Gender Quotas in the Post-Communist World: Voice of the Parliamentarians by Joshua Dubrow and Adrianna Zabrzewska (Eds.) Was Reviewed by Julia Kubisa (D.Sc
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1 Voice of the Parliamentarians Voice of the Parliamentarians IFiS PAN Publishers Warszawa 2020 This book was funded by the National Science Centre, Poland (project number //B/HS/). The monograph Gender Quotas in the Post-Communist World: Voice of the Parliamentarians by Joshua Dubrow and Adrianna Zabrzewska (eds.) was reviewed by Julia Kubisa (d.sc. Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw). Cover design Joshua Dubrow, Adrianna Zabrzewska, Andrzej Łubniewski The cover art is by Zamir Dubrow. Proofreading Active Communication & Transaltion Burzyński Golubiewski s.c. Copyright © by Authors and Wydawnictwo IFiS PAN ISBN ---- IFiS PAN Publishers - Warsaw, Nowy Świat e-mail: publish@ifi span.edu.pl www.ifi span.waw.pl Table of Contents Preface ............................................................................................. About the Contributors ................................................................... Introduction: Voice, Inequality, and Representation ................... Joshua K. Dubrow and Adrianna Zabrzewska Chapter One: An Introduction to Gender Quotas in Europe ....... Joshua K. Dubrow and Adrianna Zabrzewska Chapter Two: Women in the Parliaments of the Communist and Post-Communist World, – ............................................. Joshua K. Dubrow Chapter Three: Electoral Gender Quotas in Post-Communist Countries as of ........................................................................ Anna Sedysheva, with Joshua K. Dubrow Chapter Four: Polish Parliamentarian Arguments on Gender Descriptive Representation in the s ....................................... Selected excerpts from Jacek Kurczewski’s Posłowie a opinia publiczna. Z badań nad przedstawicielstwem w Trzeciej Rzeczpospolitej [Parliamentarians and public opinion: Research on representation in the Third Polish Republic ()] Introduction by Joshua K. Dubrow and Adrianna Zabrzewska Translated by Jerzyna Słomczyńska and Adrianna Zabrzewska Chapter Five: Debate over Gender Quotas in Poland’s Parliament in ............................................................................................... Introduction by Adrianna Zabrzewska Translated by Anna Purisch Chapter Six: Interview with Professor Małgorzata Fuszara .......... Introduction by Adrianna Zabrzewska Interview Conducted and Translated by Adrianna Zabrzewska Chapter Seven: Voice, Body, and Gender Quota Politics in Poland .......................................................................................... Adrianna Zabrzewska Appendix A: POLPARL: Polish Parliamentarian Surveys in and .............................................................................................. Joshua K. Dubrow Introduction to Appendices B and C ......... ........................................ Marcin Ślarzyński Appendix B: Parliamentarian Opinions about Gender Quotas in and ............................................................................. Marcin Ślarzyński Appendix C: Parliamentarian Opinions about Descriptive Representation in ................................................................... Marcin Ślarzyński Preface This is a sourcebook on gender quotas in the post-Communist world. As befi tting a sourcebook, we compiled a variety of sources, including from academics and legislators. Legislators are the core of this book: we present their powerful voice which strongly shapes the situation of women’s political inequality across the post-Communist world. As editors, we selected the sources and decided on their presen- tation. Within each chapter, as necessary, we communicate our de- cisions. In the main, our goal was to present these sources to the English-speaking world in as clear and natural and readable and accessible way as we could. We are grateful to the translators. Translation was essential to bring out the voice of the parliamentarians and the situation of gender quotas throughout the post-Communist world to English language readers. Anna Sedysheva translated some of the Russian media and academic research on the state of gender quotas that informed her Chapter Three. Jerzyna Słomczyńska translated much of the 1990s gender quota study that appears in Chapter Four. Anna Purisch translated all of the Polish parliamentary debate that appears in Chapter Five. Adrianna Zabrzewska, a co-editor of the book, translated some of the material in Chapter Four and the entire interview with Małgorzata Fuszara in Chapter Six. She also translated some of the Polish Parliamentarian survey 2011 for her analysis in Chapter Seven. For Appendices B and C, in 2011 Anna Boczko-Dombi translated the data to English. 