Original scientific paper
Political Parties and Women
Smiljana Leinert Novosel
; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
One of the major roles of political parties within a multiparty
democatic system is to encourage equal opportunities of men and
women with the aim of realizing full democracy.
Among the parliamentary parties in Croatia we can distinguish
between those who can see no reason whatsoever to pay special
attention lo this issue, considering it setlled, and those who advocate
the need for and the continuity of promoting women rights. In the
analysis of party politics on that issue the following model was
used: a dimension whose extremes are state intervention and selfregulation.
It was linked with the dimcension of the continuum
Modernism-traditionalism. Thus we get a four-field chart. The first
field includes thc traditionalist political parties who view the social
position of women as a result of a spontaneous development of the
society in general, i.e. they accept the rule of self-regulation. These
are HDZ, HSS and HSP. In the second, (for the time being empty,
there would be parties that strive for the social regulation in the
realization of these traditional social values. The next field is
complementarily shared by modern political parties inclined to selfregulation
(HNS, HSLS, HND, SNS. IDS, DA) and those who
advocate state regulation of the mentioned issue (SDP and ASH).
The analysis of the attitude towards women in party organization
shows the following: 1. Low percentage of women among party
rank-and-file regardless of a party's nature and 2. "the rule" that
the higher the level or polilical decision-making, the lower the
number of women.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
110787
URI
Publication date:
2.5.1995.
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