Traditional Institutions and Women's Political Participation in Anglophone West Africa: A Critical Review

Abstract

Chieftaincies, lineage councils, ritual associations and the female offices attached to them retain constitutional recognition and considerable social authority across Anglophone West Africa, yet the five states of the sub-region record levels of women's legislative representation that differ by a factor of almost seven. This review examines what is known, and what remains contested, about the relationship between traditional institutions and women's political participation in Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia and The Gambia. Literature was identified through Crossref Metadata Search, OpenAlex, the Parline database of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, targeted institutional websites and citation tracking, with a search period extending to 2 June 2026. Four analytically distinct accounts of the relationship are compared: traditional institutions as gatekeepers regulating access to candidacy and endorsement; as controllers of the land and lineage resources on which political careers rest; as carriers of descent-linked normative repertoires that shape political interest and efficacy; and as parallel arenas that substitute for, rather than feed into, statutory office. The strongest evidence supports the resource and normative accounts, with quantitative work on matrilineal descent providing the most robust demonstration that customary kinship arrangements condition participation gaps. Evidence for the gatekeeping account rests largely on studies of male chiefs, and evidence bearing on female office-holders remains predominantly qualitative, concentrated in Akan Ghana and Mende Sierra Leone, and rarely designed to support causal inference. The cross-national record does not sustain the proposition that formally recognised female traditional office translates into legislative presence: Ghana combines the most institutionalised system of queen mothership with persistently low parliamentary representation, whereas Sierra Leone's recent gains followed statutory quota reform rather than the long-standing institution of women paramount chiefs. Priorities for further work include comparative measurement of female traditional office, designs capable of separating selection from institutional effect, and attention to the neglected cases of Liberia and The Gambia.