Everyday Feminism in Local Politics: How Councilwomen Represent Women's Interests Online and Offline

Judith Hefetz and Dr. Sharon Haleva-Amir

In a recent article published in Information, Communication & Society, we examined these questions through an innovative lens, analyzing how 32 Israeli councilwomen across 27 municipalities navigate between the "covert" space of council meetings and the "overt" space of Facebook to advance women's interests. Our research introduces important theoretical distinctions and reveals a striking institutional paradox in how women's political representation unfolds at the municipal level.

Expanding Political Representation Theory: General vs. Concrete

Building on Hannah Pitkin's foundational work on political representation, we propose a crucial distinction within substantive representation (the concept of representatives "acting in the interest of the represented"). We distinguish between General Substantive Representation (GSR) and Concrete Substantive Representation (CSR).

General Substantive Representation operates outside formal mandates, involving broad advocacy, awareness-raising, and symbolic gestures on national or universal women's issues. While raising consciousness, GSR may not directly address nuanced local concerns.

Concrete Substantive Representation involves specific, localized advocacy and tangible action for identifiable local groups, transforming abstract interests into concrete policies with direct, measurable impact on women's daily lives. CSR links representation to action, creating outcomes that meet immediate local needs.This framework allows us to analyze not just whether women's interests are represented, but how specifically they are represented. This distinction is crucial particularly at the municipal level, where abstract feminist principles must translate into pragmatic actions addressing women's everyday needs.

Everyday Feminism: From Theory to Practice

To capture this translation process, we introduce "Everyday Feminism" as a theoretical concept describing how feminist principles become embedded in the mundane operations of local governance. Unlike existing frameworks that focus on grassroots activism or individual practice, Everyday Feminism examines how elected officials integrate feminist commitments into policymaking, budget decisions, and public communication.

This is the feminism that installs lighting on dark streets to enhance women's safety, creates entrepreneurship courses for women, adjusts public transportation schedules for working mothers' needs, or advocates for mobile breast cancer screening in underserved neighborhoods. Everyday Feminism bridges the gap between abstract ideals and concrete community needs, making feminist politics tangible in citizens' daily experiences.

Research Methodology: Comparing Overt and Covert Representation

Our study employed mixed-methods content analysis to examine two complementary spheres of political representation between October 2021 and May 2022:
Overt Representation: All Facebook posts published on the 32 councilwomen's official pages, representing their most publicly visible political communication.
Covert Representation: All council meeting protocols from the 27 municipalities where these councilwomen served. While legally required to be publicly accessible online, only 78% of Israeli municipalities actually publish these documents, and with Israel's e-government usage at just 47%, these protocols effectively remain hidden from most citizens' view.
This methodological innovation - comparing "overt" and "covert" modes of representation - has not been previously explored in political representation literature. We initially categorized all content as either Women Relevant or Nonrelevant. Then further distinguished between General and Concrete Substantive Representation. Through iterative coding processes with high intercoder reliability (ranges between 87% to 95%), we identified six categories of women's interests and five action strategies employed to promote these interests, across both platforms.

The Institutional Paradox: Key Findings

Our analysis reveals a striking digital-institutional divide. Councilwomen devote a higher proportion of their council meeting time to women's interests (20%) compared to their Facebook activity (11%). Council meetings are a relatively closed, institutional arena that allows for the translation of interests into concrete action. In contrast, on Facebook, as an open and competitive arena, councilwomen frame themselves as representatives of the entire public, and therefore the rate of engagement with women's interests is lower.

However, the representational character differs dramatically between platforms:
In council meetings, representation is almost exclusively concrete (99% CSR vs. 1% GSR), reflecting the formal, budget-focused nature of institutional proceedings where abstract advocacy must yield to actionable policy proposals.
On Facebook, representation balances concrete local concerns (65%) with general advocacy (35%), enabling councilwomen to engage in broader ideological struggles and symbolic politics alongside practical community support.

The Representational Toolkit: Six Interests, Five Strategies

We identified six distinct categories of women's interests that councilwomen address across both platforms:
1. Violence Prevention and Support: Comprehensive approaches to domestic, public, physical, verbal, financial, and psychological violence, including emotional support for survivors.
2. Women's Health Advocacy: Promoting accessible gynecological care, routine examinations, reproductive health support including stillbirth counseling, and family planning resources.
3. Equal Rights: Advocating for equal representation in local councils, public sphere equality including media representation, workplace equality and pay equity, and particular attention to advancing ultra-orthodox women.
4. Welfare Initiatives: Targeted support for single mothers, women's empowerment conferences, International Women's Day celebrations, and intergenerational mentoring programs.
5. Empowerment Activities: Informative lectures for girls and young women, rights education, and career opportunity awareness.
6. Culture and Sports: Women's sports leagues, specialized dance classes, and creative competitions centered on women's experiences.

