ABSTRACT
This chapter turns to the electoral processes themselves and indicates the responses of individuals and groups to the new sources of power. It illustrates the political opportunities that multi-representative constituencies create for groups within unions. The chapter examines the electoral activity of women who were already active in the former partner unions. It indicates the manner in which proportionality and fair representation encourages new women to be pulled and pushed into representative structures. The chapter indicates how women were acting collectively to take up new seats. It illustrates the manner in which the interests and identities of women interact and produce a number of tensions and contradictions. Proportionality identifies women as members of a group and, as the chapter shows that women act as individuals and as members of subgroups that cut across gender. The chapter concludes that whilst proportionality and fair representation facilitated an increase in the number of individual women taking up representative seats.
