Many democracies have been undergoing significant changes in the last few decades and are widely perceived to be suffering a serious crisis of representation, participation and legitimacy. As evidence that something has gone badly wrong with democracy, The Economist (2014) claims that first, democracy has not proved as easy to ‘transplant’ as expected (as shown by the experience of Iraq and recently democratized countries such as South Africa) and second, the dysfunctional elements of long-standing democracies such as gridlock in the US, disillusionment in the EU together with the impact of globalization, the power of the banks and international financial institutions (IFIs) have led to voter disengagement and lack of trust in politicians, in combination with important changes in party and party systems. Academics argue that many of these trends are visible as ongoing dealignment, the development of catch-all parties and personalization of politics, providing further evidence of problems in contemporary representative democracies (Dalton Reference Dalton2004). But while there may be some consensus on the symptoms, there is far less agreement about the causes and potential solutions to any crisis of participation and representation in political institutions. The Economist (2014) argues for minimizing the role of the central state, enhancing local democracy and updating institutions (for example, with open primaries and reforms to party financing), while young protestors on the streets in countries such as Chile and Brazil demand greater equality and more state spending on social welfare, health and education.
As part of this perceived crisis, the male domination of democracy – both in terms of the nature of its institutions and who participates – has been identified as both problematic, and in many ways emblematic, of the more generalized democratic crisis (and for some, emblematic of a crisis of capitalism too) (Campbell Reference Campbell2014). By the same token, replacing the ‘male, pale and stale’ with more women at the highest level in key institutions has also been seen as a potential solution to various contemporary political and economic problems. This is either because women are supposedly less corrupt and more risk averse than men (for example, the benefits of ‘Lehmann Sisters’ versus ‘Lehmann Brothers’ touted in the financial sphere) or because their presence can embody and symbolize a new and fresh style of politics (Agerberg et al. Reference Agerberg, Sundstrom and Wangnerud2014; Prugl Reference Prugl2012). But I am not suggesting in this article that male dominance is responsible or that more women is the solution; rather I am exploring the gender dynamics of the perceived ‘crisis of democracy’.Footnote 1
The gendered aspects of the ‘crisis’ are notable in two ways. First there is a paradox. On the one hand, it is incontrovertible that democracy still plays out multiple ways to privilege predominantly white, elite, heterosexual men and to reinforce male dominance in a range of contexts (Waylen et al. Reference Waylen, Celis, Kantola and Weldon2013). At the end of 2014 on average only 22 per cent of legislators in lower houses globally were women (IPU 2014). Very few countries have parity or gender-balanced cabinets and, despite prominent exceptions such as Angela Merkel (the chancellor of Germany) and Christine Lagarde (at the International Monetary Fund), few women head national executives or prominent international bodies. On the other hand, there has been a sharp increase in the numbers of women participating in democratic institutions over the last two decades, leading some gender scholars to claim that the ‘male monopoly’ over many political systems and institutions has ended (Dahlerup and Leyenaar Reference Dahlerup and Leyenaar2013). So we are seeing the widespread discussion of women’s under-representation, at the same time as some women appear to be making significant headway within electoral institutions. Second, it raises the possibility that the ‘crisis of democracy’ may provide some significant opportunities to further enhance women’s participation in electoral politics because the demands of those in favour of greater gender equality in the public sphere and those looking for solutions to the ‘crisis’ appear to coincide in the current conjuncture.Footnote 2
How should we understand these developments? In order to assess both the extent to which the male domination of politics is an important facet of the contemporary ‘crisis of democracy’ and to explore whether the crisis offers opportunities to lessen male dominance, we need to do two things. First we have to examine how far contemporary democracies remain male dominated and assess the gendered significance of the changes associated with the crisis of democracy that we have seen in recent years. Is it still ‘business as usual’ in gender terms? Second, we need to analyse the different measures that have been advocated and implemented to reduce male dominance in democracies and assess their effectiveness. We will then be in a better position to speculate about whether the ‘crisis’ could offer opportunities to reduce the male domination of politics.
To facilitate this, the main body of the article will explore both how democracy in theory and now democracy in practice are gendered, tracing through a ‘gender audit’ of both the descriptive and substantive representation of women within democratic institutions, and the extent to which contemporary democracies have moved away from the original conceptions underlying democratic theory. It will then be possible to analyse whether the contemporary ‘crisis of democracy’, often perceived as a crisis of representation, participation and legitimacy, is gendered in ways that are new or unexpected. We can then discuss the effectiveness of some measures that have been advocated to undermine the male dominance of politics in contemporary democracies.
The empirical examples used in this article are drawn from both long-standing and newer democracies (both parliamentary and presidential) and particularly from Europe and Latin America. The article uses a fairly narrow (mid-range) definition of democracy – that is, with a formal/procedural emphasis – and looks at both the formal and informal institutions/rules/norms of democracy. The focus is therefore on democratic institutions rather than on women’s movements/civil society outside those institutions, or on a wider more deliberative notion of democracy. The article will not directly address the political economy of the current perceived crisis of representative democracy but will touch briefly on the impact of economic crisis as exacerbating some of the trends identified as part of the ‘crisis of democracy’.
