359
European Journal of Politics and Gender • vol 6 • no 3 • 359–376
© European Conference on Politics and Gender and Bristol University Press 2023
Print ISSN 2515-1088 • Online ISSN 2515-1096
https://doi.org/10.1332/251510821X16654996784749
Accepted for publication 11 October 2022 • First published online 02 February 2023
Special Issue: The Field of Substantive Representation:
Re-conceptualizing, Measurement, and Implications – What Have
we Learned from Gender Research?
RESEARCH ARTICLE
From women’s presence to feminist
representation: second-generation design for
women’s group representation
Karen Celis, karen.celis@vub.be
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Sarah Childs, sarah.childs@ed.ac.uk
University of Edinburgh, UK
Feminist democratic representation is a new design for women’s group representation in electoral
politics. We build on the design principles and practices of the 1990s’ presence theorists, who
conceived of political inclusion as the presence of descriptive representatives and advocated for
gender quota. Our second-generation design foregrounds women’s ideological and intersectional
heterogeneity, and details a representative process that enacts three feminist principles: inclusiveness,
responsiveness and egalitarianism. A new set of actors – the affected representatives of women –
play formal, institutionalised roles in two new democratic practices: group advocacy and account
giving. Together, these augmentations incentivise new attitudes and behaviours among elected
representatives, and bring about multiple representational effects that redress the poverty of
women’s political representation: elected representatives now know more, care more and are more
connected to diverse women, including the most marginalised; and the represented are now more
closely connected with, more interested in and better represented through democratic politics.
Key words representation • women • intersectionality • feminism • democratic design •
legislatures
Key messages
•	Despite improvement in the numbers of women in parliaments, representative democracy
continues to fail women.
•	‘Poverty of representation’ captures the intersectional ways in which women are both underrepresented
and misrepresented.
•	We call for the formal presence within existing legislatures of ‘affected representatives
of women’.
•	Feminist democratic representation incentivises elected representatives to meet the needs of
diverse women.
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To cite this article: Celis, K. and Childs, S. (2023) From women’s presence to feminist
representation: second-generation design for women’s group representation, European
Journal of Politics and Gender, 6(3): 359–376, DOI: 10.1332/251510821X16654996784749
Introduction
A lot can be said about the failure of representative democracy to do good by women.
The 1990s’ presence theorists’ response was to call for women’s group presence.
Reflecting on parliaments full of men, there was agreement that these representatives
mostly knew and cared too little about women to stand and act for them (Young, 1990a;
1990b; 2002; Phillips, 1995; Williams, 1998; Mansbridge, 1999). In such situations,
women’s political representation would be anything but fair, with women’s interests
overlooked and laws and policies biased against them (Williams, 1998: 77). The preferred
solution was to repopulate elected political institutions with women representatives,
using gender quota1 as their handmaidens. Once present, these newly elected descriptive
representatives would embody and signify women’s political equality and, it was hoped,
if not expected, deliver fair representation for women, substantively speaking.
Today, gender quota are in place in more than 130 countries (Paxton et al, 2020).
Yet, despite relative, and, in some instances, significant, improvement in the numbers
of women in the world’s parliaments, political equality is still to be achieved (Dahlerup,
2017; Lovenduski, 2019). The term ‘poverty of women’s political representation’
captures the multiple and compounding ways in which women are both underrepresented
and misrepresented in formal politics, descriptively, substantively and
symbolically. Crudely: parties largely continue to reflect cleavages and ideologies
from previous centuries, with the political agenda and party competition remaining
very much defined by traditional, masculinised interests; governments and legislatures
are insufficiently responsive and accountable to women, with women’s experiences
and voices often marginalised or absent from formal political debate; and the average
percentage of women in national parliaments remains a mere 25 per cent.2
Like Anne Phillips (1992) three decades ago and Joni Lovenduski (2019) more
recently, we hold on to the claim that feminists should not give up on representative
democracy. To do so risks turning our backs on the self-same political institutions
that are needed to protect women from those seeking to overturn their formal rights,
especially so in these turbulent and anti-feminist times (Verloo, 2018). Believing that
women’s poverty of political representation is neither natural nor inevitable, and that
women can and should be in receipt of good representation, we update and remake
the case for women’s group representation in electoral politics. We do so knowing
full well that advocates of women’s political representation face renewed criticism
from those who query gender as a legitimate political identity (Fukuyama, 2018),
and we do so appreciating that feminist acknowledgement of women’s intra-group
differences begs elemental questions about the ability of women representatives
(disproportionately elite and majority ethnic) to represent those from different and
particularly less privileged backgrounds (Smooth, 2011; Schwindt-Bayer and TaylorRobinson,
2011; Celis and Mügge, 2018).
