Gender Politics in Southeastern Europe: Where and How do Women Govern at the Top

This Paper offers systematic comparative analysis of women’s representation in 10 democracies from South Eastern Europe and is based on originally collected data by the authors. We examine women’s political involvement at the legislative, executive and party level in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia. In addition to enriching the empirical databank on gender politics by offering time-series data on women representation in countries which have been under-examined in that regard so far, the paper presents a new concept for understanding women’s representation, or the lack thereof, in societies which have undergone severe regime-imposed equality policies. The study further purports the rather novel argument that more influential women politicians are found in parties of the right, as opposed to the traditionally expected parties of the left, arguing that left political ideology is not a primary determinant of the level and magnitude of women’s involvement in politics in the case of Souhteastern Europe. Furthermore we forward an innovative conceptual approach on substantive representation, a phenomenon we call substantive presence, which argues that in addition to how many women there are, we ought to be asking where those women are and what impact are the able to have on the political process.