7 Preface We thank Jacek Kurczewski, the author of the book on Polish parliamentarian representation that was translated, in part, in Chapter Four. Professor Kurczewski owns the copyright to that book and granted us permission to reproduce translated parts. He reminded us that Professor Fuszara was essential for that 1990s study. We thank also Professor Fuszara for granting the interview that appears in Chapter Six. We thank Irina Tomescu-Dubrow for her comments on the early stages of the book, and Renata Siemieńska who, since the 1980s, has published in English and Polish foundational studies of women in politics in Poland. We thank past and present Polish parliamentarians whose voices appear throughout the book. We are grateful for the time they took to speak with social science researchers. This book was funded by the National Science Centre, Poland (project number 2016/23/B/HS6/03916), PI Joshua K. Dubrow. We dedicate this book to the Women’s Congress – Kongres Kobiet – and to everyone who pushes upward for gender quotas throughout the post-Communist world. About the Contributors Joshua K. Dubrow is a Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences. He is the co-author of Dynamics of Class and Stratifi cation in Poland (, CEU Press) and The Subjective Experience of Joblessness in Poland (, Springer), editor of Political Inequality in an Age of Democra- cy: Cross-national Perspectives (, Routledge) and Towards Elec- toral Control in Central and Eastern Europe (, IFiS Publishers). He was, from –, the co-editor of the Political Sociology section of Sociology Compass (Wiley), and is the PI of the grant, National Science Centre, Poland, “Political Voice and Economic In- equality across Nations and Time” (//B/HS/). Anna Sedysheva is a Ph.D. student at the Polish Academy of Sciences’ Graduate School for Social Research in Warsaw, Poland. Her Master’s degree in Cultural Communication was completed at the University of Wroclaw, Poland and she received her Bachelor’s degree in Russian Philology from Vladivostok’s Far Eastern Federal University, Russia. Her current research interests are feminist move- ments, digital activism, feminist theory, and gender and politics. e-mail: [email protected] Marcin Ślarzyński is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Phi- losophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology, as well as M.A. in Sociology, Polish Studies, and Italian Studies. His research interests include comparative-historical 9 About the Contributors and theoretical studies of nationalism, civil society, social move- ments, and right-wing politics in Europe with a special focus on Poland. Adrianna Zabrzewska is a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at the Graduate School for Social Research at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. She is an alumna of the Institute of English and the American Studies Center at the University of Warsaw. Her interests include feminist theory, psy- choanalysis, and gender studies. Adrianna is currently working on her doctoral dissertation on bodies, voices, and stories in American books for young readers. As a grantee of Fulbright Junior Research Award –, she conducted her research on children’s and ad- olescent literature at Illinois State University. I Voice, Inequality, and Representation By Joshua K. Dubrow and Adrianna Zabrzewska This is a sourcebook on gender quotas in nations that experienced multiple generations of Communist Party rule. We built the book from a variety of sources and disciplines for use in research, teaching, and activism. We intend for the book to provide an introduction to gender quota policy and, thus, to the cross-national problem of women’s political inequality of voice. Voice may be defi ned as the expression of needs and interests within a political system (e.g. Verba, Schlozman, and Brady ). The political system we are concerned with is democ- racy. In democracy, parties and parliamentarians represent women and other social groups through voice within formal political in- stitutions, or what Max Weber called the “halls of power.” Power wielded by parties and parliamentarians through voice – e.g. on gender quota policy – impacts the political representation, and thus the life chances, of women. In all democracies, there is a gendered political inequality. Political inequality of voice may be defi ned as structured diff erences in opportunities and access to political de- cision-making and decision-makers (Dubrow ). Quota policy should be designed to provide substantial equitable opportunities and access to those decision-makers and their political decisions by the creation of new, favorable circumstances for women to be par- liamentarians. We present the voice of the parliamentarians whose job it is to write, promote, and enforce the policies that help move society 11 Joshua K. Dubrow