Landscape women's political agency: conceptual foundations and institutional conditions of its realization

Abstract

Women's participation in politics is today assessed primarily through their numerical share in government bodies, whereas the capacity of women politicians to act as autonomous agents, to set the agenda, build alliances, and influence decision-making, remains outside the scope of analysis. Yet the quantitative growth of women's presence in representative institutions is not accompanied by an automatic expansion of their actual influence, and the gap between descriptive and substantive representation has ceased to narrow. The aim of the study is to conceptualize the notion of women's political agency as a magnitude irreducible to presence, one that mediates the transition from numerical to substantive representation, and to identify the institutional conditions of its realization using the case of Kazakhstan. The theoretical framework draws on H. Pitkin's typology of representation, A. Phillips's "politics of presence," R. Kanter's concept of tokenism, the theories of critical mass and critical actors, as well as the treatments of agency in E. Giddens, M. Emirbayer and A. Mische, and N. Kabeer. The research method is a content analysis of 1,999 legislative and oversight acts (parliamentary deputy inquiries) of 17 women deputies of the Mazhilis of the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan of the VIII convocation, classified into seven subject domains. The results reveal a pronounced thematic asymmetry: about 45% of activity is concentrated in the socio-cultural sphere, whereas the traditionally "male" domains (economy, finance, legislation) are taken up only by individual "critical actors"; at the same time, the volume of activity is not equivalent to thematic autonomy. The aggregate 30% quota secures women's entry into the institution but not their distribution across key positions. The findings acquire particular significance in light of the 2026 constitutional reform, which replaced the bicameral Parliament with a unicameral Kurultai: the retention of the previous aggregate quota ahead of the elections of 23 August 2026 makes it possible to predict the reproduction of the gap between presence and influence in the new body as well.