We contend that just as it was nearly three decades ago, the normative argument
for group representation remains compelling from both democratic and feminist
perspectives, being necessary ‘whenever the group’s history and social situation provides
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361
a particular perspective on the issue, when the interests of its members are specifically
affected, and when its perceptions and interests are not likely to receive expression
without that representation’(Young, 2002: 128). The problem is, then, much less the
principled case than how women’s group representation is to be designed and enacted.
In this article, we rethink how the principles of women’s group representation can
be revised, revived and realised (Newton, 2012; Saward, 2020) in order to redesign
practices for a revitalised representative politics.3 In an exercise that Mansbridge (2002)
calls practice–thought–practice, we build a new, second-generation design, what we
call ‘feminist democratic representation’. If the first generation’s intent was to increase
the number of women legislators, with the accompanying assumption that these
women, especially when they were present in larger numbers, would have feminist
substantive effects (Dahlerup, 1988; Childs and Krook, 2008), the representational
effects of our second-generation design are intended as multiple: the transformation
of representative processes within elected political institutions, along with new
representative relationships between elected representatives and those they represent;
and women in society seeing formal politics as a critical site of their representation
and of themselves becoming central actors of representative democracy.
The first generation: women’s inclusion through presence
Classic presence theorists – Mansbridge, Phillips, Williams and Young – took
issue with the idea that a universal franchise was sufficient to secure for women
a foundational democratic principle: political equality. Rule by elected men was
paternalistic and patriarchal. The demand to share political power crucially involved
a reframing of the principle of inclusion from an individual to a collective basis: as
members of a historically excluded, marginalised and oppressed group, women qua
women must have seats at the political table (Jónasdóttir, 1989; Young, 1990a; 1990b).
Distilling presence theories, women merit political presence because they: (1) ‘find’
themselves a member of the group (in an ascriptive and non-essentialist fashion);
(2) recognise a mutual identity and have an affinity with other women; (3) have a
broad, shared history of exclusion from politics and society, which is empirically
demonstrable and frequently subjectively claimed; and (4), as a consequence of that
exclusion, experience laws and institutions biased against them.
Fundamental to first-generation theories was a refutation of Pitkin’s (1967) disregard
for descriptive representation and its links to substantive representation – her favoured
dimension of representation. After Phillips’ (1995) The Politics of Presence, no one
would regard descriptive representation as unimportant (Childs and Lovenduski,
2013: 490). At its core, presence theory holds that women’s issues and interests derive
from women’s structural position in gendered societies (Phillips, 1995; on the issue of
women’s interests, see also Harder, this issue); due to biology and gendered societal
roles, women have experiences that are in many ways different from those of men,
as well as gendered takes on the situations and experiences that they share with men
(Lovenduski, 2005). Men’s ability to acquire knowledge of, and the will and ability
to act in, women’s interests (Phillips, 1995: 13; Mansbridge, 1999) is questioned on
epistemological grounds. In sum, men lack women’s experiences, and consequently
women’s perceptions, concerns and needs are inaccessible to them (Williams, 1998).
The original presence claim was (we are at pains to point out) advanced alongside
recognition that women are neither homogeneous nor share an exclusive set of
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interests. There was an explicit rejection of essentialism, which does ‘violence to
the empirical facts of diversity as well as to the agency of individuals to define the
meaning of their social and biological traits’ (Williams, 1998: 6). Overdeterminism
was criticised: ‘women’s social position conditions’  (Young, 2002: 97–8, emphasis
added). Women’s ‘shared experience’ figures only as a ‘promise of shared concerns’
(Phillips, 1995: 83, emphasis added). Notwithstanding this commitment to difference,
the normative assessment of what constituted political equality in general, and fair
and just representation for women in particular, became in practice the presence of
women’s sex/gendered bodies in representative institutions. This is what counted,
normatively speaking, and was what was actually counted (Trimble and Arscott, 2003).
Equated with the presence of women’s bodies, presence risks downplaying women’s
intersectional heterogeneity, within-group privileging and marginalisation, as well as
erasing ideological differences. The standard for women’s inclusion associated with
first-generation theorists (even if unfairly) allows for a claim that all women are well
represented in institutions populated by unrepresentative women. Such conclusions
belie the essence of representative politics and power: the core democratic question
of who gets what, when and how in large and complex societies where there is
no agreement about political ends and where resources are finite. It is, then, but
a ‘hop, skip and jump’ from women’s inclusion to presence and to a descriptive
representation that privileges this dimension and reinforces a disaggregated approach
to representation, even when it is linked to substantive representation.
