sexual harassment 6 .
Despite these various laws, there is still much to be done to ensure that women's rights are respected. The analysis of the opinions of women in parliament in their struggle to establish their rights led us to use 22 items that can be factorized or grouped according to the KMO index of 0.760 and the significant p-value (0.000) of the Bartlett test presented in the table below This grouping of the 22 items assessing women's opinions on their rights, according to the results of the table below expressing the sum of the variances explained by each factor requires 3 groups or constructs according to the Kaiser criterion imposing eigenvalues greater than 1 to define a factor. These 3 constructs express a rate of 80.59% of the total information on the responses obtained. Extraction method: Principal component analysis.

Source: Author, 2020
The notion or knowledge of rights among women in parliament In terms of women's rights, it should be noted that despite the recent initiative of the State to launch a process to draft legislation and regulations against gender-based violence, accompanied by an action plan, existing laws lack provisions on psychological/moral violence and harassment. Existing laws lack provisions on psychological/moral violence and sexual harassment remains an offence that is not well understood by the general public, mainly due to its vague/unclear definition. Despite the enactment of laws to combat violence against women, legal practitioners and litigants face difficulties in their application.
The description of the situation in the health sector does not reflect the reality, especially in terms of access to quality health care services for vulnerable groups. This reality can be seen in the high and unchanging level of maternal mortality (478 per 100,000 live births), which reflects the difficulties women have in accessing quality reproductive health services Discriminatory land ownership, property management and inheritance practices persist, especially in rural areas, and perpetuate gender inequalities that disadvantage women in accessing productive resources.
Women parliamentarians are expected to be aware of these different situations regarding women's rights. In this study, the notion of women's rights is composed of three constructs and several items, namely knowledge of women's rights, perception of women's rights and assets to fight for women's rights. The problems of access to health services are due to the reduction of public spending in the health sector for several years.
The knowledge of women's rights can be translated into the representation of different sub-rights. In our case, for this construct, it is composed of 8 different items. The results of our surveys indicate that 50% to 60% of women parliamentarians agree that their rights should be related to health, decision-making and policy rights. Furthermore, we note the total agreement expressed by 53.3% of the respondents that women's rights must allow them to work and undertake. Women parliamentarians agree on the rights to decision-making, the rights to goods and services, to health and to politics. In addition, there is strong agreement on protection from sexual violence, labor rights, the right to entrepreneurship, and protection from domestic violence. The chi-square test of independence on this construct affirms a very significant 7 dependence leading to the production of the graph through the factorial correspondence analysis or CFA leading to the results obtained and guaranteeing the information collected.

Source: Author, 2020
As a result, we found that 53.3% of the respondents agree with the respect of the right to work, 55.0% agree with the respect of the right to politics and 56.7% agree with the respect of the right to decision making. On the other hand, they found that there is no respect for protection against domestic violence and protection against sexual violence, respectively with a proportion of responses of 50% and 46.7%.
The Malagasy State is committed to enshrining the principle of equality between men and women in its national constitution or any other appropriate legislative provision and to ensuring the effective application of this principle by appropriate means, but also to adopting legislative measures prohibiting any discrimination against women, including sanctions, if necessary.

The reality of knowledge and perception of respect for women's rights in the country
By reading the average scores of the items defining the knowledge and perception of respect for women's rights presented in the table below, we deduce from the spread values all equal to 3 that women MPs are aware of certain rights and convinced of the respect of rights on the right to undertake, the rights to enter the world of politics and the right to decision making.
The standard deviations associated with each item whose values are equal to the mean scores express the uniformity of the respondents' opinions. Source: Author, 2020

The position of women parliamentarians in relation to the fight for women's rights
Still in the context of the results of the surveys conducted in the field, we will now look at the position of women parliamentarians in relation to the fight for women's rights. We will briefly look at the assets to fight for women's rights and the degree of involvement in the fight for women's rights.

The assets of women parliamentarians in the fight for women's rights
Many of the assets mentioned by women parliamentarians are applied to fight for women's rights. The results of our opinion polls showed that, with response rates of 50% and 51.7% respectively, advocacy and female solidarity are the major assets in this struggle. In addition, a little more than the majority of women parliamentarians simply agree that boldness (50%) and a sense of sharing (51.7%) are among their assets. However, the ability to listen and the maternal instinct do not convince women parliamentarians too much as a means of fighting for their rights; only 51.7% and 55% respectively agree that they are useful in their strategy to assert their rights. The results of the polls show that women MPs strongly agree that female solidarity and advocacy are the most important assets in fighting for women's rights. They also agree that it is necessary to have the audacity and the sense of sharing to reinforce these assets. Finally, they agree that the maternal instinct and the sense of listening are also effective means of struggle.

