Conservative political actors appear rather troubling for many gender and politics scholars and feminist activists. What should we make of their claims to represent women? How should we best understand their actions? This article, based on a critical rereading of the empirical literature and informed by contemporary representation theory, develops a new conceptual framework for assessing the quality of women's substantive representation by conservatives. We find that under specified conditions, conservative representatives do further women's substantive representation. A first set of conditions relates to conservative claims to represent women. These are considered to be “for women” when they marry conservative women's concerns in society; when conservative representatives act and do not simply engage in rhetoric; and when their actions are not undercut by other acts, policies, or outcomes unfavorable to women. A second set of criteria considers the quality of the process of women's substantive representation. We contend that a feminist process of deliberation about women's interests can include conservative claims as long as they meet the requirements of responsiveness, inclusiveness, and egalitarianism.

Feminist scholars have developed a solid research agenda on gender equality in politics. This scholarship is built on the conviction that equitable representation of men and women is fundamental to the functioning of representative democracies (Mansbridge 1999; Norris and Lovenduski 1995). In order to comply with the intersectional research paradigm, gender and politics scholars have increasingly focused on other discriminatory mechanisms and how these relate to gender. Marginalized or privileged positions based on gender, ethnicity, race, class, or age are conceived not as “swinging free” from each other, but as interacting (Hancock 2007). Consequently, a group can be privileged in one context but disadvantaged in another depending on historical structures and contexts. Such an intersectional approach raises new questions about the meaning of political equality (Mügge 2013; Mügge and De Jong 2013). For instance, to what extent is women's sheer numerical presence an indicator for political equality if that presence is a marker of inclusion as well as exclusion? This contribution focuses on political recruitment and the question of whether inclusion fosters equality. Drawing on our ongoing research on Belgium and the Netherlands, we argue that an intersectional analysis of recruitment is indispensable to capture the nature of inclusion and exclusion and therefore to the understanding of political equality.

A recent wave of gender and politics research revisits the concept of “women's interests,” opening up new ways of thinking about who can articulate these interests and how to avoid essentialism in empirical analysis on women's substantive representation. This article seeks to advance these debates by integrating them with new work on political theory noting that speaking “for” a group also entails speaking “about” a group. Resolving some of the tensions presenting in existing work, the revised approach expands the range of actors engaged in making claims on behalf of “women” and draws a conceptual distinction between “issues,” broad policy categories, and “interests,” the content given to a particular issue. The contours of this new approach are illustrated via a comparative study of claims-making on behalf of “women” in three countries, revealing some overlaps but also important differences in the issues raised and arguments made regarding the nature of “women's interests.” This inductive method avoids problems of essentialism by arguing that “women” and “women's interests” are constructed through, and not simply reflected in, political advocacy on their behalf.

The focus on female MPs and leftist and feminist issues in traditional studies of women's substantive representation has supported the overall conclusion that women, feminists and left-wing parties promote women's interests in parliament. But our analysis of the ‘critical actors’ in women's substantive representation in 10 European countries confirms this finding only to a certain extent. Our inductive research design reveals an important group of less obvious actors: non-left, non-feminist and male MPs. That they speak out on behalf of women points to the necessity of revisiting our theories on women's substantive representation.

Four decades after publication, Hanna Pitkin's The Concept of Representation (1967), continues to resonate with scholars of representation and democratic performance. Many contemporary empirical and theoretical studies of politics begin and/or end with Pitkin's seminal taxonomy of representation (formal, symbolic, descriptive, and substantive representation); her definitions of these different forms of representation; or her conceptualizations of the relationships between the representative and the represented. This classic work still seems to provide some of the crucial tools and concepts for analyses and critiques that focus on the way in which and the extent to which policy decisions and deliberative processes relate to society.

When are “the people”—with all its different groups—represented? It is commonly accepted that democratic representation implies that no significant parts of the population are excluded from the right to vote or to stand for election and, similarly, that parliaments and even governments should, to a certain extent, mirror the represented and governed population. If authorization and accountability indicate the democratic quality of the formal dimension of representation (i.e., it is democratic when it is accountable), then representativeness allows for evaluating descriptive representation (i.e., it is democratic when it is representative of society) (see also Celis 2009). But what are our standards for judging the democratic quality of substantive representation? According to Hanna F. Pitkin, that normative standard is the representative's responsiveness: substantive representation is “acting in the interest of the represented, in a manner responsive to them.” Responsiveness turns what representatives do into substantive representation of the demos. It is a metacriterion for democratic representation in the sense that accountability and descriptive representativeness need also to ensure responsiveness. But, again, questions arise: How should we understand responsiveness? How do representatives establish it? Where and when does responsiveness need to be established?