There are substantial risks that overly optimistic conclusions are drawn from women’s
inclusion: first, that with descriptive representation, all women are well represented, both
substantively and symbolically; and, second, that all women are well represented where
women legislators are predominantly situated on one side of the ideological spectrum,
are homogeneous and/or are privileged. The represented might not, however, feel well
represented because of who the elected representatives are, how they are and/or how
they act and speak (Skeggs and Wood, 2012: 136; Kantola and Lombardo, 2017; Kantola,
2018; see also Siow and Talukder, this issue). Equally, they might feel represented when
their interests are being harmed, precisely because of who the representative is and how
they act and speak (Clayton et al, 2018). In contrast to a disaggregated approach, it is in
the intertwining of its dimensions that good representation for women is achieved. This
is not to say that the first generation failed to explore the concept of representation and
representative democracy in sophisticated ways. Yet, what materialised was the principle
of inclusion enacted by – and thereby reduced to – the presence of women elected
representatives in existing representative institutions in the absence of any additional
institutional redesign. The unfortunate consequence, as Phillips (2012) later made clear,
was that representation effectively dropped out of the picture, creating a disconnect
between the principle and its enactment.
A (re)reading of the original 1990s’ works reminds us of an ideal of representative
politics characterised by greater deliberation, advocacy and publicity, and that is
more exploratory and connected. Existing representative institutions were falling far
short of realising women’s (and men’s) good representation; decision making based
on aggregation – most votes wins – was criticised for failing to appreciate how this
reinforces and replicates existing power relations, including gender relations (Williams,
1998; Young, 2002). To discover the best argument, and thus decisions made on
that basis, more deliberative decision making was preferred (Williams, 1998; Young,
2002: 23). As Phillips (1995: 149) rather nicely put it, deliberative decision-making
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363
is an exploratory politics that discovers ‘new areas of common interests facilitated by the
possibility to formulate new positions in the course of the discussion with others’. At
its simplest, better decisions are forthcoming because representatives inhabit settings
of greater information and because deliberative decision making allows for – if not
expects – a transformation of interests (Phillips, 1991; 1995; Young, 2002: 26).
Through deliberation, the range of interests and potential solutions are greater and
more appropriate to the issue at hand because they reflect the interests and needs of
all those affected (Phillips, 1991; 1995; Young, 2002; Mansbridge et al, 2010). Even
as consensus and agreement are aimed for, differences and conflicts are not swept
aside (Young, 2002: 7). Deliberating participants form a ‘public’, speaking in ways
accountable to ‘plural others’ (Young, 2002: 25). To persuade the represented ‘of
the rightness of her judgement’, appeals shift from ‘self-regard to appeals of justice’
(Young, 2002: 115). Advocacy has a continuing critical role to play because it reduces
the risk of deliberation giving rise to a consensus that is misrepresented as ‘in the
interest of all’ (Young, 2002: 23).
Young was particularly detailed in her design work, and in many ways, her ideas
have aged remarkably well. She was adamant that in modern societies, individuals
simply cannot be where all the decisions are made and thus representative politics
was necessary (Young, 2002: 125), and she was sure that ‘all existing representative
democracies could be improved by additional procedures and fora’ (Young, 2002:
134). Young wished to link the institutions of and in civil society and formal electoral
politics (Young, 2002: 8; 132–3), talking of ‘many avenues and institutions’. By
connecting public debate and accountability mechanisms ‘to institutional or policy
outcomes’, democratic processes could address some of the ‘injustices’ of unequal
societies (Young, 2002: 36). Finally, Young’s assertion that legitimacy is linked to
political processes characterised by publicity, inclusiveness and procedural regularity
(Young, 2002: 3) speaks to the notion that one does not have to have ‘won’ on a
particular issue to be and/or feel well represented.
The second generation: feminist democratic representation
Unfortunately, too much of what first-generation theorists had to say about
representation and representative democracy failed to define what came to be the
gender and politics ‘acquis’. The sophistication of their critique was lost. We aim
to show how these ideas can be updated and translated into more concrete and
implementable forms. First, we update – represent – the principle of inclusion
in a manner that embraces and foregrounds contemporary accounts of women’s
heterogeneity. Refashioned, the principle of inclusion demands the presence of
diverse women’s voices in a constitutive politics of identifying and forming what is in
the interests of women. Understood ideologically and intersectionally, our approach
recognises not only differences among women, but also the structural power relations
that position them unequally. Relative privilege and marginalisation can create
differences of experiences, perspectives and interests; each is not only multiple, but
also at times in competition and oppositional (see also Norris, this issue). Where
there is no agreement about ends, politically representing women well must attend to
which women get what, when and how. Updating the ‘all affected’ principle, fair and
just decision making requires the inclusion not only of women, but also of what we
term ‘differently affected women’. In our intersectional incarnation, this is a claim
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for differently affected women being included in decision making such that no policy
is made nor judged fair when, as for the first generation, the representative process
‘excluded a marginalized group that is affected by it’ (Williams, 1998: 172, 242; see
also Urbinati, 2006: 2; Montanaro, 2012: 1099).
Our second response is to supplement the first-generation advocacy of quota.
