Legislating and Representing? Female Senators’ Agenda in Congress (2006-2010)
Diana Esther Guzmán Rodríguez, Sylvia Prieto Dávila | April 30, 2014
In this book we hope to contribute empirically to the issue of women’s political representation in Colombia. Additionally, the book brings attention to the necessity to develop intermediary theoretical proposals that can open the conceptual debate regarding the inclusion and representation of women in the political arena.
In recent years there has been intense academic and political debate on the inclusion and representation of women in the political arena. The rationale is a basic empirical finding: although they constitute half of the world’s population, they access state decision-making positions in very low proportions. This exclusion is also accompanied by a lack of representation of the interests of women in state decisions. The theoretical debate at the level of inclusion moves between the need for more women to come to power, and criticisms of affirmative measures that seek to accelerate their arrival. At the level of representation, the central debate arises among those who assert that it is impossible for women who achieve positions in the public space to wager bets that represent the interests of women in general, and who argue that representation is possible and it is also a political obligation.
Find the entire book here