Factors Determining Women's Political Activity
| Published date | 01 July 1985 |
| Author | Renata Siemienska |
| DOI | 10.1177/019251218500600302 |
| Date | 01 July 1985 |
| Subject Matter | Introduction |
INTRODUCTION
Factors Determining Women’s
Political Activity
RENATA
SIEMIE~SKA
There
is
a
growing body of literature on sex inequality in social and
political life, and on factors determining the present situation as well
as those impeding changes. Nevertheless, it seems useful to take up
the matter once again from a different angle. We will focus on the
syndromes
of
the determinants of women’s situations, the configura-
tions that are conducive
to
the emergence
of
given types of con-
sciousness and the selection of particular types of action designed to
change the situation.
Low political involvement of women is usually attributed to socio-
political, situational, or structural factors (Welch,
1977;
Kingsbury,
1984;
Epstein et al.,
1981),
in addition,
of
course,
to
strictly biological
ones. Discussion
of
this last group of factors would extend beyond
the scope of this volume.
As
for socio-political ones, they are usually
seen to include primarily
a
country’s ideology, as
a
rule assigning dif-
fering expectations
to
men and women. Men are usually put in the
role of decision makers
and
given a privileged position in society, while
women are assigned inferior roles, involving
a
degree of subordina-
tion to, and dependence
on,
men. Much attention
is
paid in this respect
to socialization, another socio-political factor that serves
to
adjust
members of society
to
their sex-related roles.
Situational factors include women’s placement in society, tied to
performance of traditional roles in microgroups (the family and the
household).
This
leaves them little opportunity to become actively in-
volved in other groups, or
to
devote the time and energy required to
fight for positions giving them
a
share in management, production,
and distribution of goods, or in political life.
Finally, structural factors: It is pointed out that even when women
achieve higher education, that education still prepares them for the
so-called feminine occupations, and
not
the
ones
from which the
society’s decision makers are recruited.
International Political Science Review,
Vol.
6
No.
3,
1985
282-286
0
1985
International
Political Science
Association
282
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