Conservatism and Women's Political Representation

Abstract

Conservative political actors appear rather troubling for many gender and politics scholars and feminist activists. What should we make of their claims to represent women? How should we best understand their actions? This article, based on a critical rereading of the empirical literature and informed by contemporary representation theory, develops a new conceptual framework for assessing the quality of women's substantive representation by conservatives. We find that under specified conditions, conservative representatives do further women's substantive representation. A first set of conditions relates to conservative claims to represent women. These are considered to be “for women” when they marry conservative women's concerns in society; when conservative representatives act and do not simply engage in rhetoric; and when their actions are not undercut by other acts, policies, or outcomes unfavorable to women. A second set of criteria considers the quality of the process of women's substantive representation. We contend that a feminist process of deliberation about women's interests can include conservative claims as long as they meet the requirements of responsiveness, inclusiveness, and egalitarianism.

Pathways to power: Women's representation in the 2014 European Parliament elections

“…What matters most in explaining levels of women's representation in the EP is parties: our findings suggest that gains in women's representation at EP level continue to be constrained by party ideology. Research on women and politics has increasingly challenged the received wisdom in the field with regards to party ideology and leftist dominance on women's representation, pointing, for example, to the increasing number of women selected and elected by conservative parties around the world (see, e.g., Celis & Childs ). Yet, in contrast to these findings, our study highlights the continuing importance of the traditional left‐right cleavage for women's representation in the EP, with more women elected from left‐wing parties than from right‐wing parties.…”

Promoting Gender Equality through Party Funding: Symbolic Policies at Work in Italy

“…Some parties, especially left-wing and green parties, have traditionally included feminist claims in their policy agendas and supported women's descriptive representation through the adoption, for example, of voluntary party quotas. Other parties have included representative claims that, without being feminist, have nonetheless targeted a women's perspective, as in the case of conservative parties (Celis and Childs 2014) and, more recently, far-right parties (Kötting, Bitzan, and Petö 2017). Also, political parties may strategically promote gender representation to attract women voters, privileging a vote-seeking strategy (Müller and Strøm 1999).…”

“…10.For a discussion of the predictive power of party ideology on women's representation, see Santana and Aguilar (2018). Also, on the right-leaning parties’ efforts to advance women's representation, see Celis and Childs (2014). …”

Verbalization Of The Concept Woman In The Russian And English Orthodox Discourse

“…Over the past decade, many foreign and national academic works in the field of gender studies have been written (Wynarczyk & Ranga, 2017;Serova, 2017;Celis & Childs, 2014). During the development of theoretical foundations and practical implementation of the gender category, scientists agree on gender inequality and gender asymmetry in various aspects of gender analysis (Barchunova, 2002).…”