| Abstract [eng] |
The paper analyzes the descriptive representation of women in post-communist countries, that is, the factors determining the representation of women in parliaments in postsocialist states. The main problem is that women are underrepresented in the analyzed sample of countries. With the average of 17 percent, the number of women falls behind the world‘s average and lags severely behind Western countries. The paper sets its primary goal: to test a set of theories developed from studies of women‘s access to political power in Western democracies. I wished to see how those theories fared in a significantly different context, the newly developing democracies of post-communist space. Three hypotheses were raised: 1. The main factor, determining the representation of women in parliaments of post-communist states is the design of electoral system; 2. The prevailing patriarchal attitude towards the role of women in the society is important, but not the essential factor; 3. Socioeconomic conditions do not explain the variance of the proportion of women found in legislative institutions of post-communist countries. Three last elections of 17 electoral democracies of post-communist countries have been included in the analysis. The model of legislative recruitment process has been used as the main theoretical framework. This process is highly influenced by cultural, political and socioeconomic contexts within which it occurs. The dependent variable in the research is the number of women legislators in parliaments. 3 independent variables – political, socioeconomic and cultural factors – have been divided into subfactors. Statistical analysis has been undertaken: correlation coefficients have been calculated and multivariate regression analysis has been made. Results demonstrate that the first hypothesis cannot be confirmed, but its statement is close to the truth. It appears that the main factor, determining the representation of women in post-communist countries, is fertility rate per woman. The higher the rate of fertility, the less women will be found in the legislatures. Electoral system is a very important variable. The proportional representation electoral system, characterized by high district magnitude and high electoral thresholds, is highly favourable to representation of women in parliaments. The second hypothesis, stating that patriarchal attitude towards women is important, but not the essential factor, has been confirmed. Countries where patriarchal attitude is prevalent, fare worse in representation of women. However, considering the remarkable differences between the attitudes of Western and post-communist countries, it could have been reasonable to expect that this factor would be the main determining the number of female legislators. However, this is not the case. Such attitude is common to all post-communist countries, so it probably operates as a main factor determining the relatively low number in post-communist states as a whole, and not as important in explaining the variation across the region. The third hypothesis, stating that socioeconomic factors do not affect the representation of women, has not been confirmed. Fertility rate, unemployment, and participation in labor force are all important factors explaining the variance of female MPs. The only factor that proved to be unimportant was level of development. So it can be stated, that the theories, developed in Western countries, with little nuances, are able to explain the variance of women MPs in post-communist states. The only difference is that fertility rate plays a particularly important role in post-communist context, and the relation between the participation of women in the labor force and the number of women in parliaments is negative. This can be due to the fact that participation in labor force refers to completely different things in Western and Eastern societies. |
