respondents believe that both partners should work, 40% believe that the family suffers because of women's careers and 44% believe that women want a family and children the most. The paradoxical combination between neo-liberal values in the labour market(and not only) and conservative-paternalistic »familialism«(clearly reflected in family policies, although not only) is an element that deserves further study and can also explain the gap that seems to exist between a society more open to equality between women and men on the one hand, and political parties which even appear to be regressing in their support for equality. Last but not least, the predominant anti­feminist attitudes in all three post-communist decades, enhanced by anti-gender campaigns(with ever more diverse manifestations of this in Romania) are factors that may explain the decline of women's political representation in 2020. What solutions could be adopted to improve the political representation of women in Romania? In the following we propose some recommendations in this regard. First of all, there is a need for a careful review of the legislative framework: clearer provisions are needed, with implementation rules and sanctions designed to support the promotion of gender equality at the level of political parties and in the electoral process. At the same time, the aim should be to introduce gender quotas in electoral legislation and to encourage political parties to adopt internal gender quotas. Likewise, there is a need for legal provisions to ensure proper enforcement of existing legislation(e.g. ineligibility of voter lists that do not have any women). Transparency of procedures and information, respectively the collection of relevant data, is another line of possible intervention. A legal obligation should be introduced for all the databases of the Permanent Electoral Authority to contain indicators of gender, age, occupation/profession for candidates and elected officials. Similarly, an obligation should be introduced for all mandatory reporting by political parties to contain data on gender differences. At the same time, there would be a need for the establishment of a National Observatory for Gender Equality aimed at the systematic and periodic collection of data, especially quantitative data, relevant to the political representation of women. Last but not least, these measures should be accompanied by the creation and enforcement of mechanisms enhancing the transparency of existing information at the level of political parties. Finally, there is still a need for sensitivity, education and awareness-raising regarding gender equality in Romanian society. One could design activities to raise awareness on gender equality barriers targeting women's organisations and political party leaderships. Furthermore, it would be desirable to introduce topics on political representation, gender equality in civic culture classes in school, and to organise an annual forum on gender equality in politics and administration at universities, with the participation of academics, politicians/policy-makers and representatives of the associative environment. 21 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS