ABSTRACT
Democratic theory has recently put civil liberties, accommodation of cultural and religious diversity and discrimination of minority groups on the research agenda. European integration has inspired a rethinking of democracy from two different perspectives: diversity and transnationalism. Implication is that democratic intersectionality must be understood as a constitutive process based on communication between social and political actors and the creation of new collective identities. This chapter focuses on the European setting and argues that a model for inclusive democracy at the transnational level needs to take into account differences between groups as well as conflicting interpretations of key notions of public debate such as gender equality and womens interests. Processes of deliberation and contestation contribute further to developing democracy at the transnational European level. It also discusses the empirical findings about intersections of gender with ethnicity or race in terms of collective mobilization on the transnational European level.
