Lena Wängnerud

163 Djerf-Pierre, M & Wängnerud, L (2011) Människors oro och politikens ansvar i Sören Holmberg, Lennart Weibull & Henrik Oscarsson (red) Lycksalighetens ö. Göteborg: SOM-institutet, Göteborgs universitet. D et är få känslor som är så allmänmänskliga som känslor av oro och rädsla. Edvard Munchs tavla "Skriet" och Pär Lagerkvists dikt "Ångest, ångest är min arvedel" tillhör kulturskatten just för att de ger uttryck för känslor som berör på djupet och delas av många. Det här kapitlet handlar om människors oro: Vad det är man oroar sig för i Sve-rige idag och om oron i första hand rör samhället i stort eller den egna situationen. Vi får bekräftat att oro är något allmänmänskligt, andelen som inte alls känner sig oroade är försvinnande liten, men det som är mest intressant är de variationer som återfinns. Ett återkommande resultat är att kvinnor är mer oroliga än män. Detta mönster kvarstår när man tar hänsyn till andra förklaringsfaktorer som ålder, utbildningsnivå ...

ABSTRACT Drawing on a multidisciplinary approach to explore the causal links between gender and sociotropic anxiety, this article studies the characteristics and magnitude of gender differences in anxiety to a range of social risks and threats. Specifically, it tests whether gender differences with regard to perceived vulnerability, personality traits, ideology and values, and awareness (political interest and news media exposure) mediate the effect of gender by means of mediational regression analyses. The analysis also includes a test for acquiescence bias. Gender is found to be a significant predictor of an individual’s sociotropic anxiety. Vulnerability, personality traits, ideology and values, and awareness all mediate the effect of gender. A significant effect of gender remains even when all other mediating factors were taken into consideration.

Abstract: There is a growing body of research acknowledging the lack of good cross-country comparisons that contribute to the understanding of what drives change in society, ie what make some countries more gender equal than others. In this essay, five explanatory ...

... något vakuum och forskningen har visat att såväl det svenska valsyste-mets utformning som den omfattande välfärdsstaten varit gynnsamma faktorer i sammanhanget (Bergqvist m. fl ... Men det hon säger underbygger att nyska-pande forskning ofta uppstår när man minst anar det ...

Esaiasson, Peter, 1957-(author) Göteborgs universitet, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen Gilljam, Mikael, 1957-(author) Göteborgs universitet, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen Oscarsson, Henrik, 1972-(author) Göteborgs universitet, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen ...

Page 1. = = = = = Deliberation or Jurisdiction? Testing the effectiveness of different routes towards gender equality Lena Wängnerud ... June 2009 ISSN 1653-8919 © 2009 by Lena Wängnerud. All rights reserved. Page 2. DELIBERATION OR JURISDICTION? ...

ABSTRACT The focus of this study is on the tension between the theory of the politics of presence, emphasizing the importance of background characteristics for political representation, and the theory on the politics of awareness, emphasizing the importance of explicit recognition of social group relations. The data used is the Parliamentary Survey 2010 send out to 349 members of the Swedish Parliament (310 answered the survey, which means a response rate of 89%). The study distinguishes between MPs that are self-defined champions of women, immigrants, and workers, and MPs that objectively belong to different groups (women/men, foreign-origin/native-origin, laborer/non-laborer). Dependent variables are self-perceived possibilities to influence of one’s own party-group, contacts with cabinet ministers on behalf of different groups and stand-points on concrete policy alternatives with bearing on everyday live situations of different groups. The preliminary finding is that for the representation of women matters MPs objective background, being a self-defined champion and left-right ideology; for the representation of immigrants matters being a self-defined champion and left-right ideology; for the representation of workers matters left-right ideology. Thus, the theory of the politics of presence is most relevant for understanding political representation in connection to the sex/gender dimension of society.

This article focuses on women’s representation in the Swedish Riksdag. The theory of the politics of presence serves as a point of departure. The aim is to underpin empirically – or to test empirically – the assertion that female politicians, to a greater extent than male politicians, represent the interests of women. The concept of women’s interests divides, on a theoretical level, into three components: the recognition of women as a social category; acknowledgement of the unequal balance of power between the sexes; and the occurrence of policies to increase the autonomy of female citizens. On the empirical level this corresponds to measurements indicating female versus male MPs’ attitudes and behaviour in areas such as gender equality and social welfare policy. The data used are parliamentary survey studies from 1985, 1988, and 1994. The analysis controls for effects of politicians’ gender when other factors – e.g. party affiliation, age, education, and parliamentary experience – are taken into account. The main result is that the theory of the politics of presence gains strong empirical support. What this study contributes is a significant measure of stability for the feminist critique of more established theories of representative democracy.

ABSTRACT How can one explain the transformation of elected assemblies like national parliaments? In this study it is argued that much can be gained from taking the assumption of political generations more seriously when trying to explain transformations of the political agenda – for example, of themes and topics brought up in the parliamentary process. More specifically, the article expands on previous research in three ways: first, it launches the concept of ‘parliamentary political generation’ where the core element is the combination of an influx of large numbers of newcomers into the elected assembly and an electoral context that is formative – that is, that exhibits characteristics that distinguish the election from other elections. Second, an empirical test is conducted where other factors such as party affiliation and social background characteristics are controlled for. Finally, the test on the impact of parliamentary political generations is conducted in a context – the Swedish Riksdag – where parliamentary party groups are strong. The data used is the Parliamentary Surveys 1985–2010 conducted at the Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. The political generation in focus is the ‘Class of 94’. The results show that the Class of 94 distinguish themselves by being more feminist than their senior colleagues and other groups of newcomers in Swedish elections. This is the feminist generation in Swedish politics.

Conditional cash transfer programs, an innovation in social welfare administration, have received considerable acclaim as a means of enhancing human capital and reducing leakage of public resources through corruption. While numerous studies examine the effects of the program on human capital indicators in Mexico and various other countries that have adopted the approach, little is known about the effects of