Level of involvement in the fight for women's rights
The following table shows us the results of the degree of involvement of women MPs in the fight for women's rights. The responses to this alternative are based on three items. Source: Author, 2020 The result of the first item indicates that the intervention of women parliamentarians in the area of women's rights is not considered sufficient according to 51% of the responses collected during the opinion poll. On the other hand, more than half (53%) of the women MPs strongly agree that the establishment of the rule of law for women requires an increase in the number of women. Similarly, the results of our study reveal that one out of two women MPs (50%) fully agree that the intervention of women MPs in the field of women's rights will ensure the existence of a State governed by the rule of law, i.e. 50% of the responses collected.

Table 9: The p-values of the tests of significant differences between the frequencies of the items relating to the intervention of women MPs in the area of women's rights, the increase in the number of women MPs and the frequent intervention of women in
parliaments on the subject of law. The significant differences between the response rates provided by the women MPs in the previous table judging the trends in opinions are confirmed by the chi-square tests. Indeed, we notice through the various opinions of the respondents that the p-value on the intervention of women parliamentarians in the field of women's rights is 0.000 whereas for the establishment of a women's state of law requires the increase of the number of women in the parliament, the p-value is equal to 0.012 and for the intervention of women parliamentarians in the field of women's rights will be able to ensure the existence of a state of law, the p-value is 0.002, all of them sufficiently lower than 0.05.

The involvement of women parliamentarians in the struggle for the rule of law can improve the development of women.
By adopting the same approaches to validating our first two hypotheses, we can advance the results on the different stages. First, we studied the correlation or dependency between the two matched samples formed by the opinions of the women parliamentarians on the existence of a rule of law that could impact the development of women and, as a reason for candidacy, the desire to develop other women, using the Wilcoxon static test. The result of this test, described in the table above, provides a significant p-value of 0.000 revealing this dependence. Sig. asymptotic (two-sided) ,000

Source: Author, 2020
all show positive values of 0.793 and 0.760 close to 1 and significant (p-values less than 0.05), indicating correlation and proving the fact that the more women's candidacy for parliament is conveyed by women's development, the more they are aware that the existence of the rule of law could impact on women's development.

Source: Author, 2020
In addition, in order to further support the validity of hypothesis 3, we paid attention to the development of a simple regression model analyzing the impact of women parliamentarians' intervention in women's law as a guarantor of the existence of a rule of law.
The value of the coefficient of determination or positive correlation R-two of 0.769, which is significant because of the value of the associated p-value of 0.000 deduced from the table below, formulates in a general way that 76.9% of the variability of the opinions of women parliamentarians on the development of women through the intervention of women parliamentarians in the area of law are explained by the variability of their opinions on the fact that a state governed by the rule of law is a source of development for women. Predictors: (Constant), 122-Do you think that the intervention of women parliamentarians in the area of women's rights will ensure the existence of a state governed by the rule of law?

Source: Author, 2020
The significance of this model is noted if we refer to the value of the significant p-value resulting from the analysis of variance or ANOVA between the two variables studied. Dependent variable: 133-In your opinion, will women's legal intervention improve women's development?
Predictors: (Constant), 122-Do you think that women parliamentarians' intervention in women's law will be able to ensure the existence of the rule of law?

Source: Author, 2020
The characteristic elements of the table of coefficients below of the variables in our simple regression model, allows us to reaffirm the

Source: Author, 2020
The significance of this model is noted if we refer to the value of the significant p-value resulting from the analysis of variance or ANOVA between the two variables studied.

Source: Author, 2020
The    We conclude from this that the greater the intervention of women MPs in women's rights, the greater the findings on the evolution of women's safety at home and sexual safety in the country. .

Source: Author, 2020
The various analyses above validate the third hypothesis: "The involvement of women parliamentarians in the struggle for rights can improve women's development.

CONCLUSION
Madagascar has thus adopted a range of measures in an attempt to ensure better representation of its female citizens in decision-making positions. But the promotion of gender is not limited only to the access of women to power but must also aim at improving the conditions in which the women of the country evolve, because a lot of effort is waiting for the country in this field.
The unreasonable practice of habits and customs discriminates against women and their ignorance of legal rights weakens their development efforts. The State's willingness to make the application of positive law effective and to put in place public policies favoring the development of women is not enough to promote women's development.
For their part, women parliamentarians, aware of the shortcomings in the respect of women's rights, hope to take advantage of their status to remedy the situation. Knowing their roles and their powers to impose themselves in parliament, advocating for rights that allow for the development of women is part of their objectives.