ARE WOMEN WANTED IN POLITICS AT ALL? WOMEN AND POLITICS IN HUNGARY(RESEARCH IDEAS) 1. WOMEN IN DECISION-MAKING ROLES IN HUNGARY 1.1. SITUATIONAL OVERVIEW: HOW DID WE GET HERE? In the case of Hungary, when it comes to the topic of“women and politics”, it is typical to discuss percentages, and in particular the percentage of female parliamentarians. Hungary is particularly interesting in this regard, as such figures are straightforward to compare, and with women making up 14% of legislators(28 out of a 199-member National Assembly) 2 the proportion in Hungary is low even by the standards of neighbouring countries with, in many respects, similar histories. In addition, it is worth bearing in mind that in terms of women’s political rights, Hungary kept pace with Western and Northern European countries well into the twentieth century: the first female Hungarian parliamentarian, Margit Schlachta, was elected in 1920, just one year after the first woman was elected to the UK House of Commons, and one year earlier than the first woman was elected to the Swedish Parliament.(It should be noted that Hungary also kept pace in terms of extending the franchise to women: the enactment of universal suffrage meant that women were first able to exercise full voting rights in Hungary in 1945, the same year as French women, and a year earlier than women in Italy.) However, after the communist seizure of power, Hungary took a different direction in terms of women’s participation in the legislature: the proportion of women in the non­democratically elected parliament, operating within in a de facto one-party system, increased significantly, as a result of the ruling party’s implementation of a gender quota during party-member recruitment. Hungary’s highest percentage of female parliamentarians – 30.1%– was reached in 1980, while in the Soviet Union, which was the cultural hegemon in the region at the time, the proportion of women in the Supreme Soviet, which functioned as the legislative assembly, also exceeded 30 percent. In Sweden, meanwhile, the proportion of women was 27.8%, and in the UK House of Commons it was only 3%. However, in the first democratic elections after the fall of communism(1990), only 7.3% of the seats in the Hungarian Parliament went to women. 3 Twenty years later, in 2010, when Fidesz won a governing majority for the second time, this proportion had only increased to 9.1%. 4 It should be noted that the proportion of women among the members of the European Parliament is significantly higher: at the time of writing, eight of the 21 Hungarian MEPs(more than a third) are women. 5 There are no research reports or studies dedicated to investigating this discrepancy; in the context of the broader topic of Hungarian women’s political participation, only the question of why women seem to have more extensive opportunities in this area(and what this says about Hungary’s political preferences in the international arena) is given attention. At the time of writing, the Hungarian government is led by a man, and among the 14 government ministers, there is no single woman. 6 It should be noted that in the more than three decades that have elapsed since 1989, there have been several periods – during government coalitions of differing political orientations – during which there was not a single woman in the government, which is a rare occurrence in Europe. Though it is difficult to say which government positions are considered key in terms of the executive power – the importance of individual portfolios may differ, while the influence of state secretary positions may increase or decrease due to the merging or division of ministries, for example – it seems clear that women are given disproportionately few roles with significant executive power. We can read about this in discussions concerning the participation of women in the political elite, and the activities of individual politicians. When it comes to the third branch of power, the judiciary, it is worth noting that this too is of relevance to women’s participation in executive decision-making, since according to the principle of the separation of powers, the judiciary – at least in certain areas and on certain levels – operates in the political space, almost always and everywhere. For instance, we may cite Hungary’s Constitutional Court, where just five of the 15 seats, 7 or one third, are held by women. Incidentally, this body was established in Hungary in 1990, as part of the democratic transition, but for almost a decade, until 1999, it had no female members. 8 As for the lower courts, the fact that women were overrepresented in the judiciary had become well known by the end of the 2010s. Several factors may be presumed to underly this phenomenon, and it can be presumed that“ one of 5