Creating and Feeding Discourses on Political Representation of Women. Can MPs and NGOs join hands on quotas?
Creating and Feeding Discourses on Political Representation of Women. Can MPs and NGOs join hands on quotas?

Summary/Abstract: In this paper I reflect on the discourses created around political representation by MPs and feminist NGOs associated with the Gender Equality Coalition in their endeavor to strengthen women’s representation in the 2016 Parliamentary elections. My aim is twofold. On one hand, I seek to draw on the expanding scholarly literature on gender or women and political representation in order to illuminate and critique the discourses of MPs and NGOs from the Gender Equality Coalition. Here I draw heavily from Pitkin’s (1967) classic conceptualization of political representation and the critical analysis developed by Sarah Childs (2008). My purpose here is not to reflect substantially on these works or to contribute to the development of social theory so much as to use these works to better understand current political debates. On the other hand, I try to identify commonalities and differences in discourses of MPs and NGOs on descriptive and substantive representation. The current round of political discussion of gender quotas has just begun and the proposal for fair representation of women is under debate in Romanian Parliament. I believe that a critical reflection on the aims and arguments of the NGOs and MPs may reveal whether collective action is possible and it can tell us more about ist limitations. At the same time this discussion may help identify some potential inner weakness of their arguments and invite the parties to strengthen them during the coming public and political debate.

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