The article argues that, despite the increased descriptive representation of women, democratic institutions remain deeply shaped by the same elements that informed early liberal theory. Therefore, to engender democracy in a more egalitarian way, we need to do more than just ensure that even greater numbers of women of all races and classes – not just elite white women – are involved as actors at all levels of politics. We also need to change the institutions, both formal and informal, that are associated with democracy in order to promulgate democracies with enhanced levels of participation, representation and legitimacy. Thus, although it is possible to envisage women’s greater descriptive representation resulting from some of the measures implemented as part of efforts to ameliorate the ‘crisis of democracy’, the more fundamental changes to the institutions of democracy that are both necessary to ensure a better democracy for women, as well as other under-represented groups and minorities, and as a result a better democracy for all are harder to imagine.
Democracy in Theory and Practice
Democracy in Theory
There is now a huge literature on the complex relationship between gender and democracy showing that it is gendered in multiple and sometimes contradictory ways. Challenging the gender blindness of political theory, feminist scholars first drew attention to the exclusionary ways in which democracy has been both theorized and operationalized, with the result that women and men were incorporated differently into democratic polities.Footnote 3 Pioneering early work undertaken in the 1980s interrogated how the founding principles of liberal democracy were fundamentally masculinist (Elshtain Reference Elshtain1981; Pateman Reference Pateman1983a, Reference Pateman1983b, Reference Pateman1989). It showed that as a consequence of its theoretical roots, the ways in which democracies operated in practice were unlikely to offer women political equality and would have difficulty in dealing with notions of difference. As a result, even when women had achieved formal equality within liberal democracies, these polities could still exclude women in practice. We will look in turn at each of the three interlinked themes running through various conceptions of liberal democracy focused on by feminist political theorists: the relationship between the public and private spheres, the notion of the individual and the construction of citizenship.
For a long time, the theoretical underpinnings of liberal democracy depended on a separation of the public and private spheres based on hugely gendered assumptions. As a result, liberal political theory, while appearing gender neutral, by maintaining a division between the public and the private as central to liberal democracy, maintained a division between men and women, where only men could be abstract individuals in the public sphere (Pateman Reference Pateman1983a, Reference Pateman1983b, Reference Pateman1989). Feminist political theorists such as Carole Pateman (Reference Pateman1983a, Reference Pateman1983b, Reference Pateman1989) demonstrated the crucial role played in this by seventeenth-century social contract theorists such as Locke. She and others highlighted and challenged the notion dominant within much liberal political theory of the public sphere as a sphere of male citizens enjoying rights from which women were excluded, and they exposed the ways in which women were analytically relegated to the private sphere lying outside the domain of the political. Liberal democratic theory defined the political as masculine in a very profound sense that made it hard to incorporate women on the same terms as men and excluded many activities in which women are involved as not being political.
Feminist political theorists, however, also highlighted how the public and private have never been completely separate and distinct; nor has the boundary between the two been fixed. Women have never been entirely outside the public sphere even though they have been analytically relegated to the private sphere. But the roles ascribed to women in the private sphere affected and still affect their roles in public sphere (Elshtain Reference Elshtain1981). For example, even today the sexual division of labour in the private sphere and the household affects the sexual division of labour in the public sphere, where women and men often undertake different forms of employment with ‘women’s jobs’ often based on women’s supposed caring capabilities and roles in the private sphere. Because the private sphere was positioned outside the jurisdiction of the state in liberal theory, feminists also politicized ‘private’ issues such as marital rape and domestic violence. And, as part of the challenge to dominant understandings of what constitutes the public sphere, they also tried to widen definitions of what counts as ‘political’ and get women seen as political beings.
Second, and linked to this, feminist political theory exposed and challenged the dominant conceptualization of the individual contained within liberal political theory and liberal democracy. The liberal notion of the individual has been an implicitly masculine one. It was a ‘he’ who was the head of household and entered the public sphere to enjoy its rights and privileges. Women were therefore not individuals and relegated to their roles in the private sphere. This liberal democratic notion of the individual is also contained in the ‘rational autonomous individual’ who enters the market that underlies much liberal economic theory (and more recently game theory). Feminist economists (among others) have critiqued the rational economic actor, arguing that individuals do not act in the ways predicted by liberal theory.
Finally the relationship between individuals and the state and polity has also been theorized through the concept of citizenship. Although citizenship, couched in terms of the individual, can be seen as gender neutral, feminists have argued very trenchantly that citizenship remains and always has been gendered (Siim Reference Siim2013). At worst women were excluded from full citizenship and at best incorporated into citizenship in different ways to men. Initially citizenship was restricted to men (but for long periods also excluding working-class men and men of different races such as black slaves in the US); men were incorporated as soldiers and then as wage earners – that is, through their activities in the public sphere. Only later were women incorporated as citizens, often on the basis of their activities in the private sphere as mothers, rather than as workers or soldiers. The legacy of this differential incorporation affected a range of spheres and its impact remains today. Welfare states, for example, were often created using a model of social rights and citizenship that saw men as breadwinners responsible for a dependent wife and children and as such women experience social rights very differently to men (Waylen Reference Waylen1998: 13).
