Beyond Supply and Demand: Gender and Political Recruitment in Comparative Perspective

There are few political phenomena as universal as the political under-representation of women. The emergence of women’s representation as an important political issue is matched by a large and wider-ranging body of scholarly research that has sought to understand why women are under-represented in political office and how numerical increases in women’s political presence might be achieved. Central to these analyses is the question of which factors shape access to political office. Yet while political parties can make or break women’s attempts to stand for political office, there have been surprisingly few systematic studies into the ‘secret garden’ of political recruitment in the gender and politics literature. This workshop aims to shed new light on this under-researched area, bringing together scholars working on a range of empirical cases and using different theoretical and methodological approaches to investigate the dynamics of candidate selection in comparative perspective and to explore new directions for theorizing about women, gender and political recruitment. The workshop directors welcome both comparative and single-country case-study research papers that examine the ways in which the formal and informal rules, structures and practices of candidate selection and recruitment impact on patterns of women’s representation. We also welcome theoretical papers that seek to contribute new frameworks and methodological approaches for the study of gender and political recruitment. The directors especially welcome papers that adopt a comparative approach, which can involve comparisons across multiple countries or different party or political levels.