Do Women Enjoy a Political Advantage? Majority Position and Democratic Justice

Vandamme, Pierre-Etienne [UCL]

Philippe Van Parijs suggests that there might be a political inequality in favor of women, taken as a group, stemming both from their life expectancy and their supposed higher participation in elections due to their higher level of education. He also wonders about the status of this inequality. Is it advantageous? Is it unjust? Does it partially counterbalance other disadvantages or injustices? This papers starts by assessing and qualifying the alleged inequality from an empirical perspective. It then considers Van Parijs’ normative questions and argues that we should not consider the inequality as an advantage, nor an injustice, because mere membership in a majority group cannot plausibly be judged so. Where women have strong common interests, they have no power; where they have electoral power, they have no overarching common interests.