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This article develops a critique of the ‘economistic’ approach to understanding social bias in parliamentary representation. It asks why it is so difficult to reduce social bias and achieve change towards a more demographically representative parliament. It argues that what is needed to understand political representation and social identity is a theory that does not polarise subjectivity and social structure in the way the economistic approach polarises ‘supply’ and ‘demand’. The article proposes that paired concepts of ‘habitus’ and ‘field’ provide tools that enable an understanding of the relationship between the ‘general social field’, structured as it is by divisions of social class, sex/gender and ‘race’/ethnicity, and the ‘habitus’ and ‘strategies’ of actors competing to enter one of the major fields of power, in this case, the field of politics, recognising that these two levels are mediated in their interconnections by the specific form taken by the British political system. The research is based on extended autobiographical interviews with male and female members of the British parliament. The article focuses on class, the ‘difference’ that has been sidelined in feminist debates on the politics of difference, and also on sex/gender in the form of masculine identity. The article suggests that remedies are needed at each of the three levels of field, system and habitus if parliamentary politics is to be opened up to a wider demographic base, and in so doing, to move towards political justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the link between the changing position of women and gender relations and the changes in the global political economy. Arguments on the competition of states for respectability; Changes in the condition and representation of women in Japan; Proposed conceptual framework for analysing the significance of women and gender in the global political economy.

This paper looks at how far women's access to positions of power in the labor market is independent of class background, looking at the case of Japanese women in professional and managerial employment. It questions both the conventional approach to the class analysis of women, as well as the dismissal of the concept of class in understanding women and power. Using three different indicators of social origin, based on father's employment position, mother's work status and employment position, and parent's cultural capital, it argues that women's access to positions of power in employment is not independent of social origin. On the contrary, a privileged class background is more important for women that it is for men in gaining entry into professional and managerial employment. The study also looks at how the inclusion of women in the analysis affects the understanding of class, and proposes the use of both conventional and alternative theoretical and methodological approaches to understand the complex relationships between gender, class, and power.

The article discusses representation of women in positions of public power. Women are heavily under-represented in positions of public power. In most industrialized countries women are no longer confined to the family and excluded from the public sphere, but the radical changes in gender relations that have taken place over the second half of twentieth century have had limited effects in changing the gender balance of public power or increasing women's participation in decision-making positions. Several explanations have been put forward to understand women's segregation into low value, powerless positions in public life. The most influential explanations have attempted to understand women's exclusion or nationalization from power within the context of the intersection of important structural divisions in society such as class, gender and race. In the last decade of twentieth century, women have made significant encroachments into areas of public influence, in which even 20 years ago women were considered exceptional, if not abnormal.