While these have brought about unprecedented re-gendering to representative
politics (see Phillips, 1995; Krook, 2009; Franceshet et al, 2012), they add women to
existing representative institutions – parties and parliaments – without: intervening
in ways that incentivise diverse women’s good representation by all representatives;
holding political institutions and elected representatives collectively to account; and/
or sanctioning poor representation.4 Putting our critique more starkly still: when
quota are adopted, nothing else is automatically put in place to ensure that diverse
women elected representatives gain the institutional power to represent women or
that women in society have sufficient means by which to judge the quality of their
political representation.
Our final response connects the revised principle of women’s group
representation with its enactment (Saward, 2020), specifying how best to realise
the inclusion of differently affected women in particular contexts. Interlocking
three feminist principles5 – inclusiveness, responsiveness and egalitarianism – with
the ideal representation process described by first-generation presence theorists
and contemporary democratic theorists generates a feminist democratic process
of representation (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: The process of feminist democratic representation
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365
The advocacy moment enacts:
•	inclusiveness when the interests, opinions and perspectives of all relevant groups
of women are voiced and heard, ensuring that women’s partial and subjective
views are forcefully articulated;
•	responsiveness when representatives of women can act as passionate and partial
advocates, speaking in their own voices and registers, and articulating the subjective
conceptions of women’s interests of those experientially close to the issue; and
•	egalitarianism when the representatives of women are treated, and are seen to
be treated, with equal respect and consideration, and no a priori assumptions are
made about which women and which interests should be privileged.
The deliberation moment enacts:
•	inclusiveness when all the interests, opinions and perspectives articulated in
the advocacy moment are taken, and are seen to be taken, into account as
representatives’debate and decide upon what is the fairest and most just decision;
•	responsiveness when representatives – who must be open to transforming their
views on what is in the interests of women, rather than holding onto pre-existing
positions that might very well be partial and gender unequal – examine and take
into account the relationship between the representation of subjective and partial
interests and what constitutes just and fair decisions; and
•	egalitarianism when all women’s interests are considered and have the potential to
affect the decision under consideration, irrespective of political, socio-economic
or cultural power hierarchies.
The accountability moment enacts:
•	inclusiveness when elected representatives’ explanations and justifications are
addressed to. and are received by, women in their diversity;
•	responsiveness when representatives engage with women’s approval, contestation
and/or rejection of decisions, as only in this way will all women witness and
experience reciprocity in the representative relationship and regard the institution
as accountable to them; and
•	egalitarianism when representatives give accounts in ways that give equal weight and
consideration to the multiple and, at times, competing women’s interests articulated
during the earlier advocacy moment, as well as to the potential objections of
various groups of women, as women in their diversity should see that their views
and interests were taken seriously, irrespective of the substantive outcome.
To bring our second-generation design to life, we call for the formal, institutionalised
political presence within existing legislatures of a new set of political actors: the
affected representatives of women. Legislatures are now required by design to bring
in the representatives of differently affected women, including the most marginalised
women who will rarely find themselves elected representatives under the current
rules of the political recruitment game, even with quota.
The naming of our new representatives as affected representatives captures a number
of aspects of who these representatives are and how they represent. First, the prefix
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refers to the differently affected principle, which we put forward as an ‘intersectional
update’ of the all-affected principle. The latter states that democratic decision making
requires that all participate when they are affected by the matter (Williams, 1998).
Our update consists of the specification that women differently affected due to their
intersectional or ideological positionality merit representation. Second, we wanted
to highlight that affected representatives are epistemologically and experientially,
but importantly also affectively, close to those they represent. They are thus better
able to know and present factual and affective knowledge (for example, how an
issue is experienced and felt by the represented). Here, our concept of ‘affected
representatives’ marries up with Dovi’s ‘preferable descriptive representatives’, as
factual and affective knowledge is produced through ‘strong mutual relationships with
dispossessed subgroups of historically disadvantaged groups’, reciprocal recognition
and linked fates (Dovi, 2002: 729). Third, our new concept reflects the ‘affective
turn’ in politics (Ahmed, 2014), acknowledging how affects – such emotions as
recognition, trust and pride – are co-constitutive of the representative relationship.
Turning to the noun, affected representatives are not merely witnesses or informants to
parliamentary proceedings undertaken by elected politicians (for example, witnesses to
committees or spokespeople in legislative hearings); rather, they are representatives of
a constituency of women. Granting them the status of representatives and giving them
an institutionalised role in the representative process makes affected representatives
‘equal of sorts’ with elected ones. Elected representatives undisputedly retain their
primacy, reflecting their electoral mandate, but the affected representatives of women
play highly visible, high-status, formal roles within legislatures.
The presence of affected representatives is not a one-off, compensatory intervention,
but a permanent institutional provision.6 It is triggered when a legislature discusses
women’s issues and/or where there is discrepancy between the political/institutional
agenda and civil-societal debates about women’s issues. It has, in other words,
become an institutional responsibility to reach out to, and crucially bring in, affected
representatives of women.7 It is for the represented – women in civil society –
to determine who is the best representative of their interests.8 Since women
must ‘own’ not only how they are represented, but also the process of identifying
their representatives (Dovi, 2007: 155–9), we do not specify how many affected
representatives there should be or the (s)election process or the societal spheres that
they would come from (these might include organised civil society organisations, ad
hoc groups, artists and social media influencers, for example).
