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Confucian societies have a well-deserved reputation for possessing patriarchal cultures which confine women to subordinate roles and almost entirely exclude them from the public sphere. In Taiwan, however, women have done quite well by international standards in winning legislative elections. This paper applies "countersocialization" theory to explain women's growing role in Taiwan's electoral politics. It finds that the careers of women politicians in Taiwan are strongly conditioned by their exposure to countersocialization, primarily in terms of their adult family environments. These findings are quite consistent with the arguments based on socialization theory that women's entrance into public life depends upon an individual psychological reorientation in which "political women" reject traditional cultural norms that limit them to subservient and privatized roles. Such a reorientation can be stimulated by a variety offactors to which an individual woman might be exposed-a mother's role model proving that women can have broader horizons, social and generational change legitimating more active roles, and (most importantly in our data) an adult family and spouse encouraging and supporting her "empowerment" in public affairs.

Les niveaux respectifs de participation politique chez les hommes et les femmes de Yougoslavie sont examines a partir d'hypotheses tenant compte de l'impact des differenciations culturelles et sociales