Parting with ‘interests of women’: how feminist scholarship on substantive representation could replace ‘women’s interests’ with ‘gender equality interests’

Abstract

The concept of ‘women’s interests’ has received a large amount of scholarly attention. In particular, the problematic assumption underpinning this concept – that women share interests – has been an object of much consideration. Yet, while scholarship on the substantive representation of women has today moved free of this assumption, three other assumptions have not been scrutinised to the same degree. These are: (1) that political interests are attached to social groups; (2) that women and men have different interests; and (3) that there are only two genders. This article argues that these three assumptions are problematic for feminist scholarship on substantive representation, which warrants replacing the attached ‘women’s interests’ with an alternative interest: the unattached ‘gender equality interests’. In addition, the article sets forth three distinct ways for future studies to operationalise the substantive representation of gender equality.

The substantive representation of social groups: towards a new comparative research agenda

“…Although we believe that cross-country and cross-group comparisons can push scholarship on SRSG forward, we also acknowledge that this comparative approach might pose its own challenges. One immediate challenge is that current scholarship has no uniform understanding of exactly what SRSG constitutes and how to measure it (see also Harder, 2021;Siow, 2021). Indeed, studies use various conceptualisations of SRSG and different behavioural indicators, and rely on non-uniform conceptions and measurements of group interests.…”

Women’s Good Political Representation

“…Hanna Pitkin's The Concept of Representation has been a key source for politics and gender scholarship on representation, with many, ourselves included, introduced to her work via Phillips (1995). We avoid an extensive summary here primarily because these are already available (Childs and Lovenduski 2013;Celis 2008;Childs 2004), but also because we both recommend the (re)reading of the original text for how it speaks to contemporary debates within the field, and because any summary cannot do full justice to Pitkin's reach, comprehensiveness and ongoing relevance (see, for example, Celis andErzeel 2020, andHarder 2023, as we discuss below).…”

The field of gender and substantive representation: re-conceptualising, measurement and implications

“…It features articles from the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) Joint Sessions workshop on the Substantive Representation of Marginalized Groups held online in May 2021. It combines original work that studies the substantive representation of women portrayed in specific institutions like parliaments (Siow, 2023) with taking stock of more systemic dynamics promoting or deterring equality (Chiva, 2023), drawing on various methodologies (Erzeel and Rashkova, 2023;Wäckerle, 2023;Staehr Harder, 2023;Talukder, 2023;Celis and Childs, 2023). Together, the articles included in the special issue make use of theoretical arguments, single case studies or comparative qualitative or quantitative methods, using both data on legislative activity and survey data.…”