Women in Politics and Abortion

The second half of the XX century has given the world a new political phenomenon - a kind of a breakthrough of women in the highest echelons of power. In several countries of Western Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America, they took power into their own hands. The process flow of women into politics thoroughly shake the stereotype: the policy - for men, family, children - for women. But this stereotype is not broken. Overall, the proportion of women in decision-making in most countries remains low and far below their proportion in the population and labor force. Over the past thirty years the representation of women in public office has substantially increased. Although women have yet to reach parity with their male counterparts, women have become a strong and visible force in politics.

The role of women in politics depends on the dominant ideology in society, as well as socio-economic and political characteristics of stages of development. Women are poorly represented in political parties and national legislatures. The proportion of women-members of the lower chambers of parliament in the last twenty or thirty years has increased only slightly and reached a maximum of 12%, which is certainly much less than that of men (Zeinert 2002). Women are better represented in the lower chambers of parliaments in Europe, although this figure is that mainly due to the Scandinavian countries. In the Scandinavian countries in general the most powerful in the world of women. United States with a sad 13% is much lower on the list (Zeinert 2002).

In Europe, a higher representation of women are making some centrist and leftist parties. In Scandinavia, this is required by female activist groups. The Swedish Social Democratic Party has taken in this...

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...e yet to buy) means to move away from a more serious issue as to whether the public emerging political system of check and control the actions and decisions taken by the executive.

Turning specifically to the issue of abortion, in the United States Berkman and O’Connor’s (1993) study of the impact of female legislators on state abortion policy outputs found a strong correlation between the proportion of women in a state’s legislature and a state’s abortion policy (Berkman & O’Connor 1993, 103). More specifically, findings revealed that as the number of women legislators increased so did the likelihood that a state would not require minors to obtain parental consent in order to receive an abortion (Berkman & O’Connor 1993, 111). Until now, Berkman & O’Connor’s study (1993) was the only existing research on the impact of female legislators on state abortion policy.