Affected representatives have bespoke representative responsibilities during group
advocacy and account giving – the institutional input and output phases of the
representative process, respectively. In group advocacy, their representative work
ensures that elected representatives hear from, and listen to, the voices of differently
affected women, increasing the available ‘store of knowledge’ (Young, 2002: 83).
An exhaustive account of what is at stake for women is realised, with affected
representatives speaking about their experiences, knowledge, preferences and interests,
and doing so in their own voice, both factual and affective. Women’s interests are
thus shown to be multiple, revealing competition and, at times, conflict over what is
in the interests of women. This is especially the case regarding the differing interests
of privileged and marginalised women, something that can all to easily be absent
or hidden today (Young, 2002: 7; Urbinati, 2006). Due to group advocacy, some
elected representatives might change their policy positions. Nor can there be pretence
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367
on behalf of elected representatives (or wider society for that matter) that an issue is
not gendered, or assumptions among elected representatives that there is a universal
women’s interest.
Account giving is where affected representatives hold elected representatives
to account – it is systemic recursiveness and reflexivity in practice (Disch, 2011;
Mansbridge, 2019). Elected representatives explain and justify the content, course and
conclusions of their deliberations to the affected representatives of women. As a highprofile,
public moment, media coverage enables women beyond parliament to see and
learn about what is going on within it, permitting autonomous, considered, reflective
and robust judgment (Runciman, 2007; Mansbridge, 2009: 391; Warren, 2019: 40,
45). Occurring under conditions of publicity (Young, 2002), and being a collective
affair, elected representatives are incentivised to deliberate and take decisions in ways
that are inclusive, responsive and egalitarian, with elected representatives appealing
to principles higher than self-interest (Williams, 1998: 145, 222, 227; Young, 2002:
115; Dovi, 2007). Affected representatives have power over elected representatives in
terms of judging the quality of representation.9 They are institutionally positioned
to question, probe and seek justifications, providing for Disch’s (2011: 8; 2012:
219) ‘disidentification’ or a ‘not in our name’ judgement (following Pitkin, 1967),
or Dovi’s (2015) ‘naysaying’.10 If not for genuine reasons of wanting to do good by
women, elected representatives are incentivised to avoid ‘looking bad’ for strategic
or electoral reasons.
Complementing each other, our twin augmentations together create and embed
conducive contexts to make the throughput phase – the deliberation and decisions
by elected representatives – better meet the representational interests of women and
produce just and fair outcomes. With a new set of actors, a diversity of women’s
voices is spoken, heard and responded to in our legislatures. The good representation
of women is now an institutionalised obligation of elected representatives, indeed,
of institutions qua institutions. The intended representational effects affect both
elected representatives and the represented, and are both direct and indirect. Overall,
the representative process is characterised by improved relationships between the
represented and the elected representatives, and with new representative relations
also created between the represented and affected representatives.11
Direct representational effects on elected representatives: knowing, caring and connected
Five design features incentivise the transformation in the quality of women’s
representation12 achieved by elected representatives, both male and female: (1)
exposure via affected representatives to the direct and lived experiences of the
represented; (2) the constitution of affected representatives as representatives, equal
of sorts with elected representatives; (3) the formal and public character of account
giving; (4) the institutionalisation of group advocacy and account giving as part of
the routine and iterative practices of parliaments; and (5) the collective responsibility
of elected representatives. By design, our new democratic practices ensure elected
representatives are institutionally required to hear from affected representatives. In this
way, elected representatives give formal recognition to women’s views, symbolising
and legitimising women as a representable constituency. Group advocacy and account
giving intentionally provide for elected representatives to know more about the
representational issues and interests of differently affected women (see also Bonish,
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Karen Celis and Sarah Childs
368
this issue). Our twin practices maximise the available knowledge critical for elected
representatives to engage in an exploratory, recursive and reflexive politics about
what is just and fair for women (Phillips, 1995; Disch, 2011; Mansbridge, 2019).
Competition among diverse women regarding a particular women’s issue, policy or
legislative intervention – and the strength of the feeling about them held by different
women – is revealed, as affected representatives advocate for the women they represent.
When elected representatives later deliberate, they will be better appraised of the
cacophony of views (Dodson, 2006), with better appreciation of why particular issues
and interests are advanced. During the representative process, elected representatives
are active in (re)constituting women’s interests. Since our new democratic practices
are normalised as part of everyday parliamentary processes, elected representatives
appreciate and accept that representing women is a collective responsibility, with
individual, institutional and systemic costs if done poorly. We go so far as to suggest
that as elected representatives accept the democratic responsibility to represent diverse
women, they would become more confident in their deliberations, emboldened in
making their decisions and trusting in their individual and collective judgements.
