Making Democratic Design Feminist: A Systemic Approach to (In)Equality

Karen Celis and Sarah Childs, both political science Professors, have been co-authors for over two decades working on women’s political participation and representation, theoretically and empirically. During the production of their award-winning 2020 book, Feminist Democratic Representation, they came to think of themselves as feminist democratic designers of sorts. Moving beyond the re-design for a single political institution (an intersectional, second-generation design for group representation in parliaments), they are currently engaged in systemic design thinking to bring about democratic polities that meet real world inequalities and injustices. Note to the Section Chairs regarding the format of the roundtable: The panel is organized as something between a traditional roundtable and an author meets its critiques. New papers will be circulated by Saward (on feminist design) and Celis and Childs (on feminist democratic design) in May to Amara-Hammou and Wojciechowska. This enables the latter to bring their research expertise to the new papers’ foci, approaches, and arguments, ensuring that the panel is, on the day, a considered ‘four way’ conversation between all of the panellists. In this way, we expect the panel to provide an informed sketch of new research agendas.