Feminist political theorists such as Anne Phillips (Reference Phillips1991, Reference Phillips1993) detailed the impact of these factors on the operation of liberal democracies in practice. For example, the roles played by women in the public and private spheres as well as the ways in which they have been incorporated into citizenship resulted historically in significantly lower rates of participation by women in many democratic processes. Indeed, liberal democracy has found the empowerment of many disadvantaged and minority groups difficult to accommodate within its frameworks, because of its emphasis on the individual as the basic unit in political life (Young Reference Young1990). Yet at the same time Philips (Reference Phillips1992: 82) has been loath to give up on liberal democracy, arguing that feminism can be used to inspire a more substantial version of liberal democracy.
Indeed, feminist political scientists in turn have considered whether democracies are more likely to implement gender equality policies than other types of political system. Tripp (Reference Tripp2013a: 516) argues that ‘simple cross-national bivariate regressions between regime type and broader measures of women’s status reveal a strong correlation between democracy and women’s status even controlling for economic growth’. Htun and Weldon (Reference Htun and Weldon2010) have also investigated whether regime type matters in the adoption of gender equality policies. Although they found that there is considerable variation between the implementation of different forms of gender equality policies and that regime type is not always a predictor for this, the degree of democracy is one variable that predicts the effectiveness of the advocates advancing women’s rights (alongside factors such as state capacity and policy legacies), as democracies tend to have more developed civil societies, which allows women’s organizations to have greater influence. Scholars have also examined the extent to which transitions to democracy and post-conflict settlements can offer opportunities for the enhancement of women’s representation and gender equality policies, such as through the creation of new institutions and constitutions (Tripp Reference Tripp2013b; Waylen Reference Waylen1994, Reference Waylen2007, Reference Waylen2014a). Tripp, for example, has found that post-conflict states in Africa have higher rates of women’s representation than other African states that have not experienced conflict. Furthermore, in a similar vein to Tripp’s (Reference Tripp2013a) arguments about regime type and gender equality, Oscar Encarnación (Reference Encarnación2014) argues that ‘political regime is a better predictor of gay rights than either economic development or cultural factors such as religion’. Over the last decade, gay rights have deepened considerably in democracies – in contrast to many non-democracies – because of several mechanisms, including the presence of vibrant civil societies, the protection of citizenship, respect for the rule of law and a socially tolerant living environment.
Therefore, while on the one hand historically excluding women, liberal democracies’ open civil societies and cultures of rights and citizenship can provide opportunities that do not exist in other political systems.
Democracy in Practice
Having explored liberal democracy’s complex theoretical underpinnings, we are now in a position to conduct a ‘gender audit’ of contemporary democracies to assess the extent of change, looking at how far men and women now participate and are represented (both descriptively and substantively) differently, and also at the ways in which political institutions such as legislatures and political parties are gendered. This will enable us to determine how far the legacies of early liberal democratic thinking – notions of the individual and the ‘political’ as profoundly masculine, the division between the public and private, and the gendered nature of citizenship – remain. Despite some important contextual differences between them, it is possible to detect trends that are common to both in recent and more long-standing democracies and which were first identified by pioneering feminist political scientists 20 to 30 years ago (Randall Reference Randall1982).
At a time when political participation (measured, for example, by voter turnout) has been declining and trust in politicians and political institutions has also been falling, women’s numerical presence in electoral institutions (‘descriptive’ representation) has increased. However, it is a mixed picture. Globally the trend has been away from male monopoly, and now only 19 per cent of polities (including many non- or semi-democracies but also Brazil and Japan) have fewer than 10 per cent women in their representative bodies. The vast majority of democracies still exhibit ‘male dominance’, with between 10 and 40 per cent female representation. In 46 per cent of polities (including the UK and US), women are in a small minority (10–25 per cent), and in nearly 30 per cent – predominantly in Europe and Latin America – women are in a large minority (25–40 per cent). But only around 5 per cent of states are gender balanced with 40–60 per cent female representation, most notably the Nordic states (an average of 42.3 per cent) and some African countries, such as South Africa and Rwanda. Furthermore, although the legitimacy of all-male executives is often questioned, the ‘acceptable minimum’ number of women in an executive varies and can still be as low as only one woman minister (Dahlerup and Leyenaar Reference Dahlerup and Leyenaar2013).
Men therefore remain much more likely to become politicians than women. And in both newer and older democracies, it is elite women (in terms of class and race) who predominate among female representatives, with many other groups of women (and men) still under-represented. The factors that explain levels of women’s representation have sometimes been couched in terms of supply and demand (Norris 1991). The supply of male and female candidates differs, with more men coming forward, as women’s roles in the public sphere are still affected by their perceived roles in the private sphere – for example, caring responsibilities, experience and ambition (Lawless and Fox Reference Lawless and Fox2010). And on the demand side, electoral rules also impact on the numbers of women who become legislators. In the absence of effective electoral quotas, first past the post systems (FPTP) tend to have lower levels of female representation than more proportional (PR) electoral systems as parties are more likely to choose balanced/diverse electoral lists in proportional representation systems than single candidates in a first past the post system; other factors such as district magnitude, rates of incumbency and the presence of open or closed electoral lists also play a part.
