The Feminist Foundations of Sortition: Reconstructing Democratic Legitimacy Through Material Parity

Sortition has re-emerged as a response to the exclusions and distortions of electoral democracy, yet its normative foundations remain anchored in procedural fairness, cognitive diversity, or broad anti-elitist commitments. This paper develops the first systematic feminist theory of sortition by asking under what conditions random selection can be justified as a feminist democratic institution. While feminism is certainly critical of elite domination, feminist political theory draws attention to a different set of exclusions: the structural and material conditions that silently determine who can actually take part. Scholars have previously noted that people living in precarious circumstances face significant barriers to serving in randomly selected assemblies. Yet the prevailing response has often been to remain sceptical of sortition itself, treating these barriers as evidence of its inherent limitations. Rather than interpreting these obstacles as reasons to reject sortition, this paper argues that they are grounds for transforming the social, political, and economic arrangements that condition people’s capacity to appear as political beings. The paper evaluates the core claims for sortition through feminist principles, identifying the enabling conditions and failure points that determine when random selection can genuinely advance feminist commitments. It then translates these conditions into concrete reforms—such as a shorter working week, statutory civic leave, institutional parity with elected chambers, and wage parity with elected representatives. Together, these interventions establish a feminist standard for sortition, shifting democratic legitimacy away from formal inclusion alone and toward the material conditions that make equal political participation possible.