Through the italian electoral campaign… with not gender and equality. Women and men within electoral parties programs: contents, promises and political agendas.

The paper is based on the results of content analysis in political parties electoral programs in Italy, presented for the last Political Election in Italy on march 4 2018, during which the distance from formal and substantive changes in gender equality and political representation arrived to maximise the paradox of an augmented but marginalised female participation. These even if gender quotas has been adopted and forced parties to insert female candidates in their lists. It is clear that redistributive measures play an important role in supporting the increment of the number of elected women, but gender and equality still result not embodied in parties political agendas, even during the electoral campaign, looking for consensus of both, men and women. There is a lack of cultural investment on the value of equality as well a careful and systematic observation of sex selection strategies in representation and political participation. The goal of this research is to analise the policies contents, formal parties declaration, the type of proposals and electoral promises addressed to the electors and revealing which among them the different parties intend to represents, as well as how social plurality is in the programs, which aspects of public life they pay attention, such as visions of living and organizing society and roles imagined and represented in a gender oriented sense or not. This is the opportunity to think over shape and substance of political representation, by considering the all cultural process of gender roles construction, rather than assuming these in their (political) inevitability.