Gender Equality
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Abstract
The study of descriptive representation is key in projects that aim to understand and further gender equality. But what does it mean to achieve gender equality in descriptive representation? And how can descriptive equality be measured and understood? Gender and politics scholarship contends that gender equality is about more than counting women and men in elected assemblies. Concerns related to power, agency, and intersectionality should equally be addressed. This chapter engages with these challenges by going back to the conceptual roots of descriptive representation. Based on a re-reading of Pitkin’s foundational study on representation, it suggests that scholars can counter several of the complexities that have been identified by taking information-giving on board as an additional criterion. Studying descriptive representation as information-giving would allow for an improved understanding of the causes and consequences of political inequality, and of descriptive representatives as a source of equality in other political spheres.