Feminist Democratic Representation

Abstract

If there is nowhere better to go than representative democracy, the ongoing representational failures experienced by women warrant something more than what has been provided for in theory and practice thus far. The first step in making women’s political representation in democratic systems more gender equal entailed securing women’s formal political equality (Phillips 1991, 1992; Saward 2003; Celis and Mügge 2018; Dahl 2006). Frequently defined in terms of suffrage, representative democracy only belatedly instituted “one person, one vote.” Today it should be unthinkable for a polity to be classified as a democracy were women ever again formally denied the vote (Teele 2018). Surely, no one could mistake Atwood’s (1985) Gilead for a democracy?Canonical democratic theory tells us, however, that political equality in representative politics is about something more than universal suffrage: it is also manifest in citizens’ rights to political association. Like other potential interest groups, women, or subgroups of women, must be free and able to organize around their interests (Williams 1998, 10). If they fail to do so, or if women’s interests remain a minority view and fail to be responded to, this does not, in traditional readings at least, detract from their political equality.Being wellrepresented here is not about outcomes, but about fair opportunities to participate politically.