Importance of women's political empowerement - Gurmai Zita

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Forever assistants? Challenges of women’s political empowerment
Changing image on surface vs. changing gender roles
Activism is of great importance when it comes to the advancement of women’s political
empowerment and changing the perception of gender roles. Due to intense cooperation in the
past decades, there is a huge toolkit available for lobbying. However, the use of this toolkit far
too often bumps into walls of prejudice and stereotypes. Therefore, I would like to firstly evoke
some elements of the debate about gender roles, which have been there for a while, but
certainly their further discussion is necessary.
The reason is often evoked, that women should be more politically active (both in terms of civic
participation and as politicians), as they have a naturally different way of doing politics.
According to this belief, women are more empathetic, peaceful and careful. However, taking a
look at politicians like Marine Le Pen, Krisztina Morvai or Michelle Bachman, there is no need
for intense research to refute this argument. This argument based on supposed behavioural
differences can be quite harmful in the process of women’s political empowerment, as it
reinforces stereotypes of classical gender roles.
The reason behind women’s political empowerment is rather linked with the debate about
values in our society, and the way notions like freedom, emancipation and equality are
interpreted. Several male politicians use equality, meaning the legal availability of equal
opportunities, as an excuse for maintaining the current status quo. Their argument can be
summarised as follows. The possibilities are there, women could freely decide to enter politics.
But of course, if willingness and ambition is lacking, it would be against their free will to push
them in another direction. Therefore, in order to change the perception of gender roles in
society also on the level of bias and sub-consciousness, progressives should promote a new
interpretation of freedom, meaning emancipation as an equal member of a community. 2 This is
the first step if we would like to change institutional mechanisms, and effectively implement the
toolkit available. Interpreting women’s political empowerment in this way is important, as it sees
change in the way of doing politics based on supporting transformation in societal attitudes.
Having noted this, it should be seen that it gives an important argument against these
politicians cynically wondering about women's ambitions. It forms a solid part of the reasoning
why gender quotas are necessary, amongst other fields, in politics. It is an efficient and
supportable element of the toolbox with possible encouraging effect, at least in the beginning of
the procedure, when institutional mechanisms are still missing. But again, one should be aware
of the importance of the construction of arguments for quotas. Would the empowerment of a
critical mass of women to participate actively in political life in itself change the perception of
gender roles? If most of these women choose to continue representing the traditional values,
based on the traditional interpretation of gender roles, change would be hardly expected. It
2 Skrzypek, A. (2011) The core values for the Next Social Deal, [in:] Progressive values for the 21st
century, (eds.)E. Stetter, K. Duffek & A. Skrzypek, FEPS