ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses only on the percentage of women in elective office has tended to discount the importance of woman power in community activities, interest groups and lobbies, political parties, and government agencies. It looks at women's participation in a variety of roles and arenas, as well as at the impact of participation-related public policies on likelihood that future generations of women will be more actively engaged in the exercise of political power. The debate over women's political role has been affected greatly by dominant ideologies of democracy and by contemporary movements for political power. As a central issue of women's rights, probably the most famous of all, the fate of women's suffrage illustrates many aspects of contemporary feminist politics. The chapter describes international efforts to envision a democracy for both men and women and the efforts of feminist theorists to break down the equality/difference dichotomy and expose the way such frameworks themselves constitute barriers to political power for women.
