Beyond Interests in Politics: A Comment on Virginia Sapiro's “When Are Interests Interesting? The Problem of Political Representation of Women”

Engendering local democracy: The impact of quotas for women in India'spanchayats

“…The critics of the language of 'interests', even predating Molyneux, objected to the use of a term associated, they argued, with interest group theory and the rational, utility-maximizing individuals who populate its theoretical landscape, making women into just another interest group. 8 The suggested substitution of 'interests' by 'needs' 9 has, however, been no less controversial, as the needs argument suggests a top-down perspective of political elites and administrators, and belongs to a 'service democracy', while the interests perspective is a view from below, the demand to have one's own wants represented in a participatory democracy. 10 Other critics of the vocabulary of interests are alarmed by its allegedly essentializing tendency to view women as an undifferentiated category.…”

Women and Proportional Representation in Australia and New Zealand

“…There is a whole separate debate in feminist theory about the extent to which women can be said to have a distinct set of interests that can only be represented by women (see for example Sapiro 1981;Diamond and Harstock 1981;Jonasdottir 1988;Nicholson 1990;Pringle and Watson 1992;Gatens 1996). 2.…”

Political Parties: The Missing Variable in Women and Politics Research

“…Women and politics research moved into the mainstream of political science during the Second Decade. Along with the founding of the journal Women and Politics in 1980, two remarkable essays debating women and politics research appeared in the American Political Science Review in 1981 (Sapiro 1981;Diamond and Hartsock 1981) demonstrating the seriousness with which women and politics were now taken by the discipline. This expanded interest was not accompanied by any new theories; it merely acknowledged women as a special case of deviance (Githens 1983).…”