DYNAMICS OF POLITICAL INEQUALITY OF VOICE: ROMANIAN AND POLISH WOMEN’S PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION SINCE 1945
DYNAMICS OF POLITICAL INEQUALITY OF VOICE: ROMANIAN AND POLISH WOMEN’S PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION SINCE 1945

Summary/Abstract: Across Eastern Europe, despite radical changes to the political environment – including the postwar period, the revolutions of 1989, the post-Communist era and the rise in power of the European Union in the early 21st Century – in comparison with men, women always have had far fewer representatives in national legislatures. How can this be? In this article I compare Romania and Poland from the postwar period to now to critically examine the causes and dynamics of women’s unequal political representation. While gender inequality in various forms has been a constant feature, the characteristics of its relationship to political inequality – its form, duration and magnitude – changed over successive eras. I argue that much more research needs to be done to properly understand dynamics of, and links between, the history and the present of women’s political inequality in Eastern Europe; as such I also criticize the extant literature and suggest directions for future social science inquiry.

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