Kön och politik - En kvantitativstudie om kvinnorepresentation i kommunfullmäktige

Sammanfattning: Politics should be constituted by social representativeness in order to be conceptualised as democratic and legitimate. The set of politicians ought to be diverse and heterogeneous with the aim to include a wide spectrum of interest and concerns. The debate about women lacking power in politics was raised in the seventies. The political parties acted in response to the debate by implementing different strategies in order to combat the unjust distribution of seats among men and women. The left-wing parties practice gender quotas when framing their electoral list, and the right-wing advocates recommendations and general goals to provide a more even distribution of women and men. The Swedish town councils obtains an even distribution of women and men since the election in 2014. Neither men nor women constitute less then 40 present within the political parties, except the Swedish Democrats where women constitute 24,1 present. Results indicates that the different strategies to improve female representatives in politics are successful. Accordingly, the research also identifies that competition among parties does not improve women representation in politics. The very point is thus that conscious discussion and public debating about absence of women in politics, is necessary in order for Sweden to be held as democratic at local political level.