Suchergebnisse

This article addresses a foundational question of political representation: how do representatives act for those they represent? In a shift away from analyses of individual representatives' attitudes and behaviour, we identify Women's Parliamentary Organizations as potential critical sites and critical actors for women's substantive representation. Offering one of the most in-depth studies to date, our illustrative case is the long-standing UK Parliamentary Labour Party's Women's Committee. With a unique data set, and using both quantitative and qualitative methods, we systematically examine the Parliamentary Labour Party's Women's Committee efforts to substantively represent women over more than a decade. We find that the Committee sustains its focus on a small number of women's issues and interacts with party leadership to advance women's interests in a feminist direction. Our findings capture processes of political change, a frequently under-explored stage in studies of substantive representation. We close by identifying the potential for comparative research in this area.

This article addresses a foundational question of political representation: how do representatives act for those they represent? In a shift away from analyses of individual representatives' attitudes and behaviour, we identify Women's Parliamentary Organizations as potential critical sites and critical actors for women's substantive representation. Offering one of the most in-depth studies to date, our illustrative case is the long-standing UK Parliamentary Labour Party's Women's Committee. With a unique data set, and using both quantitative and qualitative methods, we systematically examine the Parliamentary Labour Party's Women's Committee efforts to substantively represent women over more than a decade. We find that the Committee sustains its focus on a small number of women's issues and interacts with party leadership to advance women's interests in a feminist direction. Our findings capture processes of political change, a frequently under-explored stage in studies of substantive representation. We close by identifying the potential for comparative research in this area.

Since the 1980s, gender and politics scholarship has prospered alongside increases in women's descriptive representation. If a 'feminist imperative' drives us to seek to transform as well as study politics, the potential impact of research and our role as change actors has been little studied. We ask: (1) what effects feminist scholars sought to have; (2) upon whom; (3) when; and (4) through what channels. With two cases – Nordic countries and the UK – we explore the opportunities and dilemmas faced in seeking to enhance descriptive representation and aim to contribute to the development of feminist theories of political change.

Progress toward gender equality in politics is striking. With the help of electoral gender quotas in more than 130 countries, women's national legislative representation more than doubled in the last 20 years. Other historically marginalized groups—racial, ethnic, and religious minorities, immigrants, and indigenous peoples—are also increasingly making their way into our parliaments. Political institutions are, then, more inclusive today than they have ever been. Yet equal representation has not been fully realized: some marginalized groups have seen a decline, and men from dominant social and economic groups—hereafter "elite men"—remain numerically dominant. Globally, there are no known cases in which elite men do not hold a disproportionately high share of positions in national elective office (Hughes 2015).

AbstractThere has been extensive consideration of women's under‐representation in the UK parliament. Here we are interested not only in the question of sex and political representation, but in parenthood too: in short, whether national politics is closed to women, and possibly men, with young children. We start with a review of the academic literature on legislative recruitment to see what it has to say about mothers—almost nothing has been written about fathers. Based on a 2013 survey of UK MPs—men and women—we then identify key features of parents' presence at Westminster. For the first time, we can be sure that mothers are in fact significantly under‐represented in the House of Commons. We then consider whether arguments made to support the descriptive representation of women have purchase for mothers. Finally we consider how political institutions might be reconfigured not to be merely woman or even mother‐friendly, but to be care‐friendly.

The study of conservative women is expanding to compensate for the historic over-emphasis of gender and politics research on left-wing women. We add to this burgeoning literature and assess the extent to which the modern gender gap in political attitudes – where women have moved to the left of men – is evident among supporters of the British Conservative Party. We find that, like women party members, women Conservative supporters are noticeably to the left of men, but only on economic issues. This sex gap cannot simply be accounted for by women's employment in the public sphere, lesser interest in politics or because they are more morally conservative than male Conservatives. These findings are likely to have serious implications for intra-party discipline, the support for the Conservative Party at the next British general election and, if replicated elsewhere, speak to what it means to 'represent' the interests of right-wing women.

The opposition between Flinders and John is largely a false one, and consequently the argument between them is rather ritualistic. On the major issue – that political science must engage in political and public debate – Flinders and John agree. Whether there was once a golden age of academic engagement or whether we are now at the high point, at one level does not really matter; what matters more is that political scientists should be engaging with, and responsive to, public debate. We set out an 'impact imperative' and its sister, the 'feminist imperative', arguing that feminist scholarship has always sought to engage with the real world of politics. We set out a series of recommendations to institutionalise and normalise impact, engagement and dissemination into work models and working practices, which if well managed should not detract from serious scholarship or require an aggressive campaign strategy for dissemination. Instead our approach is based on cooperation between academics, across disciplinary silos and the methodological divide.