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Exclusion by Design: Locating Power in Mansbridge’s Account of Descriptive Representation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2023

Amanda Clayton Open the ORCID record for Amanda Clayton [Opens in a new window] ,
Diana Z. O’Brien  and
Jennifer M. Piscopo
Amanda Clayton*
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University, USA
Diana Z. O’Brien
Affiliation:
Washington University in St. Louis, USA
Jennifer M. Piscopo
Affiliation:
Occidental College, USA
*
Corresponding author. Email: amanda.clayton@vanderbilt.edu
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Extract

A much-circulated image during the Donald Trump administration showed Vice President Mike Pence and members of the Republican House Freedom Caucus discussing the removal of maternity coverage from the Affordable Care Act—with not a single woman or person of color among them. In another image, white men watched approvingly as Trump signed an executive order reinstating the global gag rule, which bans foreign nongovernmental organizations that receive American aid from supporting abortion access. These images contrast with one from early in Joe Biden’s presidency. In his first address to Congress, Biden was backed by two women occupying the second- and third-most-powerful positions in the country, Vice President Kamala Harris and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, respectively. After acknowledging “Madame Speaker, Madame Vice President,” Biden said, “No president ever said those words and it is about time.”

Type
Critical Perspectives Article
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , December 2023 , pp. 1251 - 1255
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Women, Gender, and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association

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References

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