Background Document - Danish Institute for Parties and Democracy

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In point form, these insights, which seem commonplace today, may be summed up thus: ´ Formal equality is a necessary, but not a sufficient, prerequisite of true equality. ´ Direct gender discrimination is only the tip of the iceberg, with wide-spread indirect gender discrimination hiding beneath the surface. ´ The private is political. ´ Civilian, political, and social rights are based on sexual and reproductive rights. But in 1915, equality before the law and political rights were the undisputed road to equal status. Though there were discussions in what remained of the women’s movement of forming a women’s party, and though women’s lists were entered in the first municipal elections, the main tenet throughout the inter-war years was that women should enrol in, and run for office via, existing political parties. However, in the parties the interest in female voters was higher than the interest in female candidates, and more so once the first election results had been reviewed. Political parties maintained that the state no longer had a part to play given that direct gender discrimination in legislation had been abolished. From here on out, it was up to civil society and the market to create a fitting gender balance. Until 1945, this meant one female Member of Parliament per party – the so-called token woman. The women’s movement thus ended up with the full responsibility for increased political representation of women. To begin with, the movement took up the gauntlet by launching a nationwide educational programme in citizenship, and by facilitating the founding of women’s organisations within the political parties. Thanks to the initiative of members active in the women’s cause, all political parties had women’s committees in the 1930s. The close collaboration between the women’s movement and the political parties could also be seen in the fact that women’s organisations until the end of the 1970s drew their chairman from the ranks of prominent female politicians – preferably government ministers – and that the parties took turns holding the post. Following the Second World War, the women’s movement expanded its repertoire to include proper electoral campaigns. In the 1945 elections, the “vote for a woman”campaign was launched. This was to become a fixture of Danish electoral campaigns for many years to come. The concept is simple: activists position themselves outside voting stations carrying posters encouraging voters on their way to the ballot to vote for a woman. This is also when the women’s movement founded the tradition of crossparty election meetings – a tradition still alive today. The most spectacular campaign was carried out in the municipal elec-tions of 1970, when the entire female elite in the country was mobilised in a large-scale media push. The weekend preceding the elections, every nationwide newspaper as well as the major regional papers carried opinion pieces urging voters to vote for a female candidate and written by politicians from all parties, leading members of the women’s organisations, and famous artists. Demonstrating the strength of the feminist heritage, every single opinion writer drew on the classical arguments of justice, representation, and resources in their plea for increased political representation for women. In 1945, the women’s movement also suggested the implementation of a quota system in the form of a proposal that all parties be mandated to reserve 33 per cent of the spots on their lists of candidates for women. However, this type of affirmative action did not receive broad support until the third wave of the movement: between 1977 and 1996, several parties operated with some form of quota system or other. By this time the glass ceiling had, however, been broken by the second feminist wave, which paved the way for a new understanding of the entire concept of politics WOMEN IN POLITICS DANISH INSTITUTE FOR PARTIES AND DEMOCRACY PAGE 54
and set new standards of female citizenship with the demand that women have the right to rule their own bodies. Affirmative action became statutory and was, on the advice of the United Nations’ fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, supplemented by a third equal status strategy, gender mainstreaming. WOMEN AND DEMOCRACY So what has a hundred years of women in politics meant to Danish society? First and foremost, it has meant democratisation. Long gone are the days when regimes that reserved political rights for (select groups of) men could be labelled democratic. Today, democracy legitimises itself through universal human rights and equal political representation. In other words, by recognising the legitimacy of feminism’s first two arguments for women’s political rights. The resource argument – that women have different areas of compe-tence than men, and that this has contributed to an improved process of political decision-making – is more questionable. On the one hand, a clear, gender-based division of labour can be demonstrated, under which women have handled the ‘softer’ policy areas, such as equal status policy, social policy, and cultural policy. On the other hand, women have stuck to party lines in these as in all other policy issues. There are very few examples of women collaborating across party divides, and in the end, it is the male majority that has established the “woman-friendly” welfare state through their votes in Parliament. More research is thus needed to properly investigate this important question The question remains whether the Danish model may serve as inspiration for countries undergoing democratic transition today, when alternative, and faster, roads to political equality are available. Quota systems, in particular, have proven to be very effective instruments. But maybe the secret to sustainable equal status development is that it is rooted in a combination of top-down and bottom-up politics. The state may institute equality before the law, but carrying this over into equality in life required the cooperation of civil society. And here, others can perhaps draw on the experiences of the Danish women’s movement when it comes to information campaigns, women’s mobilisation and organisation within political parties, and electoral campaigns. BIBLIOGRAPHY American Declaration of Independence. United States National Archives; http://www.archives.gov/ exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html Dansk kvindehistorie www.kvinfo.dk History.com; http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/abigail-adams-urges-husband-to-remember-the-ladies Kvinder i Folketinget; http://www.ft.dk/Demokrati/~/media/Pdf_materiale/Pdf_publikationer/Informationsark/Folketingets_medlemmer/kvinder_i_folketinget%20pdf.ashx Dahlerup, Drude, Vi har ventet længe nok: håndbog i kvinderepræsentation, Kbh.: Nordisk Ministerråd, 1988 Equal democracies?: gender and politics in the Nordic countries, Christina Bergqvist (editor in chief), Anette Borchorst ... [et al.], Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1999 Duiker, William J., and Jackson J. Spielvogel. World History: From 1500. Cengage Learning, 2006. Larsen, Jytte, Også andre hensyn: dansk ligestillingspolitik 1849-1915, Århus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2010 Mill, John Stuart. The Subjection of Women. Hayes Barton Press, 1924. Pateman, Carole, “Three Questions about Womanhood Suffrage”, Caroline Daley & Melanie Noland (red.), Suffrage and Beyond. International Feminist Perspectives. New York University Press, 1994 WOMEN IN POLITICS DANISH INSTITUTE FOR PARTIES AND DEMOCRACY PAGE 55
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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 and 52: THE STRUGGLE FOR WOMEN’S REPRESEN
Page 53: On the municipal level, development
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
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Background Document - Danish Institute for Parties and Democracy

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