Women and politics : presence and participation in European Union

Abstract

I have subtitled my paper as Presence and Participation as what is often called ‘the politics of presence’ is at the core of the debate about equal representation. I shall return to this in conclusion. To begin with, I consider women’s participation as policy-influencers in the EU, either in partnership with EU bodies or as lobbyists. After that, I look at women as direct political participants in EU institutions. I then move to the mechanisms that campaigners for equal representation have promoted and to criticisms of them by exponents of what is called ‘parity democracy’. This critique leads to my concluding remarks on the debates about why representation matters.