Sitting on the Sidelines? Women's Sections in the Political Parties of Central and Eastern Europe

Recent feminist scholarship on women's substantive representation has primarily focused on women's movements and on women's policy agencies as the most effective actors in promoting women's interests. In contrast, much less attention has been dedicated to examining the role of women's sections within political parties. This is puzzling, not in the least because of the strategic importance of women's sections for gender equality within political parties, especially in terms of their potential impact on party policies on a variety of issues spanning the range from reproductive rights to quotas. This paper examines (1) the emergence and (2) the impact of women's sections in the political parties of Central and Eastern Europe since 1990. The paper focuses primarily on three types of party: (a) the communist successor parties, (b) centre-right parties, and (c) ethnic minority parties. The overarching argument is that the most successful women's sections are not to be found, as one may have expected, on the left side of the political spectrum. Instead, it has been women of the centre-right that have had the greatest success in their respective parties. The reasons for this situation rest as much with the legacies of the communist regime as with the process of party system consolidation in the region.