Our augmentations do not only educate; they also make elected representatives
care more about representing women. Group advocacy and account giving are ‘close
encounters’ between elected and affected representatives. Passionate and partial
advocacy starkly contrasts with the witnessing of disembodied and dry knowledge.
The represented is now a ‘concrete other’ (Benhabib, 1992). In the minds of
elected representatives, differently affected women are made ‘conversationally’ and
‘imaginatively present’, expanding elected representatives’knowledge and sensibilities
(Goodin, 2000: 83, 95, 98). Affective knowledge makes it harder for elected
representatives to summarily ignore or dismiss claims (Kantola, 2018), or depict
affected representatives and those they represent as unworthy of representation.
Furthermore, even when elected representatives refute claims or choose some over
others, as in some instances they must, affected representatives and their representative
claims will still have been formally aired and acknowledged within the institution
(Disch, 2011).
Changes in the content of elected representatives’deliberations – the consequence
of elected representatives knowing and caring more about diverse women’s interests –
are matched by changes in how elected representatives deliberate and communicate
within parliaments and extra-institutionally. Since they know that they will be held
to account, elected representatives are incentivised to communicate with affected
representatives on the latter’s terms. By speaking in ways that resonate with those
they seek to persuade in the account-giving moment, elected representatives’ style
shifts away from dominant political forms – adversarial, detached, formal and elite.
These new modes engender institutional and societal recognition of the legitimacy
and validity of (diverse) women’s speech.
Direct representative effects on the represented women: recognised and legitimised, more
knowledgeable, and interested and mobilised
The success of our second-generation feminist design lies centrally in the transformation
of the attitudes and behaviour of elected representatives. Yet, it is the views of the
represented – what they think about the quality of their representation – that we
value most. Five design features incentivise representational effects regarding the
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From women’s presence to feminist representation
369
represented: (1) the formal and institutionalised presence of affected representatives;
(2) the constitution of affected representatives as representatives, equal of sorts with
elected representatives; (3) the right and practice of affected representatives advocating
partially and speaking in one’s own voice and for one’s own interests; (4) ‘ownership’
by the represented over how they are represented by affected representatives; and
(5) affected representatives’active power over elected representatives during account
giving. First, the represented feel recognised and legitimised (Dovi, 2007: 155–6).
Responsive to shifting and evolving societal debates, and built around concrete
political issues and events, over time, a wide variety of women engage with formal
politics; previously absent groups of women are formally included as active participants
in the ‘public speech for the nation’and see themselves reflected among the affected
representatives (Urbinati, 2006: 35). As elected representatives collectively respond to
diverse women, and as affected and elected representatives adopt new styles of language
and tones in their interactions, parliamentary politics becomes less exclusive13 and the
gap between elected representatives, the legislature and the represented is lessened.
Women should come to acknowledge that the long antipathy and indifference to
their representation has ended and that parliaments are amenable sites for the redress
of gender inequality.
Second, women in society become more knowledgeable. Through repeated
encounters between elected and affected representatives, women in society become
more aware of different and, at times, oppositional views. Different groups of women
and their affected representatives may: reflect upon the particularity of their views
(Young, 2002: 113, 116); ‘recalibrate’ their thoughts and emotions (Mansbridge,
2019: 316); ‘transcend the immediacy of their biographical experience and social and
cultural belongings and interests’(Urbinati, 2006: 5); and better appreciate how their
‘situation looks to others’ (Young, 2002: 116). This might alter or transform how
some women conceive of their interests, even if for others, original conceptions of
these will be reconfirmed. Either way, interactions that lay out the structure of any
conflict open up the potential for mutual appreciation. The saliency of individual
women’s issues may change over time too. This is not because all women suddenly
agree, but, rather, because with additional factual and affective knowledge, initial
preferences might be considered partial and new solutions and alliances become
imaginable. Contestation, in an agonistic sense, allows citizens to understand the
nature of their struggle and to identify the terms on which citizens might align or
oppose (Mouffe, 2000: 13–20; Disch, 2019: 179). For some or all of these reasons,
there may be recognition that subgroups of women are part of something bigger;
new alliances and mobilisations, perhaps even the temporary identification of a
collective women’s agenda, is possible.
Third, a wide diversity of women will be interested in and mobilised for electoral
politics. Seeing their affected representatives face to face with elected representatives,
and witnessing a different form of politics, women should feel: content that their
affected representatives have contributed to better understandings of the issue at hand;
pride that their efforts have led to their interests being acknowledged and responded
to; and positive about their contribution to the education of representatives and the
improvement in the quality of the overall representative process. Such inclusive,
responsive and egalitarian presence should, in turn, generate greater feelings of worth,
efficacy and affinity with the actors and institutions of representative democracy
(Rosanvallon, 2011). This should give rise to the greater self-organisation of women,
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with diverse women constituting themselves as representational constituencies (Saward,
2010), putting forward affected representatives and seeking direct participation as
representatives, both elected and affected.
