Democratic Community and Problem of Exclusion: About Women’s Underrepresentation in the Public Sphere

In democratic countries women’s political participation continues to be lower than men’s. Women are the second-class citizens. The aim of the article is to point out the mechanisms of exclusion that are rooted in the basis of liberal democracy. In the first part of the article I discuss the concept of the political agent, citizenship and public discourse and I explain why I see these categories as discriminating against women. Moreover, I analyze the liberal idea of difference as inclusion criteria that women are not able to meet. In the second part I try to answer the question if the non-exclusive public community could be possible. Invoking the concept of communicative democracy I propose some premises and strategies to implement in order to make women participation in the political community equal.

This Article is made in Open Access, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 license.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode.pl

This article is a translated and modified version of the text that was published in the previous issue of “Zoon Politikon”. See:
Weronika Żybura, Wspólnota demokratyczna a wykluczenie, "Zoon Politikon" (6) 2015, DOI:10.19247/ZOON201506