ABSTRACT
Depending on the questions formed by socio-political circumstance and formulated by critical social theory, the uneasy relationship between the theory and practice of democracy with gender may be explored in different ways. Judging from the literature of the 1970s and the 1980s, it seemed then not only an urgent need, but also a satisfactory goal, to underline the obvious lack or limited presence of women in all power structures and decision-making processes as socially problematic and theoretically inconsistent.1 In addition, investigation into the sexist distortion of political analysis was regarded as epistemologically interesting, especially since the limited political participation of women was as a rule dealt with, in mainstream political analysis, in a manner negatively charged against women,2 and aligned with the numerous stereotypes and projections on gender.3 Stereotypes that emerge from common sense assessments regarding the inevitability of women’s limited political participation given their social roles, and from the dominant political discourse in which the “political” is identified with men.