These interests are advanced through five distinct action strategies, adapted to each platform's opportunities and constraints:
Critical Engagement: Expressing disapproval of policies disadvantaging women, particularly targeting police departments and mayoral offices, positioning councilwomen as watchdogs for women's rights.

Information Provision: Sharing resources about events, workshops, and services (lectures on domestic violence, empowerment workshops, mobile health screening)—transforming councilwomen into community information brokers.

Budget Advocacy and Employment Creation: Making official budget claims for women's initiatives, creating employment opportunities, and promoting women's entrepreneurship.

Self-Help Facilitation: Providing legal guidance and fostering female leadership development from early stages.

Leadership Promotion: Publicly recognizing leading women and explicitly calling for young women to follow in their footsteps.

Platform-Specific Strategic Choices

Comparing platforms reveals sophisticated strategic adaptation:
Facebook emerges as a space for cultural engagement and community mobilization. Culture & Sports dominates (28%), followed by Equal Rights advocacy (23%). Councilwomen employ Portraying Leadership (35%) and Information Provision (32%) to build community connection, while Criticism serves general advocacy (28% of general posts) but remains minimal for local issues (6% of concrete posts).
Council Meetings prioritize institutional equality battles. Equal Rights claims the largest share (30%), reflecting formal policy focus, while Cultural Activities receive proportionally less attention (18%). Information Provision dominates strategically (48%), with Leadership, Budgets, and Criticism maintaining institutional balance (14-16% each).

Complementary Spaces, Not Competitive Platforms

Crucially, our findings demonstrate that online and offline representation function as complementary rather than competitive spaces. Council meetings serve as the arena for concrete policy implementation, where councilwomen translate feminist principles into actionable proposals within institutional constraints. Facebook enables broader advocacy, community mobilization, and visibility maintenance during what political communication scholars call "Permanent Campaigning" - the continuous cultivation of positive public images throughout political tenure.
Contrary to assumptions that social media primarily serves politicians' self-marketing, we found that Facebook enables closer daily involvement in constituents' lives, deepening connections with the community while facilitating both general consciousness-raising and concrete assistance to individuals, groups, and local women. The platform's affordances - immediate communication, broader reach and participatory interaction, fundamentally shape what kinds of representational practices are possible.

Implications for Democratic Representation

This research advances our understanding of political representation in several important ways. First, it demonstrates that the specificity level of represented interests (meaning, the distinction between General and Concrete Representation) transforms how representation unfolds in practice. This theoretical innovation extends Pitkin's foundational framework to capture dimensions previously underexamined in representation scholarship.

Second, the concept of Everyday Feminism provides a framework for understanding how abstract political principles become embedded in governance practices at the level where most citizens experience government. This is especially relevant to scholars and practitioners interested in translating feminist theory into institutional practice.

Third, our findings reveal that digital platforms have not replaced traditional political spaces but rather created an additional layer of representation with distinct affordances and constraints. The gap between "overt" and "covert" spaces reflects not a failure of either arena, but their different functions: council meetings manage logistics and policy implementation, while social media enables community engagement and broader advocacy.
Finally, this research demonstrates that at the municipal level, what geographers call the "level of experience" where everyday life unfolds, political representation takes on particular significance. It is here that abstract commitments to gender equality must translate into concrete actions affecting women's daily lives: safer streets, accessible healthcare, economic opportunities, and cultural participation.

As democracies worldwide grapple with questions of representation, accountability, and digital transformation, understanding how elected officials navigate between formal institutional constraints and digital platform affordances becomes increasingly crucial. Our research on Israeli councilwomen offers insights applicable beyond the specific context, revealing universal tensions between general advocacy and concrete action, between institutional mandates and autonomous expression, and between visibility and effectiveness in political representation.

The time for theoretical abstraction alone has passed. As our research demonstrates, meaningful political representation, particularly for historically marginalized groups, requires attention to the practical, everyday mechanisms through which principles become policies and advocacy becomes action. Everyday Feminism, operating through both overt and covert channels, represents not a retreat from grand political visions but their necessary translation into lived experience.

---
Judith Hefetz is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Studies and the Gender Studies program at Bar-Ilan University.
Dr. Sharon Haleva-Amir is a political Communication Scholar.

This post is based on the following article:
Judith Hefetz & Sharon Haleva-Amir (2026). Online and offline practices of 'Everyday Feminism': Concrete substantive representation of women's interests by municipal councilwomen. Information, Communication & Society, first online.
https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2025.2612510