Indirect representational effects: role models and the appreciation of diversity
If the institutional presence of affected representatives improves women’s descriptive
representation in straightforward numerical terms, as more women participate in
the legislature, and qualitatively in terms of which women are now participating in
formal politics,14 it might also boost descriptive representation in more indirect ways.
Experiences gained may influence individual affected representatives’ ambition and
resources, prompting them to seek (s)election as elected representatives. They will have
acquired – and be seen to – the experiences, skills and resources for formal politics.
As time passes, affected representatives have wider role-model effects outside formal
politics; seeing ‘women like them’ in politics can increase the numbers wishing to
participate in formal politics, whether as elected or affected representatives (Piscopo
and Kenny, 2020; Hinojosa and Kittilson, 2020).
The contrast between who comprises a parliament’s elected and affected
representatives should throw additional light on the problematic homogeneity of so
many institutions. The presence of affected representatives has the potential to reeducate
parties about the value of diverse representation and may challenge leader
and selectorate perceptions of women’s credentials and capacities for elected office.
Rather than the artificial demand for women candidates created by gender quota,
changes in gatekeeper attitudes towards women as candidates should engender
‘genuine’ demand for more and, importantly, diverse women in politics. Were this
to happen, we would witness a profound change in the demand side of recruitment
(Norris and Lovenduski, 1995), fundamentally overturning ideas about gender and
merit. As mentioned earlier, this has proven singularly impossible to achieve (Murray,
2014; Annesley et al, 2019).
Conclusion
In the face of women’s ongoing poverty of representation, we were emboldened
to undertake what we came to regard as second-generational feminist democratic
design. We reflected once again on the 1990s’ politics of presence literature, and
we reviewed contemporary democratic theory for what it might offer women. We
were confident that the case for women’s group representation could be remade and
that classic ideas regarding women’s political inclusion could be updated to address
what it might mean for women in their diversity to be well represented (following
Phillips, 2012). Our design thinking identified three feminist principles, reflecting
a full appreciation of women’s intersectional and ideological differences, which we
would infuse with newer democratic ideas regarding deliberation, advocacy and
accountability.
Feminist democratic representation establishes new institutional practices
and introduces new political actors – the affected representatives of women –
incentivising transformations in the relationship between the represented and
elected representatives, and engendering new representational outcomes. Affected
representatives have roles distinct from elected representatives. However, while our
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371
design maintains the latter as the key actors of representative democracy, it nevertheless
disrupts their established ways of working and, in party democracies, the norms
of party politics. Affected representatives are critical to the new input and output
phases of parliamentary representation, that is, group advocacy and account giving.
Reinforcing each other, these augmentations incentivise elected representatives to
better meet the representational needs of women, notably, when they later deliberate
and take decisions. Crudely, elected representatives can no longer claim ignorance
of the diversity of women’s interests (they know more) and they are affected by, and
responsive to, what they have heard (they care more). There is a reputational risk,
both individual and institutional, in turning their backs on representing women:
inviting criticism from the affected representatives within the legislature during
account giving and, more generally, from women outside.
Our design importantly moves the responsibility to realise women’s good
representation from the personal preference of (mostly) descriptive representatives
operating in highly constrained masculinised contexts to the collective interest of
elected representatives, both male and female, and the responsibility of the institution
overall. The institutionalisation of affected representatives means that our designedin
incentives – and hence the potential to effect substantial representative change –
deepens and broadens over time. Parliamentary politics becomes more conducive
to women’s representation. In ongoing moments of advocacy, deliberation, decision
making and account giving, the affected representatives’judgement of whether elected
representatives have deliberated and decided in a just and fair manner feeds into
subsequent consideration of the next women’s issues and interests to be decided upon.
With its two new democratic practices and a new set of political actors, a virtuous
circle is formed: affected representatives put particular interests on the parliamentary
table, are treated responsively and in an egalitarian fashion, and hold elected
representatives to account; in consequence, women’s motivation to participate is
reinforced. In turn, greater participation by women in electoral politics – as both
affected and elected representatives – opens up the possibility that representative
democracy becomes an everyday practice of ordinary women. We would suggest
that these stronger representative relationships encourage greater support for the
procedures, institutions and substantive outputs of representative politics on the
ground, and, at a higher level, for the idea of representative democracy.
Feminist democratic representation, moreover, allows for the possibility that
women who fail to have their interests (as they would define them) met by elected
representatives can nonetheless judge the overall representative process as fair and just.
