The "Male Democrat": an interview with Martin Conway

"It is a myth that democracy and gender equality walked together in harmony."

While researching Europe's "Democratic Age," British historian Martin Conway found himself puzzling over the problem of gender. Women's rights have been making great strides for over a century since the 1890s. Yet in the 25 years post-WWII, an era marked by peace, stability and the expansion of human rights and freedom, progress stalled.

The problem, according to the Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Oxford, is democracy itself. "We should not think of the ascendancy of democracy after 1945 as a triumph," argued Conway while delivering the 17th Gerald Stourzh Lecture on History of Human Rights and Democracy at the University of Vienna. "It was a compromise, a way democracy was joined together with other ideological, political, and social forces in Europe at the time." 

And one such force was the iron grip of masculinity in politics. "Post-1945 democracy was a gendered democracy, with power concentrated in the hands of men rather than women," he states. 

Johanna Taufner, a doctoral researcher in political science at the University of Vienna, is an expert in citizen education. She works with future teachers and studies their views on gender equality. "There is a huge gap between the intended curriculum of Austrian schools, where there is a clear assignment to teach gender equality, and the taught and the learned curriculum," she explains. "And when I ask them about gender equality, there is a recurring narrative that things are getting better." 

Ahead of his lecture at the University of Vienna, Taufner sat down with Conway to explore why things were not getting better towards the end of the 20th century. They talked about the male-centred model of political citizenship, the manosphere and what the future holds for democracy and education.

Taufner: In European democracies, gendered inequalities persist. For example, Austria has one of the largest gender pay gaps in the EU, and women remain underrepresented in leading positions in the economy, in science and research, in politics and the public service. 

You argue this is not an imperfection of democracy per se, but evidence of a durable, male-centred model of political citizenship. Could you elaborate on this claim?

Conway: In the middle of the 20th century, especially right after 1945, it looked as though the building of gender equality might go hand-in-hand with democracy. But in the last 50, 60 years, the dominant regime of democracy in Europe did not result in greater equality. 

One reason is that democracy was constructed in ways that reinforced gender inequality, rather than eroding it. In the political sphere, men have dominated in many ways: not just numerically, but also in how political agendas are set and the distribution of rewards, that is, the offices and the forms of power that come with democracy. A male-centred model of political citizenship was clearly reinforced by the way democracy was institutionalised.

Taufner: What prompted you to turn from your early work, which was on Catholic politics, to focus on the history of gender democracy? Why gender?

Conway: About 10 years ago, I began to become seriously interested in what ended up being the book "Western Europe’s Democratic Age: 1945–1968" (2020). A new field had opened up to historians of 20th century Europe. Instead of carrying on with topics such as fascism and communism, we can now talk about the second half of the 20th century, the most successful political regime in Europe – democracy.

Studying the history of democracy, it became obvious to me that it was built on certain forms of measured inequality of social classes. Democracy had never been about taking all the wealth away from the middle class and giving it to the workers. It had also never been about reducing gender inequality. As this aspect of the democratic structure had not been examined sufficiently, I decided to write the next book on male citizenship, and why male citizenship became such a durable reality in Europe in the 20th century roughly up to the 1990s.

Taufner: You said that democracy is a gendered form of politics. Therefore, one could argue that democracy is the problem. If so, why should we still hold on to democracy?

Conway: A historian's answer to that would always be: the problem is thinking of democracy as one thing. It's not whether we have democracy, but which democracy we have. The democracy that emerged in Western Europe after 1945 was in many ways a more conservative, limited model of democracy than had existed in some areas of Europe over the previous century, going back to 1848.

What I have observed is that there was a very conscious effort after 1945 to construct a rather limited form of democracy, where the will of the people is not dominant. There was a good reason for this. This was a reaction against violent crowd politics, a democracy spilled out of control, that gave opportunities to authoritarian forces to step in, like in Austria. As a result, a very controlled model of democracy was created under the idea that democracy should work with the inequalities of European societies rather than overcoming them.

At the end, it's about maintaining a model of class-based democracy in which the middle classes can feel confident about their future. And in which, in particular, men can be integrated into the democratic process as full participants instead of disruptive ones. It was about holding men in the democratic sphere. And that meant giving men a central role, which meant that they felt empowered within this democracy.

Nobody planned this, but it was the way in which democracy developed as a gendered form of politics. I'm not advocating here for some non-democratic regime. But I think we have to be brave enough to confront the reality that the historical record of democracy is not so much better than other forms of political regime.

Taufner: When I talk to my students, we go over the milestones of gender equality. I found that it is very difficult for them to comprehend why there are certain basic goals that are still not happening. To them, the world seems quite equal. The recurring narrative in my interviews is that things are getting better. How would you respond to that?

Conway: The idea that we are all on a conveyor belt of liberal rights getting wider and larger was very much associated with the first decades of democracy after 1945. However, to me, that cannot really be sustained by the time we get to the 21st century.

In most of Europe, progressive reforms in areas of race and LGBTQ+ reforms demonstrate a widening of social values, and that's evident in the sociological data. People have become less judgemental, more tolerant and more pluralist. From the 1960s onwards, the language of gender equality became an important, indeed almost dominant language within structures like education, social life and employment. 

What we see now would not have been acceptable 20, 30 years ago: aggressively male forms of rhetoric and threats of violence coming from public, political figures. The terms of political debate are harshening, gendered language such as "men allowed to be men" are returning, and it's not all coming from just one individual in the US. You see dismissive comments about women in the political sphere in Britain or in France as well. Interestingly, you cannot imagine that many would say the same things in their own social sphere!

Taufner: In a new documentary about the manosphere called "Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere", there is a moment where the male influencer speaks horrific things about women's voting rights and how wives should behave. But then his wife comes in and he immediately shifts. It is so interesting to see… 

Conway: … how respectful he is to his wife. 

Taufner: Exactly. This brings me to another question of interest: how would you respond to the manosphere claims that men cannot be real men anymore? 

Conway: Clearly, this is a statement of emotion not a statement of fact. What's interesting is how that sort of emotion became current in European democracies in the early 21st century.

I think it expresses the re-emergence of a desire to have some sort of control over your life. People feel precarious. They don't feel secure about their material situations or their own social standing. They also carry great anxiety about the future of their children instead of hope and optimism. Will they find a job in the way I found a job?

Those forms of insecurity are very central to many European people's lives, and when you put that into the male language of "men not allowed to be men," this is about feeling that somehow, they have been disenfranchised.

Taufner: Where do you think democracy is heading? 

Conway: It is not getting better. That doesn't mean we have to say things are getting worse. The language of there being a "crisis of democracy" is to me, an empty phrase. For a historian, that's just a recognition that the form of democracy that came into existence in Europe across the second half of the 20th century does not work anymore. The language of populism develops from an idea that although we have democracy, we don't have any control over our rulers. 

Clearly, we need to rethink democracy, but we need to think about it in ways that are smaller rather than larger. It means using educational structures to encourage micro-regimes of democracy. It involves creating a certain level of empowerment to people within their own communities. And thirdly, it probably also means trying to do something about the distance that has developed between the rulers and the ruled.

Rudolphina: Thank you for the great conversation! 

Conway & Taufner: Thank you, this was fun!