Background Document - Danish Institute for Parties and Democracy

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Generally speaking, developments are uneven, particularly for the first fifty years, which are characterised by long periods of stagnation broken by some notable forward leaps in the early 1940s and again in the early 1970s. The representation of women in Parliament thus falls into three phases, which mirror the general situation when it comes to equal status policy. 1915-1945 with less than 5 % female representation. 1945-1971 with a female representation of up to 10%. 1971-2011 with a rapid and sustained growth in female representation towards the 40% mark. The first phase ends with the close of the Second World War, when a great window of opportunity opened up in equal rights policy, as is often the case in post-crisis situations. Across the world, women had made a significant contribution during the war years, both on the home front and in the field. Recognition of this contribution came in several forms. Equal gender rights were included in international legislation through the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The political representation of women increased in countries with women’s suffrage, including Denmark, and having a female government minister became a must. Other countries, including, as previously mentioned, France, instituted voting rights for women. The second phase ends with the beginning of the second feminist wave in the wake of the 1960s youth rebellions. The 1970s became the women’s decade par excellence, not least due to the United Nations’ prominent focus on equal rights, including the International Women’s Year, the World Conference on Women, and a bill of rights for women: the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). In Denmark, women charged into parliament, where the percentage of women surged from eleven to twenty-four per cent over the course of the 1970s. And in a new development, women’s political representation continued to increase. Following the long period of stagnation, focus shifted from political rights to political participation, and the feminist tenet that political organs not having an equal gender distribution are illegitimate now garnered broad popular support. Revolutions are created by the assault of youth on old regimes, and the second feminist wave became the historical youth rebellion of women. In earlier days, female politicians were typically middle-aged, because they did not run for office until the children were out of the house. Since the mid-1960s, the mean age for women in Parliament has dropped by ten years, from fifty-five to forty-five, and the age composition has become more diverse. The latest national elections gave seats in Parliament to two women between the ages of twenty and twenty-four, and two between the ages of sixty and sixty-nine. “The entire female elite in the country was mobilised in a large-scale media push.” The young women brought the issues of pregnancy, birth, and parental leave with them into political life. When the first pregnant woman ran for Parliament in 1971, and was elected, it made the headlines. Front pages were cleared again when the first female minister gave birth while in office in 1998. Since then, many have followed in their footsteps, and today nobody disputes female politicians’ right to have children while holding office. WOMEN IN POLITICS DANISH INSTITUTE FOR PARTIES AND DEMOCRACY PAGE 52
On the municipal level, developments in female representation mirror those of Parliament, though women’s representation in local politics still lags behind the national level. FIGURE 2 Women’s representation in municipalities and in Parliament 1918-2006 % 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 1918 1926 1934 1942 1950 PARLIAMENT MUNICIPALITIES 1958 FROM EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW TO GENDER MAINSTREAMING Why did it take a hundred years to achieve political participation on an equal level? A very significant explanation is the fact that for centuries, feminism was hobbled by a theoretical deficiency in relation to liberalism and socialism, modernity’s two other political ideologies. Whereas the latter were formulated by the male academic elite based on major new theories of politics, economics, sociology, and history, feminism did not gain an academic foothold until the 1970s. While it is true that the University of Copenhagen (the only university in Denmark at the time) opened its doors to female students in 1875, and that female academics returned the favour by getting involved in the women’s cause – two of the first four female Members of Parliament were academics – research positions were long reserved for men. And even if a woman managed to squeeze through the eye of the needle, this was due to merits in traditional fields of research. Commitment to feminist politics was relegated to off-duty hours up until the second feminist wave, in which a large, young, and highly educated generation of women occupied universities and under the motto of Research of women, by women, for women developed theories on the societal import of gender that finally put feminism on a scholarly par with liberalism and socialism. By organising the insights that had run as a subtext throughout the feminist criticism of liberalism and socialism since the democratic transition in the late eighteenth century, women’s studies and gender studies forged the basis for new and effective strategies, including affirmative action towards the underrepresented gender and gender mainstreaming. WOMEN IN POLITICS DANISH INSTITUTE FOR PARTIES AND DEMOCRACY PAGE 53 1966 1974 1982 1990 1998 2006
Page 1 and 2: DANISH INSTITUTE FOR PARTIES AND DE
Page 3 and 4: DANISH INSTITUTE FOR PARTIES AND DE
Page 5 and 6: Of course this search will also bui
Page 7 and 8: CONTENTS 9 Young women in politics
Page 9 and 10: YOUNG WOMEN IN POLITICS From househ
Page 11 and 12: litical parties ‘rely on the stat
Page 13 and 14: ing able to keep up with and ‘bei
Page 15 and 16: youth population. Overall, it could
Page 17 and 18: dialogue across party lines. It als
Page 19 and 20: The program was broadly understood
Page 21 and 22: BIBLIOGRAPHY Ann, Teo Sue and Shuib
Page 23 and 24: WOMEN IN LOCAL LEVEL POLITICS Socia
Page 25 and 26: While contesting the post of an ele
Page 27 and 28: In fact training and capacity build
Page 29 and 30: enforcing these norms in ways that
Page 31 and 32: WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP POSITIONS AT TH
Page 33 and 34: amidst a scenario where only 0.6% w
Page 35 and 36: Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 2006. M
Page 37 and 38: WOMEN IN TRANSITION COUNTRIES Strug
Page 39 and 40: A year later, women in the Arab Spr
Page 41 and 42: INSTITUTIONALISED MALE DOMINANCE AN
Page 43 and 44: OPENING SPACES AND INCREASING ACCES
Page 45 and 46: GENDER AND DEMOCRACY Danish democra
Page 47 and 48: ulation were now able to read about
Page 49 and 50: y American, French, German, and Bri
Page 51: THE STRUGGLE FOR WOMEN’S REPRESEN
Page 55 and 56: and set new standards of female cit
Page 57 and 58: NETWORKS AND TOOLKITS Some resource
Page 59 and 60: EMPOWERING WOMEN FOR STRONGER POLIT
Page 61: MAKING DEMOCRACY WORK FOR WOMEN: IN
Page 64: CHRISTIANSBORG SEMINAR The ’Chris

Background Document - Danish Institute for Parties and Democracy

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