Why do women in male-dominated societies seek to ‘act for’ women under circumstances where their chances of success are minimal to nonexistent? After all, in male-dominated societies such as those of post-communist Europe, there is often no ‘critical mass’ of women MPs in national legislatures, and the circumstances that enable critical actors to pursue gender policy change successfully (such as active women’s policy agencies or open policy environments) tend to be absent. Yet, as the evidence shows, women MPs do propose policies that have no immediate chance of being adopted, at least in the short term.These efforts are often costly for the women concerned, especially if they go against the grain in their respective political parties. ‘Why do these women persist?’ is a question that the current literature on substantive representation is remarkably unprepared to answer, largely because of a built-in focus on successful policy change at the expense of ignoring missed opportunities and failed attempts at change.
This paper seeks to reconceptualise the substantive representation of women in male-dominated societies as norm entrepreneurship. The key to norm entrepreneurship is that, although not immediately successful, ‘acting for’ women often pay off in the long run by building new norms into the political and legal systems of the countries concerned. This reconceptualisation draws on with three distinct strands of scholarship: international norm diffusion, policy entrepreneurship and state feminism respectively. The case studies are Poland and Romania, although the argument is designed to have general applicability for male-dominated democracies.