Political parties too, despite a perceived decline in their strength and influence, still play a central role. Long identified as key gatekeepers, they have affected women’s participation and representation by determining candidate selection procedures and often displaying a preference for men (Lovenduski and Norris Reference Lovenduski and Norris1993). Women have faced difficulties in getting selected or were put into unwinnable seats or low down on party lists for legislative elections (Lovenduski and Norris Reference Lovenduski and Norris1993). A range of characteristics, such as party ideology, levels of institutionalization and centralization and the presence of women activists within all levels of party hierarchies, have been found to affect the numbers of women selected. In her study of European political parties in the 1990s, Caul (Reference Caul1999) found that left-wing parties tended to field more women candidates, as did parties with larger numbers of women in party executives. But over the last two decades, increased pressure to select women – whether from women activists within parties, demonstration effects, or because parties feel that it might increase their support from women voters – has contributed to the improvement in women’s descriptive representation. However, evidence that many different types of party still discriminate against women remains (Fortin-Rittberger and Rittberger Reference Fortin-Rittberger and Rittberger2014; Schwindt-Bayer and Wiesehemeier Reference Schwindt-Bayer and Wiesehemeier2014).
Although gender scholars initially tended to focus primarily on legislatures and candidate selection, in recent years they have become more interested in executives and party leadership positions (Jalalzai Reference Jalalzai2013; Krook and O’Brien Reference Krook and O’Brien2012). The change is first because in most polities the locus of power sits with the executive rather than the legislature. Second, it is because there has been a real world increase in the numbers of women in executives. The number of women leaders has doubled over the last decade (Alexander and Jalalzai Reference Alexander and Jalalzai2014). Latin America, for example, has recently seen a swathe of female presidents in Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Costa Rica, and more generally there has been a move away from female leaders with connections to political families (which has been particularly true in Asia – for example Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto, Corazon Aquino) to greater numbers of ‘self-made’ women politicians such as Dilma Rousseff (Brazil), Angela Merkel (Germany) and Michelle Bachelet (Chile). And we have even seen a small number of ‘parity’ or gender-balanced cabinets, for example, during Zapatero’s socialist government in Spain, at the beginning of Bachelet’s first term of office in Chile in 2006, and more recently in Italy, Sweden and Scotland (Franceschet and Thomas Reference Franceschet and Thomas2011). Finally, it became evident that larger numbers of women in legislatures (high descriptive representation) do not necessarily lead to the kinds of changes desired by some feminists.
Although research in this area is still at a relatively early stage, some of the complexities of the gendering of contemporary executive office and political leadership are emerging. A number of, somewhat contradictory, trends have been noted. In their study of female cabinet ministers in five presidential democracies, Escobar and Taylor Robinson (Reference Escobar and Taylor Robinson2014) found that, except for appointments to economic posts, the political capital resources and effectiveness of the women are not significantly different to their male colleagues. There is also some evidence that women leaders’ pathways to office do not differ hugely from men’s (Mueller-Rommel et al. (Reference Mueller-Rommel, Kubbe and Vercesi2014) found this in their study of prime ministers in Europe). However, although there are increasing numbers of women now being appointed to more non-traditional ‘hard’ ministries such as defence, interior and even foreign affairs or finance, the long-recognized tendency for female cabinet ministers to be appointed to ‘soft’ positions such as education, health and women’s ministries continues (again resonating with women’s perceived roles in the private sphere). And a study of the cabinet careers of ministers in Westminster democracies found that, on average, women ministers started in more lowly positions and were less likely to be promoted to high-status jobs than male ministers (Curtin et al. Reference Curtin, Kerby and Dowding2014).
At the same time, analyses of the gender of party leadership (often a stepping-stone to becoming prime minister in parliamentary democracies) show first that women are more likely to stand for party leader in low-competition situations – namely, when few men are putting themselves forward (Beckwith Reference Beckwith2014) – and furthermore, that women are not only more likely to succeed in becoming party leaders when the political party is doing badly, but they are also more likely than a male leader to be removed if their party is doing badly (O’Brien Reference O’Brien2014).
Gender scholars have not only looked at women’s ‘presence’ and their descriptive representation but for some time they have also looked at substantive representation and the relationship between the two. Substantive representation, according to Childs and Lovenduski (Reference Childs and Lovenduski2013), is the extent to which representatives advance a group’s policy preferences and interests. However, the concept of ‘women’s interests’ has long been a contested one, with many gender scholars disputing the extent to which there can be common interests shared by all women regardless of differences (for example, in terms of class, race and sexuality). As a result, others argue that substantive representation should be understood in terms of ‘voice’ and ‘claims making’ by representatives on behalf of particular groups (thereby raising the issue of who judges the veracity of claims to represent particular groups) (Childs and Lovenduski Reference Childs and Lovenduski2013).
