Abstract

This study focuses on the issue of participation of women in politics, particularly in the area of gender equality in governance and access to the resources associated with it. The results available show an increase in women's participation in political life. There are definitely more women applying for offices and many of them achieve success. Indubitably, the easily discernible progress is overshadowed by the continuing gender gap, manifested in persistent, lower participation of women. In this chapter, it is primarily quantitative data and reports that have been considered, and analysis of the results available enables us to present the changes in the representation of women in political decision-making circles both at the national and supra-national levels. We have analysed the data describing the situation in Poland, the Nordic countries, and the European Union. In the context of initiatives for equal representation of women in representative bodies exercising functions and decision-making, it is worth noting that, even in countries which have achieved a satisfactory level in terms of numbers, this is not fully reflected in the implementation of gender equality in the area of politics. This is because the practice, often used, is to limit access to certain areas of political activism. There is still a well--established social, stereotypical division into areas traditionally “reserved” for representatives of both sexes, such as social affairs or education.

Key words: women, politics, European Union, Poland, the Nordic countries

Introduction

Empirical studies show a variety of motives for engaging in politics, which may indicate that for various individuals political activity may be valuable for various reasons. Here we can identify motivational factors such as: the need for influence, control or power, the need for affiliation, loyalty to specific groups of people, the search for strong incentives, new experiences, or the need to undertake specific tasks. As you can see, the motivation for political participation is multifactorial, so you can show various types of typologies of the dominant motivation. For example, in studies conducted in the years 1964−1990 on the activists of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, it has pointed out that there are four basic factors of motivation: ambition, sociability (affiliation), task orientation, and loyalty (Constantini and Valenty, 1996, pp. 498−524).