Good practice

The 'gender-sex system' is deeply rooted in time and space and is manifest across societies and cultures. The experience of democracy itself may not be reduced to formulaic redefinitions of representation in legislative assemblies, but rather is recognised to incorporate the manifestations of institutionalised and discursive practices on the daily lives of women and the multiplicity of their locations. Feminist critiques of democracy, specifically liberal democracy, point to the view that the theoretical underpinnings of liberal democracy have not only been based upon the negation of gender as a social construct, but have over time excluded the voice of women from the public sphere. Emerging from the modernist tradition, feminism has at one and the same time historically sought to utilise modernity's universalist aspirations while highlighting gender difference as the mainstay of its critique. Recent feminist critiques of democratic thought have sought to deconstruct gendered conceptions of citizenship and political participation.