Inclusion and Exclusion: Contributions of a Feminist Approach to Power

Abstract

This chapter illustrates the insights offered by feminist approaches to power. First, it very briefly compares feminist approaches to traditional approaches to power, emphasising the feminist insight that power is a relationship, not a thing, and that power is ubiquitous. Thinking about power in this way gives us a better understanding of the potential for women’s empowerment as well as the reasons for (and consequences of) women’s exclusion from political leadership. Feminist analysis directs our attention to multiple sites of power, moderating expectations of women who occupy ‘positions of power’. It suggests broader solutions to the problems of exclusion that bedevil advocates for women’s inclusion in democratic politics. The approach offers a richer understanding of relations of inclusion and exclusion that structure contemporary democracies.