The Good, the Bad & the Ugly: Intersectional Accountability in Parliaments

• In Event: Research on Intersectionality in French Contexts: An International Dialog

Abstract

Marine Le Pen’s 2019 European election pitch to women was forthright. Those who claim to represent women have failed to protect Muslim girls’ innocence and freedom; they have not stopped the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) or forced marriage; and French culture, symbolized by its sunbathing practices, is under threat. Feminists have failed, alongside political parties and the state, to close the gender pay gap. Against this, Le Pen offers herself as the politician who will protect future generations of women from Islam and multiculturalism, and who will bring about gender equality. She is speaking as a woman, as a divorcee and single mother; she is speaking about what would commonly be considered women’s issues; and she is offering a ‘feminist take’ on these issues; she is moreover contending that she “gets” ordinary women and has lived-experience as a woman.

In Feminist Democratic Representation (FDR) (Celis and Childs 2020) we both described the ‘Le Pen problematic’ and through ‘imagining representation as it should be’, advanced a design for the redress of women’s poverty of representation. At the heart of our concern was a commitment to an intersectional update of women’s group representation and a concern with how women can determine whether their representatives are good, bad or ugly. Rather than excluding Le Pen’s representative claims as part of public debate over what constitutes women’s issues and interests, her voice may very well be amplified in the very institutions of representative democracy. Yet, if Le Pen wants to argue that her politics is what is best for women, under our new design she must now do so knowing that she will need to substantiate and defend her claims, subject to the eye of those women for whom she says she speaks. In all likelihood she will find her representative claims for and about women directly challenged by others who also claim to speak and act for women. Her charge that French politics and French feminism is elitist, that abortion rights are settled in France, that women’s interests are under threat from Islam might well resonate with some women but might well be flatly refused by others.

In this paper we focus particularly on practices of accountability which remain as yet underdeveloped in the P&G literature. In Joni Lovenduski’s damning review of the failures of representative democracy she concludes that not only do elected representatives tend not to have a clear mandate about how to act concerning women’s issues and interests, women are ‘not explicitly considered to be a group to whom decision makers should be accountable’ (Lovenduski 2019, 29, emphasis added). Asking the questions ‘why and how elected political institutions and representatives can be held to account by intersectionality diverse women’, we elaborate upon the twin institutional augmentations - Group Advocacy and Account Giving - introduced in FDR. The latter is where elected representatives explain and justify the content, course, and conclusions of their deliberations. To better adjudge decisions (un)just and/or (un)fair, elected representatives seek to persuade the represented of the quality of their deliberations and decisions, how well do they prove that they listened, rather than merely heard all voices?

Under the conditions of our new design, and even when faced with experiences and interests that are different from, or in conflict with their own, there is a greater possibility, if still no obligation for elected representatives to better represent women. Account giving is our institutionalized moment that provides an intersectional enactment of Young’s (1990) veto, Disch’s (2012, 219; 2011, 107) “disidentification” or a “not in our name” judgement, or Dovi’s (2015) “naysaying.” Because it takes place within parliaments, Account Giving is moreover characterized by its formal status, a high degree of legitimacy and extra-parliamentary visibility that further incentivizes elected representatives to do ‘good by women’.

So what of the Le Pen problematic? Let us imagine any representative making claims to represent women. In political representation ‘as it should be’ - and where parliamentary accountability mechanisms are taken seriously - elected representatives are incentivized to represent intersectionally diverse women. Having been exposed to women who are affected by the decisions they make, politicians care more and know more about them, and understand that they will need to persuade them that they made just and fair decisions. The political agenda becomes overhauled, even as we recognize that not all women can have their substantive interests met at all times, given their diversity. Indeed, it is precisely because accountability is not reducible to substantive congruence that we look to processes of accountability where evidence is provided of ongoing affinity, connection, and responsiveness between the representatives and the represented in all their diversity.

Authors

• Karen I.L. Celis, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

• Sarah Childs, Royal Holloway