Conclusion

The Conclusion recaps the transformative potential of Feminist Democratic Representation, before reflecting a final time on the vignettes. This chapter explores how the representational problematics experienced by women might fare were the authors’ feminist democratic process of representation in place. The first effect is a changed composition of elected political institutions: accomplished by supplementing descriptive representation. In transforming the membership of legislatures via the affected representatives of women, the institutional agenda and deliberation are rebalanced in women’s favor, reflective of the diversity of women. The design thus makes meaningful political participation possible, creates stronger representative relationships, and ensures systematic accountability—re-connecting formal politics with the represented. In these ways—through a feminist process of representation—women’s poverty of representation is redressed.

Affected Representatives, Group Advocacy, and Account Giving

Chapter 5 introduces a new category of political actors—the affected representatives of women—and discusses the key features of twin institutional augmentations, group advocacy and account giving. The affected representatives connect women to the formal representation process, establish new representative relations, and, importantly, generate a new context for deliberation by elected representatives on women’s issues. Affected representatives advocate for differently affected groups of women and hold elected representatives to account for their parliamentary deliberations and decisions. The standard according to which elected representatives will be publicly judged is reaching just and fair decisions for all women. Designed in this way, women’s group representation is better able to address women’s ideological and intersectional differences and tackle women’s inequality vis-à-vis men and within-group processes of privileging and marginalization. It is a much more solid answer to women’s failing representation compared with an overreliance on women’s descriptive representation and gender quota, the key first-generation design.

Introduction

Chapter 1 makes a defense of representative democracy even as it acknowledges long-standing and contemporary feminist criticism and surveys the appeal of more fashionable non-representative alternatives. As part of this, the authors consider the failure of political parties to “do good by women.” Adopting a problem-based approach, they remake the case for women’s group representation, reviewing the 1990s politics-of-presence literature in light of criticism based on women’s ideological and intersectional differences. Instead of regarding this as undermining the possibility of women’s group representation, the authors hold that these differences should become central to its successful realization. A second observation is the tendency of gender and politics scholars to disaggregate the concept of representation. Eschewing this approach, they instead hold that political representation is better understood as indivisible: a mélange of its many, overlapping, and connected dimensions. The final section of Chapter 1 introduces the structure and component parts of the book’s argument, introducing the reader to the “affected representatives of women,” and the authors’ twin augmentations, group advocacy and account giving.

When Are Women Well Represented?

Chapter 2 offers a re-reading of classic and newer research on women’s political representation. It is designed not to provide the reader with a comprehensive, global account of what has been said and found by multiple generations of scholars. Rather, by using more select work, the authors show through a critical reading that the dominant “dimensional approach” to political representation limits both conceptual understanding and empirical evaluation of the quality of women’s political representation. This tendency toward individual dimensions of representation—oftentimes discrete analysis of descriptive, substantive, symbolic, and affective representation—not only presumes that women’s good representation is somehow a simple question of adding up and taking away scores for each dimension, but it also makes it particularly hard to conceive, theoretically and empirically, when women are well represented, given women’s ideological and intersectional differences. Hence, the authors’ claim to redress intersectionally women’s poverty of representation demands that we conceive of representation as a mélange.

The Good Representation of Women

Chapter 3 marks a key step in the development of the authors feminist design thinking, contending that electoral politics should institutionalize new representative processes. In so doing, it visualizes new relationships between elected representatives and those they represent in ways that are attendant to debates over what is in the interests of women, and all the time conceiving of the political representation of women in the round. Critically, the feminism of Feminist Democratic Representation refers not to a definition rooted in one or other type of feminism, or one or other set of feminist policies, but to processes characterized by three principles: inclusiveness, responsiveness, and egalitarianism. Chapter 3 also engages head on with critics, and the accusation that in shifting from a content to a procedural approach to women’s substantive representation we had effectively permitted “anything” to count. The authors disagreed then with this criticism, and here they extend their commitment to feminist processes of political representation.

An Essay on Women’s Political Representation

The Introductory Essay asks readers to consider four vignettes—on prostitution, Muslim women’s dress, abortion, and Marine Le Pen. The vignettes illustrate what the authors term the poverty of women’s political representation, representational problematics experienced by women in established democracies. These are also core issues identified in contemporary gender and politics research: of women’s ideological and intersectional differences, skewed political and parliamentary agendas, and disconnect from political parties and electoral politics. The vignettes adopt a dialogical style to clarify and magnify core concerns of the book, highlighting the contemporary relevance and importance of the book to academic scholarship and democratic practice. The discussion of the vignettes weaves through reflection on “representation as it should be,” what women’s good representation might be. There would be significant change to political institutions, political representatives, political parties, and parliaments; elected representatives would be institutionally and systemically required to represent women.

The Promise of Feminist Democratic Representation

Chapter 6 fully elaborates the promise of the authors’ parliamentary design. Ideal representational effects go beyond bringing more women in—through the inclusion of the affected representatives of women—and generating just and fair laws and policies for women. Chapter 6 focuses on the broader effects on both the elected representatives and the represented women—this is what the shift from discrete dimensions of representation to conceiving it as a mélange implies. In short, elected representatives become more knowledgeable, care more about women, and are better connected to women and their experiences. Twin augmentations provide both the means and the incentives for a transformation in elected representatives’ attitudes and behavior. In turn, women finally feel recognized as legitimate members of the polity, are more knowledgeable about their own and others’ interests, are positioned to judge their representatives and are thus empowered, and participate more in a democratic politics now that it is belatedly interested in them.

Designing for Feminist Democratic Representation

Chapter 4 opens the second part of Feminist Democratic Representation. It first offers a discussion of the recent institutional and representational turn in democratic theory. Four ideals are identified that speak to concerns with women’s political representation: (i) democratic representation connects the institutional and the societal, (ii) democratic representation is creative and educative, (iii) democratic representation is deliberative, and (iv) democratic representation unifies and builds trust. These normative ideals are very promising but on their own only go so far. Added to them are the feminist principles of inclusiveness, responsiveness, and egalitarianism. Together these produce the feminist democratic effects that the authors seek. To this end, an introduction is provided to the design thinking and the specificities of the design practices envisaged. Chapter 4 is, therefore, where the authors’ approach is situated within the emerging literature on democratic design.