Notwithstanding these conceptual issues, recent analyses of the substantive representation of women within liberal democracies have focused on two main themes. First, studies have looked at the extent to which female representatives, for example in legislatures, ‘act for’ women, measured in terms of advancing or voting for legislation or policy change that is seen to be in women’s interests – whether this is around equality issues, reproductive rights or more traditional welfare concerns (Schwindt Bayer Reference Schwindt-Bayer2010). The empirical evidence is somewhat mixed. It does seem that on the whole women legislators are more likely to promote and support measures that are identified with ‘women’s interests’ than men, but this varies considerably according to the issue as well as party strength, party discipline and the party’s position on that issue (Swers Reference Swers2002, Reference Swers2013). For example, women legislators of different parties are more likely to act together around less contentious issues such as child maintenance payments and domestic violence than more contentious ones like reproductive rights and abortion rights in particular (Franceschet and Piscopo Reference Franceschet and Piscopo2008; Waylen Reference Waylen2000). As part of the scepticism about the relationship between descriptive and substantive representation, attention also shifted from notions of a ‘critical mass’ – the number of female representatives (often seen as 30 per cent) needed to make a significant difference – to a focus on ‘critical actors’, that is, examining the roles of key women (and men) who seek to represent women substantively as a group (Childs and Krook Reference Childs and Krook2009).
Second, state bureaucracies and policy-making processes are another important area for feminist scholars thinking about how women’s interests (however defined) might fare within governance structures. Building on long-standing feminist analyses of the state which see it not as a homogeneous entity but as a complex collection of institutions and contested power relations, state structures are not considered neutral but gendered, and as a result policy outputs may have a differential impact on men and women, often with a detrimental effects on women (Waylen Reference Waylen1998). Some feminist scholars have also focused on efforts to create gender equality policies and women’s policy agencies within the state (so-called ‘state feminism’) (Stetson and Mazur Reference Stetson and Mazur1995). Other feminists have subjected ostensibly gender-neutral policies to gendered analysis. Recently attention has turned to the austerity policies implemented in many developed economies as a response to the economic crisis beginning in 2007/8. Although male unemployment initially rose more than female unemployment, subsequent cuts in state employment and the state provision of welfare services have had a negative impacts on many women. It is particularly poor, often ethnic minority and migrant, women – who make up a substantial part of the paid providers of welfare services and low-paid state employees and who are often the largest recipients of the welfare payments and services – that have been hardest hit. In the UK, retrenchment has also been accompanied by a hardening of public attitudes towards welfare recipients, migrants and equality policies.
We can see that, even if these have narrowed over recent decades, gender differences in participation and representation remain in liberal democracies. But one dimension we have yet to explore explicitly as part of our gender audit is the role of political institutions qua institutions in the gendering of democracy. Following an ‘institutionalist turn’ in much of political science, many gender scholars – who share an understanding of institutions as gendered rules, norms and practices (with both formal and informal dimensions) that shape actors’ strategies and preferences – have started looking at political institutions both in terms of the formal rules and also the informal norms and practices (Krook and Mackay Reference Krook and Mackay2011). We have seen that the formal rules of most political systems are now ostensibly gender neutral (with the exception of quotas). There are few political systems that have not extended full suffrage to women and men, and women formally compete as candidates on the same terms. But at the same time we saw that the operation of different electoral rules – for example, first past the post and proportional representation systems – do contribute to different levels of male and female representation. And, as we will see, formal rule change such as the introduction of quotas and changes to constitutions to enhance rights and equality can have a huge impact if they are well designed, appropriate and enforced. However, this does not undermine the notion that political institutions are gendered nominally and substantively – nominally through gender capture and substantively through numerous mechanisms, like social norms based on accepted ideas about masculinity and femininity that equate masculinity with rationality, power, boundary setting and control and femininity with its opposite: passivity, care, emotion and irrationality – that result in gender bias (Chappell and Waylen Reference Chappell and Waylen2013). Of course, masculinity and femininity come in plural forms, with some forms of masculinity operating hegemonically in some settings – for example, in the military.
The gendered nature of the informal institutions – the informal rules, norms and practices – is therefore one dimension of political systems that requires more attention. However, as a number of political scientists have pointed out, informal institutions are often harder to discern than formal ones as their rules and sanctions are not explicit (generally unwritten and communicated through channels that are not official according to Helmke and Levitsky Reference Helmke and Levitsky(2004)) and as a result they are often even harder to change. Informal rules, norms and practices can act to prevent women’s political participation and effectiveness. In her study of Scotland, Kenny (Reference Kenny2013) has shown how informal norms affect selection procedures, informing assumptions about what constitutes a good candidate. Informal networks (often termed ‘old boy’ networks) can act to exclude women. Elin Bjarnegård (Reference Bjarnegård2013), for example, has identified the importance of ‘homosocial capital’, whereby male-dominated informal networks influence candidate selection processes in political parties in Thailand. Within political institutions, these informal practices can continue to work in gendered ways. The heckling that is commonplace and largely tolerated in the UK Parliament can be extremely gendered, with female MPs forced to endure misogynistic comments (Chappell and Waylen Reference Chappell and Waylen2013). The persistence of informal norms and rules can sometimes undermine attempts to change or reform existing formal rules or impact on newly created institutions such as the Scottish Parliament or the International Criminal Court, ensuring that their ‘newness’ remains ‘nested’ in old practices that continue to be ‘remembered’ while the new is ‘forgotten’ (Chappell Reference Chappell2014; Mackay Reference Mackay2014). It is also possible for new informal norms to develop that can undermine a new institution. For example, the French quota system has been routinely sabotaged by a new informal norm that it is acceptable for (larger and wealthier) parties to ignore the quota rules and pay the fine (Waylen Reference Waylen2014a).
