This bachelor thesis studies female local politicians’ views on representation and the existence of a women’s interest. The thesis uses a qualitative method in the form of semi structured interviews. The interviewees are five female politicians from a municipality in Småland. The study bases on Hanna Pitkin’s theory of representation and Virigina Sapiro and Anne Phillips views on women’s interests. Pitkin views representation as acting in the interests of the represented in a manner responsive to them. The interview questions are based on the theories and are used to explore the female politicians’ views on representation, women’s interests and their own ability to influence local politics. The theories are used to analyze the results and as a point of comparison to see if the politicians’ views align with the theorists’ views. The thesis finds that the female local politicians’ thoughts on representation has several similarities with Pitkin’s theory, but they focus more on the independence of the representative and two of the politicians differ from Pitkin by viewing the social characteristics of the representative as the most important aspect of representation. All the politicians see their ability to influence the politics in the municipality as good. They agree that women share experiences that can create a mutual women’s interest, specifically in the question of childbirth, but based solely on the interviews it is difficult to say that there’s a mutual women’s interest that cover several areas of society. The politicians agree that women’s experiences are important when making political decisions regarding questions like childbirth, but male politicians can also successfully create policy in these areas. The results from the interviews are not enough to give a fair answer to the question of the existence of a mutual women’s interest.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-109199 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Vilma, Dahlgren |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för statsvetenskap (ST) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
Page generated in 0.0024 seconds