In western societies, the process of integrating women’s issues on the political agenda developed from the left side of the political specter towards the right side of it. This evolution of left-right engagement with female citizens’ issues can be framed as a process of institutionalization of feminism, whose pressure gradually made room for women in the political institutions. Translated into a political engagement across the ideological specter with women’s problems, the institutionalization of feminism can be used to explain the developments that took place in western democracies since the 1990s such as the announcement of the British Conservative Party of introducing all women shortlists in the 2010 parliamentary elections, as well as women representatives’ cohesion across political lines in sustaining laws that benefited the female voters. Confronted with a bottom-top pressure, rightist political parties, from liberals, conservatives, Christian-democrats and even extreme rightists, could no longer ignore the female citizens. But what was the case for the transitional countries of Eastern Europe? By addressing the case of post-communist Romania, in this paper I argue that precisely the dominance of a rightist discourse of political parties hinders the efforts towards the substantiation of the equality between women and men and towards an increase in the political representation of women. Moreover, the revival of a conservative approach to the position of women in society and the rejection of the concept of positive action, as associated with the forced equality policies of the communist regime and with the political left affect the development of a strong feminist movement which could pressure for the introduction of women’s issues on the public agenda, across political parties.
