Good morning, everyone.

My name is Muskan, and I am honored to stand before you to discuss

a topic that holds great significance in today's socio-political landscape — the feminist
perspective on democracy. As someone deeply passionate about equality, social justice, and
the principles that underpin our democratic systems, I am excited to explore how feminist
ideologies challenge and reshape our understanding of democracy.

"Justice demands equal citizenship for all, regardless of gender, and justice demands that we
reconceive the family so that women, no less than men, can participate fully in social life."
This quote by Susan Moller Okin, in her work "Justice, Gender, and the Family," focuses
on the intersection of family life and political theory. She argues that justice requires addressing
gender inequalities within the family, as they have implications for broader societal structures.
Feminists have further critiqued the liberal distinction between the public and the private. They
characterize relations between men and women as one of unequal power relations wherein
there is indivision of Labour and the tasks done by women are devalued and not considered
productive enough to constitute paid labour. Thus, the domestic arena is a site of unequal power
structures and is, therefore, an arena of democratization. In liberal theory, the family is part of
the private sphere and hence kept out of politics and therefore, out of democratization. This is
one dimension of the feminist slogan ‘the personal is political’. The other dimension is that this
gendered division of labour and power in the private sphere is linked to the unequal
distribution of political status and power in the public sphere.
Most political thinkers explicitly excluded women from the category of citizenship on the
grounds of their natural inferiority and incapability. Carole Pateman, in her work "The
Sexual Contract," critiques the traditional social contract theories that often exclude or
subordinate women. She argues that the social contract, as historically conceptualized, has been
a sexual contract that legitimized male domination and the exclusion of women from full
citizenship.
Feminists are of the view that the measures to ensure substantive equality for women have to
be of a distinctive kind; they have to incorporate a notion of difference.
“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate
those differences.” as Audre Lorde says.
Understanding differences between men and women solely as a disadvantage is to adhere to a
male norm. Understanding differences as disadvantages has meant that democratic theory has
been insensitive to the realities of women’s lives. Using a particular norm as the standard and
imposing it on others is an act of discrimination. This disadvantages women as a group. Thus,
feminists contend that there is a gender bias in the democratic theory itself. In order to ensure
substantive equality, democracy has to think in terms of recognizing and accommodating
differences.
Like the deliberative democrats, feminists have also been critical of liberal democracies for
taking people’s preferences as given and for the restrictive view it has of participation. If
interests and preferences are taken as given, then democratic decision making will simply
reproduce the status quo. Unequal power structures sustain themselves through ideologies and
socialization. Thus, for women, the process of democracy is also a process of empowerment,
where they become aware of exploitation, gain confidence, and seek to transform their
conditions. This, however, calls for a more active and participatory democratic practice.
Therefore, Feminist thinkers including Pateman and Okin advocate for a more participatory
form of democracy that challenges the hierarchical structures inherent in traditional liberal
democracies. They propose a rethinking of democracy to include active participation,
especially by women, in both the public and private spheres.