Gendering the ‘Crisis of Democracy’
In this section, we explore in more depth how recent changes in participation, representation and legitimacy associated with the ‘crisis of democracy’ are gendered, before considering how male dominance in contemporary democracies could be lessened. Two interlinked trends associated with the ‘crisis of democracy’ are important to our analysis: first, changes to parties and party systems; and, second, an increased focus on leadership, the personalization of politics and the changed role of the media. Dahlerup and Leyenaar (Reference Dahlerup and Leyenaar2013) argue that these have both positive and negative effects on women’s participation and representation within electoral politics.
Widespread dealignment – with declining levels of party membership and voting – accompanied by declining levels of trust in politicians and interest in politics are symptomatic of the changes in party systems. As mass parties disappear, some rank-and-file organizations such as women’s sections have been abolished, and the ‘new-look’ parties, comprising a small core of professionalized politicians and advisers, remain open to accusations of continuing male domination. But, increasingly, ‘catch-all’ parties, less differentiated by ideology, try to appeal to different groups of voters. As part of this, women voters are often targeted in specific (and more ‘modern’) ways. Policy proposals, such as promises to increase the availability of childcare, are often aimed at women. Throughout the Scottish independence referendum campaign in 2014, for example, the gender gap in support for independence was identified as a key motivation for the childcare pledges of the SNP (Scottish National Party). One poll conducted in August 2014 put the gender gap at 12 per cent, with women’s support for independence running at only 27 per cent, with men’s at 39 per cent. However, the gap was estimated to have narrowed to only 3 per cent in the referendum in mid-September 2014, with 47 per cent of men and 44 per cent of women voting for independence (Ashcroft Reference Ashcroft2014).
To broaden their appeal, parties also try to present a less male-dominated image, hoping that women will provide ‘fresh faces’ or make parties appear more modern. For example, in part to counter the perception that it is dominated by a male public school clique, the UK coalition government of 2010–15 positioned women MPs prominently in the television coverage of parliamentary debates (particularly Prime Minister’s Question Time) and very publicly appointed more women MPs to cabinet posts in the reshuffle of July 2014. Parties also attempt to select and field more women candidates (seen as part of the motivation for Michelle Bachelet’s selection in 2005 as presidential candidate by the increasingly tired ruling Concertación coalition in Chile (Staab and Waylen Reference Staab and Waylen2014)).
However, some of the new selection procedures widely touted as part of measures to revitalize politics and counteract falling party memberships can have negative effects on women’s representation. There is some evidence, for example, that selection through primaries can result in fewer women candidates and make it harder to enforce mechanisms aimed at increasing numbers of under-represented groups. Magda Hinojosa (Reference Hinojosa2012) found in her analysis of candidate selection in Latin America that primaries disadvantage women candidates. Party fragmentation and the rise of ‘anti-politics’ parties, on both the left and the right, can also affect women’s representation in a number of ways. An increasing number of parties can sometimes reduce the number of women elected as more small parties often each have fewer women representatives on the top of their lists (Dahlerup and Leyenaar Reference Dahlerup and Leyenaar2013). Some (but not all) right-wing populist parties, often anti-migrant and xenophobic, also have few women representatives, but parties at the other end of the political spectrum – such as Green parties – often have higher than average numbers of women in senior positions, including as leader.Footnote 4 Dahlerup and Leyenaar (Reference Dahlerup and Leyenaar2013) argue that, on balance, the overall effect of these changes on women’s representation has been positive in the European countries they studied.
Accompanying the decline in political parties and party systems has been an increased emphasis on leadership and a personalization of politics. As such, the personal characteristics of leaders become more important, with a differential effect on women and men. On the one hand women’s performance (such as that of Julia Gillard in Australia) is often judged differently (and often more harshly) than men’s, but at the same time women can be more likely to achieve leadership positions if they are seen as ‘new brooms’ or as part of a revitalization of politics (Beckwith Reference Beckwith2014; O’Brien Reference O’Brien2014). Now that increased numbers of women have reached leadership positions, more research is needed on whether men and women exercise (or are seen to exercise) leadership in different ways. Franceschet et al. (Reference Franceschet, Piscopo and Thomas2013), for example, argue that female leaders in Latin America use four different strategic frames to justify their political careers: the traditional supermadre, the technocratic caretaker, the macho minimizer and the difference denier. And given the new prominence of devices, such as leaders’ debates, in parliamentary as well as presidential elections, it would be useful to know more about their gendered dimensions.
The increased role of the media, and social media in particular, also has a mixed impact on women’s political activity. It is clear that the ways that politicians and leaders are treated by the media continue to be very gendered, and there is some argument that female politicians in particular are increasingly subjected to the kind of scrutiny more often afforded to celebrities. For example, the appearance, dress and behaviour of female politicians are much more widely commented on than their male colleagues’ (O’Brien and Savigny Reference O’Brien and Savigny2014). On 16 July 2014 the Daily Mail, a UK newspaper, used the headline ‘Thigh Flashing Esther, and the Battle of the Downing Street Catwalk’ to report the increased number of female politicians appointed to David Cameron’s cabinet in the reshuffle of July 2014, illustrating it with catwalk-style pictures of all the new female ministers. At the same time Angela Merkel was widely reported (positively in the German media but less positively elsewhere) as having worn the same tunic on at least three public occasions since 1998.