The classic dimensions of representation are now recognised as thoroughly entwined:
being well represented encompasses how women feel about their formal, elected
representative relationships, the workings of democratic institutions and processes,
and how those who stand and act for them speak, act and decide. Whether women
feel and experience good representations is wrapped up with ideas and feelings of
affinity, trust, legitimacy, symbolism and affect.
We cannot guarantee such feminist outcomes, just like first-generation designers
could not guarantee women’s substantive representation; rather, we have spoken of
conducive contexts, talked in terms of incentives and outlined intended and hopedfor
representational effects. Nor do we think that building our design will be easy or
quick – there is a lot more to institutional (re)building (Lowndes and Roberts, 2013).
Indeed, we are too cognisant of feminist-institutionalist scholarship to imagine such
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a rosy scenario, and there should be a feminist building process to inform bespoke
institutional blueprints (Lowndes and Paxton, 2018). Furthermore, what we are
suggesting is hugely demanding of political institutions, elected representatives and
their parties, and at least in the first instance, it will slow down politics. Even so,
we have some confidence that the remade case for women’s group representation
should have appeal. Representative democracy is not in the best of health. Making
our political institutions feminist and thus more democratic – and extending this
design for other currently under-represented groups, including marginalised men –
might just be one, very good, way of underpinning what at present look like rather
shaky political institutions.
Notes
	1	Gender quota can take different forms but are mechanism to increase the number of
women candidates and/or elected representatives.For example,a quota may determine
the proportion of men and women on electoral lists, hence securing a minimum
number of not only women, but also men, candidates.The norm is to use the term
‘gender quota’, even when formally a sex quota.Where quota include trans women,
‘gender quota’ is the more accurate nomenclature.
	2	See: www.ipu.org
	3	This contribution limits itself to the first two phases of democratic design:design-thinking
and designing (Saward,2020).We refrain from discussing the implementation of feminist
democratic representation in varying real-world contexts (that is, in parliamentary
or presidential democracies, multi- or two-party systems, or newer or established
democracies).The latter would:(1) require a third‘building’phase,that is,a‘translation’
to specific contexts,which requires more than a simple‘transfer’of practices from one
context to another (Saward, 2020); (2) involve ‘local design coalitions’ mobilising the
‘local knowledge and creativity of multiple dispersed institutional entrepreneurs’,as well
as the critical engagement of a pluralistic and diverse group of citizens (Lowndes and
Roberts,2013:187);and (3) necessitate‘joining up’with other democratic innovations
(Saward, 2020).
	4	We cannot do justice to the literature that documents the women (and some men)
who see their roles,at least in part,as about representing women and have undertaken
political acts to those ends (for an overview, see Paxton et al, 2020). Our point is not
to discredit their labour or existing scholarship.
	5	Galligan (2012: 3) similarly writes of inclusion, accountability and recognition as
the requisites for a gender democracy, and Walsh (2011) refers to access, voice and
contestation capacity.
	6	To be clear,the new processes advocated in feminist democratic representation do not
replace either gender quota or gender mainstreaming, but augment these democratic
innovations.
	7	The actors (for example, academic experts or women’s policy agencies) and processes
involved (for example, research or open calls) in mapping the differently affected
groups of women is part of the third phase of democratic design, which we refrain
from discussing in this article (see note 3).
	8	We recognise the difficulties of civil society participation and note that some
refuse engagement with formal politics. We trust that our design will engender
women’s civil society mobilisation – a claim we return to when we discuss
representational effects.
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	9	As asserted by feminist institutionalists (for example,Krook and Mackay,2011;Mackay
and Kenny, 2007), we acknowledge that the inclusion of affected representatives will
not change institutional gendered power relations overnight.
	10	The affected representatives do not have the right to veto elected representatives’
decisions (Young, 1990a; 1990b), which would render them akin to decision makers.
	11	This ensures some feminist substance remains in play (Dodson,2006;Saward,2016:9).
	12	Arguably, feminist democratic representation would also incentivise the establishment
of gender-sensitive parliaments (Palmieri, 2019).
	13	When elected representatives deliberate among themselves, they may switch back to
their preferred mode of communication (Urbinati, 2006: 43–6).
	14	We assume that most affected representatives will be women, that is, Dovi’s (2002)
‘preferable descriptive representatives’.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research,authorship,and/or publication
of this article.
Authors biographies
Karen Celis is a full professor affiliated with the Department of Political Sciences of
Vrije Universitiet Brussel, Belgium. She is co-director of the RHEA Research Centre
on Gender, Diversity and Intersectionality and academic advisor on inclusion policy.
She conducts theoretical and empirical research on the democratic quality of political
representation from an intersectional perspective.
Sarah Childs is Professor of Politics and Gender at the University of Edinburgh,UK.She
researches women’s political representation,political parties and gender/diversity-sensitive
parliaments (GSPs/DSPs).An impactful academic, she has undertaken GSP work with
the UK Parliament,the Inter-Parliamentary Union,the Commonwealth Parliamentarian
Association and UN Women.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
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