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

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

Author(s): Joshua Kjerulf Dubrow
Subject(s): Social Sciences
Published by: Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai
Keywords: political inequality; women’s political representation; gender; Eastern Europe.

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.

  • Issue Year: 57/2012
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 3-25
  • Page Count: 23
  • Language: English
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