La participación en política de la mujer: Un estudio de caso

Abstract

Over a century after the suffragists' struggle to overcome women's political inequality, there are still significant, observable differences in women's access to positions of political power, and notwithstanding the quota system that the Spanish Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) implemented in the mid 1980s in order to increase women's representation and parity. In this paper, we start from the hypothesis that although the quota system has favored women's access to party lists, they still experience difficulties in effectively gaining access to legislative positions. Thus, with the goal of discovering what women's presence really is within decision-making spheres, the present article engages in empirical analysis of the relationship between militancy and participation in directive organs and the relationship between militancy and access to positions of representation. We look at how the PSOE has managed to establish a greater balance between militancy, participation in directive organs and access to positions of representation using the quota system. Similarly, and from a qualitative perspective, we look at the opinion of women politicians whom we reached through discussion groups; this has confirmed the hypothesis that we began with, particularly for the case of progressive parties. Thus, we find that while some women are able to become candidates, the poor position they tend to occupy on party lists makes it much more difficult for them to actually become elected officials.