However, new forms of grassroots participation can also be facilitated by social media, allowing campaigns a prominence that would have been hard to achieve otherwise. But conversely social media can also facilitate the harassment and denigration of women campaigners and politicians, as the campaigners (including a female MP) to get a woman on the UK currency found in 2013 when they received misogynistic abuse, including rape threats, via Twitter. This phenomenon has been identified by Krook and Restrepo-Sanis (Reference Krook and Restrepo-Sanis2014) as part of more generalized violence against women in politics. Indeed, some commentators have speculated that the (new and old) media treatment of female politicians increasingly acts to discourage women from putting themselves forward for office. The ‘crisis of democracy’ therefore appears to have some contradictory effects, intensifying some existing trends which are resulting in increasing descriptive representation for women, at the same time as subjecting female politicians to greater pressures.
What More can be Done to Undermine Male Dominance in Politics?
If there is now additional momentum to reduce male dominance as a result of the ‘crisis of democracy’, it is useful to analyse the strategies on offer. These have been framed in terms of improving women’s descriptive and substantive representation as well as promoting institutional change. Increasing women’s descriptive representation, and particularly of under-represented groups such as poor, working-class, LGBT, disabled and ethnic minority women, is advocated for all formal institutions, including executives and judiciaries as well as parliaments and other international governance organizations, and at all levels from the local to the international for both symbolic and justice reasons. Having more women in the supply pipeline will also increase the pool of eligible candidates for executive positions, particularly in parliamentary democracies where cabinets are drawn primarily from elected representatives.
There are a number of strategies to increase both supply and demand that vary in their effectiveness. Several measures to encourage more women to put themselves forward and to support potential women candidates exist. ‘Soft’ measures range from the provision of funding (such as EMILY's list in the US) to the leadership training courses and mentoring programmes undertaken by political parties, universities, women’s policy agencies and non-governmental organizations. On their own, these will have only a limited effect, as many parties still display a reluctance to select female candidates. It is also essential to increase the demand for female candidates. New formal rules are one of the most important ways to ensure that women are selected by parties. The best-known and most effective measure to increase the demand for women candidates and therefore levels of women’s representation is gender quotas. These have been very widely adopted all over world and, if they are well designed, appropriate and enforced (which does not always happen), are a ‘fast track’ way to increase in women’s representation (Dahlerup Reference Dahlerup2006; Franceschet et al. Reference Franceschet, Krook and Piscopo2012; Krook Reference Krook2009). Indeed, more than 50 per cent of electoral polities now have a form of quota, whether in the form of electoral quotas, party quotas or reserved seats (Dahlerup and Norris Reference Dahlerup and Norris2014).
Despite their potential and proven efficacy, quotas have been controversial, with critics arguing that they undermine merit and result in women politicians who are less qualified than their male peers (reminiscent of the ‘milk maid’ syndrome in the ex-Soviet bloc). But there is no evidence that ‘quota women’ are different from other women politicians. Allen et al.'s (Reference Allen, Cutts and Campbell2014) analysis of Labour women elected from all-women shortlists in 1997 in the UK shows that ‘quota women’ are as well qualified as their non-quota colleagues and are treated the same both by voters and by the gatekeepers of executive office. It is also argued that gender quotas can improve the quality of male politicians. Besley et al. (Reference Besley, Folke, Persson and Rickne2013) examined the data on candidates in Swedish municipalities over seven elections and claim that the ‘zipper quota’ implemented by the Social Democratic Party actually increased the competence of male politicians. As a result of all these factors, Murray (Reference Murray2014) argues that gender quotas should be reframed; rather than being seen as applying only to women candidates, they should be seen as quotas for men in order to undermine men’s dominance over the talent pool and reduce the suspicion and scrutiny that women politicians are subjected to.Footnote 5 However, as Franceschet and Piscopo (Reference Franceschet and Piscopo2008) argue, using the case of Argentina, quotas may increase the number of women, but they do not necessarily disturb the underlying male hierarchies or exclusionary male networks.
A number of measures have also been implemented to improve the substantive representation of women and ensure ‘gender-friendly’ policy-making. Among the best-known formal mechanisms are state women’s machineries/women’s policy agencies. These have had mixed success, depending on their location within the state, their levels of funding, support from government, technical expertise and capacity to initiate or deliver policy – many have been peripheral, underfunded and powerless in the face of resistance both inside and outside the state (Waylen Reference Waylen2000). Some have also been criticized by feminist activists outside the state for ignoring their claims-making and failing to represent their interests or voices. In part as a response to the critique that gender concerns are marginalized within these separate, often ineffectual bodies, gender has been ‘mainstreamed’ within national and international organizations, trying to ensure that the gendered implications of all policy is considered at every stage, from design to implementation (Waylen Reference Waylen2008). Again, the verdict on the effectiveness of gender mainstreaming is mixed. Some believe that it can make a difference (and even be transformatory) if there is institutional commitment and it is implemented and monitored by trained staff, but others argue that gender mainstreaming can never be any more than a technocratic tool with limited possibilities for profound change. But, although limited in its potential, gender mainstreaming can uncover the ways in which many policies (such as austerity policies and welfare cuts discussed earlier) are highly differentiated in their impact on women and men in ways not immediately recognized by policymakers.
