The article's main argument is that a public sphere forms a constructive arena for citizenship practice if we by citizenship understand four components: rights, responsibilities, participation and identity as formulated by Gerard Delanty. The Habermasian (re)working of the concept remains an essential contribution to theories of democracy and of political participation. With this in mind, the author's ambition is to address and to rework a specific type of public: an opinion-forming public within a framework of feminist political theory. The article is informed by the assumption that an opinion-forming public sphere is a central democratic arena in which the process of deliberation has intrinsic value. The analysis draws on a debate where a broader concept of communication than the one proposed by Habermas has been discussed. Iris Marion Young's concept of 'inclusive communication', greeting, rhetoric and narratives, is an attempt to widen public communication and further an ambition of constructing a concept of a more inclusive public sphere. The author suggests that feminist political theory goes some of the way towards reconstructing a concept of an opinion-forming public sphere within a Habermasian framework. The empirical cases (the women's rights as human rights movement and a Scandinavian feminist debate) illustrate how participants in such a public can use the public arena for internal learning by employing a broad concept of communication such as narratives and storytelling as a means of politicizing their situation and as a consciousness-raising and identity-giving process. The article also suggests that the positive reasoning around an extended concept of communication can be criticized. The overarching idea is that the type of communication in itself does not provide the democratic inclusion and the egalitarian communication it intends and that decisions made as a result of it can be misleading.
IntroductionIn Denmark, women gained the suffrage relatively early and undramatically in 1915, when a constitutional reform granted suffrage rights to all men and women over the age of 29. The first democratic Danish Constitution of 1849 had granted the vote to men above the age of 30 who had their own household, had lived in the constituency for at least one year, paid back or been released debt or could dispose of their own estate. "Women, poor people, criminals and fools" [fruentimmer, fattiglemmer, forbrydere og fjolser] were excluded. As a result, 14-15 % of the population could vote (Elklit et al. 2005:21).
I disse år er køn på den globale dagsorden på mange og komplekse måder. Overalt i verden mobiliserer kvinder sig omkring #metoo-bevægelsen mod seksuel diskrimination og vold, mens højrepopulistiske bevægelser i høj grad er præget af traditionelle maskuline værdier.1 Der rejses krav om rettigheder til seksuelle minoriteter, og der er stort fokus på nydanske minoritetskvinders og -mænds medborgerskab, arbejde og uddannelse. Samtidig er der global politisk modstand mod reproduktiv sundhed, herunder abort og prævention, samt muslimske kvinders tørklæder. Desuden ses homofobiske og transfobiske strømninger i mange samfund, ligesom der er negativ politisk opmærksomhed på kønsforskning. I efteråret 2018 lukkede den ungarske regering to universitetsprogrammer i kønsstudier uden nærmere begrundelse. Kort sagt: Køn og andre forskelssættende kategorier er i spil, når vi skal analysere moderne politiske fænomener og samfund. Grundlæggende forhold i menneskers liv – deres sikkerhed, sundhed, uddannelse, arbejdsliv, adgang til markedet, til offentligheden og til ytringsfrihed – formes af deres identifikation som tilhørende et bestemt køn eller kønskategori. Dog står køn aldrig alene men får forskellige betydninger afhængig af alder, etnicitet, race, nation, klasse, seksuel orientering og andre forhold på både individ- og samfundsniveau.
Media Representations of Women Politi- cians from a Gender to an Intersectionality Perspective. This article investigates media representation from a perspective of intersectionality defined as one that deconstructs the category ‘woman’ by looking at different social divisions such as class, ethnicity, gender, race and sexuality. An intersectionality perspective is constructive in broadening the debate on the media as a powerful political site for different groups of men and women politicians. The analytical point of the article is that a perspective of intersectionality deepens the understanding of the ways that the media organize power through stereotypical representation and homogenization of social categories.
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