ABSTRACT
Feminist scholars and activists alike have asked for decades whether a democracy that excludes women from participating equally in democratic decision-making structures can be considered legitimate. One key argument states that equal representation is a question of justice: women make up half the population and should thus be included as elected representatives. Accordingly, rightist women as political actors do not fit easily into conventional ideas about women as agents of progressive change or as a group to be uniformly represented. As a result, a great majority of studies have focused on left leaning parties and governments when investigating women’s political representation, both descriptively and substantively. This perspective, however, is slowly changing. Women in right-wing parties themselves have asked where and how they fit into the greater question of women’s representation particularly when their own parties often reject group-based claims. The chapter also presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book.