It is clear from the preceding discussion that achieving gender-equitable democracy and undermining the male dominance of political systems require more than an increase in the numbers of women and the introduction of mechanisms such as gender mainstreaming into policy-making to enhance substantive representation. Indeed, presence is sometimes over-emphasized – it may be necessary but it is also limited in what it can achieve (Waylen Reference Waylen2014b). More profound institutional change is necessary to enable critical actors to be more effective and challenge male dominance. Institutional change can take various forms – either via the creation of new institutions (for example, as a result of a transition to democracy or the design of a new constitution) or more commonly via the reform or redesign of existing institutions such as legislatures and parties. But it is also clear from the preceding analysis that changing formal institutions is often not enough. Informal institutions also need to be modified as pre-existing informal institutions can undermine efforts to create more gender-equitable outcomes or the absence of ‘completing’ informal institutions makes the success of formal rule change less likely. However, changing informal institutions – such as the often widely accepted gendered norms and practices that contribute to a sense of politics as a masculine business and undermine women’s effectiveness, making it harder for women to progress through politics and for certain gender measures to become law – presents a big challenge, as we saw from our discussion of ‘nested newness’. But changing both the formal and informal institutions, creating more open and transparent political systems in place of closed and male-dominated ones make it more likely that women will come forward.
Conclusions
Contemporary democracies remain male dominated, despite the changes that have taken place over the last couple of decades that have brought a significant increase in the numbers of women in positions of power. We have also seen how democracies have not escaped their rootedness in liberal theory. The analytical separation of the public and the private and the construction of notions of the ‘political’ and the individual as masculine still mean that women and men are incorporated into politics in different ways. Therefore, although politics in contemporary democracies is no longer ‘business as usual’, it certainly has not been transformed.
We have also seen that the ‘crisis of democracy’, often seen as a crisis of representation, participation and legitimacy, has had a somewhat contradictory impact in gender terms. On the one hand, it has increased the opportunities as well as intensified the pressure for an increase in the numbers of women in electoral politics. Measures to raise the levels of women’s descriptive representation by increasing the demand for women politicians, such as quotas, now have widespread acceptability and there is a greater sense of urgency surrounding their implementation in many contexts. Increasing the representation of women also offers some potential to revitalize democratic politics. There is evidence, for example, that the presence of women leaders increases women’s levels of political activity and voting (Alexander and Jalalzai Reference Alexander and Jalalzai2014; Reyes-Householder and Schwindt-Bayer Reference Reyes-Householder and Schwindt-Bayer2014).
In this sense, the ‘crisis of democracy’ has itself contributed to the reduction in the male dominance of politics. And one of its perceived solutions – raising the numbers of women – could help to ameliorate some of the widely perceived symptoms of the crisis, such as declining levels of participation and a sense of the increasing aloofness of politicians from ‘ordinary people’. However, it is necessary to go further than this to ensure the greater participation and representation of, not just some women, but all currently under-represented groups and minorities. This is fundamental to ensuring a secure future for liberal democracy. Replacing white, privately and Oxbridge-educated male MPs and cabinet ministers with white, privately and Oxbridge-educated female MPs in the UK Houses of Parliament is not necessarily a significant improvement.
At the same time the ‘crisis of democracy’ has intensified some of the trends that make politics a difficult place for many women and can also lead to policy outcomes that are not necessarily gender friendly. As we have seen, the increased presence of women (descriptive representation) in the political sphere does not necessarily lead to their increased substantive representation. Women legislators cannot necessarily be relied upon to support progressive gender agendas, for example around equality and reproductive rights. And measures to increase women’s substantive representation, such as gender mainstreaming and women’s policy agencies, have had mixed effectiveness (one consequence of both the political and economic crisis has been to lessen support for equalities policies in many polities, even if this has been maintained in others, like Chile). Many of these measures have therefore been subject to increased contestation, retrenchment and backlash in recent years. And while new forms of participation, such as citizens’ juries, can afford new opportunities for exercising voice, facilitated by social media like Twitter, the new (and old) media can also provide new forms of accentuating gender difference in ways that have negative repercussions for many women.
For the future of democracy to be one where the participation of and representation of all groups is enhanced, and the decline in the legitimacy of political institutions is reversed, more profound institutional change than simply increasing the participation of (some) women in politics is required. This alone cannot provide a solution to the ‘crisis of democracy’ or end male dominance in politics. We need change to the formal as well as the informal rules, norms and practices that shape political life and democracy to help to enable everyone to participate fully, regardless of race, class, gender, disability or sexuality.
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the European Research Council (Advanced Grant no 295576-UIC, Understanding Institutional Change: A Gender Perspective) for supporting some of the research reported here. I would also like to thank the workshop participants, the editors, an anonymous reviewer and Marcela Rios for their helpful comments.
