The Study of Women's Political Representation: Power, Privilege and Disadvantage

Abstract

The insight that women’s social positions and subject formations are affected by the complex intersections of power systems (such as, but not exclusively, patriarchy, racism, ageism, and heteronormativity) has revealed the shortcomings of prior, often white, middle-class, feminist, delimitations of women’s interests (e.g., Reingold & Swers 2011; Mügge and de Jong 2013). The understanding that women’s representation originates within a claim to speak for women (cf. Saward 2006; 2010) has, in addition, called for a reconsideration of the assumed relation between women’s descriptive and substantive representation (e.g., Childs and Krook 2006) and the prima facie importance of parliament as a venue for women’s representation (Lovenduski & Guadagnini 2010; Erzeel 2012). Reflecting a heightened understanding of the endogeneity of women’s interests and the competitiveness of women’s political representation, scholars have recently begun to explore the relations of power, privilege and disadvantage that undergird women’s political representation (e.g. Severs 2010). Scholars have, for instance, made the type of women (not) represented and the interests attributed to them a question of empirical investigation (e.g., Celis et al. 2008; Meier 2008; Childs et al. 2010). Scholars have, similarly, begun to attribute greater attention to competition among women and women’s complicity in the marginalisation of other ‘Others’ (Severs et al. 2013). This panel aims to further investigate the relations of power, privilege and disadvantage that are at play in women’s political representation. It invites contributions that deal with single dimensions of women’s political representation (i.e., formal, symbolic, descriptive, and substantive representation) or that focus on the interaction between these dimensions.

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