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JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH

traditions is promoted through the very low level of social and
geographical mobility and high social control within
communities. A significant role plays the religion for which the
role of women is mainly in the family. As a further barrier is
often mentioned an opinion that politics is a male domain, or
opinion that women are not interested in politics. But until
women show sufficient interest in participating in politics, no
quotas can help and the desired progress may not be even
achieved.

One of the institutional barriers to entry into politics is primarily
the electoral system. It is based on proportional representation on
the candidate list, which means that women have good chance of
being selected. But the reality is that even with an increase in the
number and proportion of female candidates on the candidate
lists their representation is still not high. For low number of
women at any level of politics in Slovakia bear the responsibility
the political parties themselves, which have competence to
compile a gender-balanced candidate lists. Parties declaring the
democratic approach should pay attention that the candidate lists
reflect the composition of the population they want to reach.

4 Research

The topic of women's participation in politics is not sufficiently
explored in Slovakia, and therefore detecting of experiences of
Slovak female - politicians and their attitudes to political
representation still it has meaning. Even more so in relation to
municipal politics, that is still insufficiently addressed in our
territory. The research results can be thus beneficial as a
statement on the gender culture of our society. The purpose of
the research was to identify the obstacles that impede or in any
way diminish involvement of women in politics, and also
determine how these barriers are lived and interpreted by female
politicians themselves. Our research was based on personal
experiences and views of women participating in municipal
politics. The research was performed in a standard manner
ensuring anonymity for respondents.

For the purposes of this research, qualitative research strategy
was chosen, as it’s clear advantage over the quantitative research
strategy is precisely that it allows a deeper understanding of
observed reality, and thus enables better reflection of the
understanding, experiencing and creating of the social reality
from people. Within it, it’s in fact possible to acquire data in all
its depth, without having to reduce them.

The basic criterion of selection was a woman - municipal
politician. Randomly we addressed ten mayoresses of
municipalities of different sizes located in the district of Banská
Bystrica, Zvolen, Detva and Krupina, i.e. approximately in the
middle of Slovakia. Other criteria were not taken into account in
the selection.

For investigating of the obstacles to women's political activity,
structured questionnaire with predetermined nine questions was
selected, which served as a technique to collect data for this
research. The questions concerned both general matters relating
to the participation in municipal politics but also specific facts
aimed at answering the main purpose of research – detecting of
obstacles to women's political participation. The questions were
composed as follows:

1.

What are the motives, circumstances and facts that led you
to run for mayor of the village? Have you run because of
your own conviction, or based on some external stimulus
(being addressed by a particular person, a community of
people, political parties, etc.)?

How long is the time – period that you hold the post of
mayoress for?

BITUŠÍKOVÁ, A.: Ženy v o

bčianskom a politickom živote na Slovensku. Banská

Bystrica: Ústav vedy a výskumu Univerzity Mateja Bela v Banskej Bystrici, 2005. p.
109-114.

BITUŠÍKOVÁ, A.: Ženy v o

bčianskom a politickom živote na Slovensku. Banská

Bystrica: Ústav vedy a výskumu Univerzity Mateja Bela v Banskej Bystrici, 2005. p.
115-121.

Have you consulted the candidacy for the post of mayoress
with someone in your community? If yes- whom with and
to what extent did you follow the opinion of this person /
these persons?

What were the reactions of your community to your
candidacy for the post of mayoress?

Do you see any obstacles in the exercise of your function?

Have you ever encountered, from the side of people with
whom you come into contact with, emotionally tinged
(positive / negative) reactions to what post you hold as a
woman?

Has your life changed after taking the office of mayoress?
If so-in what terms?

Do you have the ambition to engage also at a higher
political level (regional politics, national politics)? If yes /
no-why?

What is your marital status (single, married, divorced,
mother)? If you are a mother, what is the age of
child/children?

Answered questionnaire questions were thus our output data,
which we subsequently analyzed and interpreted. The return of
sent questionnaires was at 80%. Of these, it was found that three
women had already previous experience in municipal politics,
and, as it turned out in case of five of them, they are new to
politics. Also, from the information available it could be
concluded that all female - politicians interviewed are mothers of
a child or children, while four of them have minor children and
four of them are mothers of children over 18 years.

Family emerges as the most important element influencing the
political career of addressed women also in our research. In this
respect, we decided to give it a dominant attention and analyze it
in the context of the political representation of women. Although
some of the other obstacles to women's participation in politics
were also documented, due to their insignificant occurrence in
the responses of addressed women as well as the thematic focus
and the required extent of the report, these will be discussed only
marginally. Some representative quotes of the addressed mayors
were used in verbatim transcription.

Questionnaires show that women’s decision to enter politics is
primarily based on the effort to improve several areas life of the
community in which they live. Up to five addressed women
decided to run because of their own conviction, two respondents
did so on the initiative of citizens, and one respondent upon
nomination by a particular political party. When considering the
actual entry into politics, the support of husband and family was
the key issue for all women.That was exactly what decided
whether the woman shall or shall not run for the post. Should
they not have the support, some respondents were willing to give
up their political career. This fact is significantly shown by
particular statement of one of the respondents that says in the
questionnaire: "I ran because of my own conviction, but without
the support of people around me, especially my husband, as well
as number of citizens of the village, I would not go for it."
Totally common were so called "meetings", i.e. women
consulted the decision on the entry into politics with family. All
mayoresses addressed consistently confirmed that they consulted
their entry into politics with the closest persons. However, this
approach is obviously not gender-specific and serious
consultation of such a decision can be expected even in case a
man enters politics. Since interviewed were the mayoresses, who
had already previous experience in municipal politics, it is
possible to determine or at least deduced that these family
meetings are held in case any other candidacy to municipal
authorities and it’s not just a one-off. One of the respondents in
this regard, said: "(...) before each election I consult with my
family members whether I run or not. Their opinion is very
important to me because it allows me to get feedback on coping
my work commitments and the lack of time for them. "

From the questionnaires it was found that the reactions of the
immediate community to the nomination of addressed women
for the post of mayor of the village were mostly positive. Only in
one case addressed woman spontaneously stated that some of her

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