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Parliamentary Affairs Advance Access originally published online on March 1, 2008
Parliamentary Affairs 2008 61(3):419-425; doi:10.1093/pa/gsn006
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© The Author [2008]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Hansard Society for Parliamentary Government; all rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

This article appears in the following Parliamentary Affairs issue: The Political Representation of Women [View the issue table of contents]

Introduction: The Descriptive and Substantive Representation of Women: New Directions

Karen Celis and Sarah Childs

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Feminist engagement with the concept of representation dates back more than ten years. The starting place for much of this discussion is Hanna Pitkin's seminal The Concept of Representation.1 According to Pitkin, the crucial dividing line in forms of representation is the distinction between ‘standing for’ and ‘acting for’ representation. Famously, she states that an over-emphasis upon the composition of political bodies prevents a proper focus upon the activity of representation; in her view, it is more important to focus on what representatives do than on who they are. Thus Pitkin contends, and many mainstream scholars of political representation concur, political representation should be conceived of in a substantive way, defining it as ‘acting in the interest of the represented, in a manner responsive . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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