KOMMUNFULLMÄKTIGE, EN JÄMSTÄLLD POLITISK ARENA? -Om den deskriptiva och substantiella representationen i Örebro och Västerås Kommunfullmäktige

The main purpose of this paper is to understand if an equal descriptive representation of women and men in Örebro and Västerås city councils results in equal participation in political debates. The papers purpose is also to study if women in Örebro and Västerås city councils engage in debates more frequently when questions concerning welfare are debated. According to some theories and previous research women in politics tend to participate less than men in debates on the political arena. Previous studies made in the 1980s suggests that women although in quite high numbers in city councils were relatively silent compared to men. Other theories suggests that women representation needs to reach a critical mass to have an impact on womens participation. There is also previous research that suggests that women in an higher degree than men participate in debates concerning welfare questions. Our aim is to apply this on our two cases, which are Örebro city council and Västerås city council. In order for us to do this we collected 3 time reports from previous meetings of each council and calculated the time the women and the men participated during the meetings to see if gender played a role in the participacion. For the second part of the study we observed two video recordings of council meetings, one from each council in order to determine if women according to the theories participated in greater numbers when welfare questions were discussed. Our result is that women and men according to our samples and variables generally participates in an equal degree during the council meetings. Small variations are to be found but in general the differences are insignificant in this paper. On the question if women participated in greater number than men when welfare questions were debated we can not agree with the theories because the men participated more in Örebro, and almost equally as much in Västerås when welfare questions were discussed