social and cultural factors are the single most important barrier to womens access to decisionmaking they often continue to hamper the effectiveness of women even when they have a foot in the door this is reflected in the dual burdens of home and work that women in politics continue to bear the open hostility in some public spaces towards women in decisionmaking especially at the local level and the difficult relationship that women in politics frequently have with the media in her study of women in the south african parliament mtintso discovered that most women found political fulfilment at the expense of personal fulfilment