Political Ambition and Gendered Responses in Unequal Contexts

Abstract

How do gendered barriers, social expectations, and unequal opportunity structures shape the development, persistence, and decline of political ambition? This panel brings together five papers that examine the mechanisms influencing whether women and men enter politics, aspire to advance, remain in office, or withdraw. The papers investigate: (1) how exposure to political violence affects candidates’ willingness to continue competing, and how informal networks mitigate the costs of insecurity in gendered ways; (2) how young women’s perceptions of gendered barriers influence their nascent political ambition, including how such perceptions deter, reshape, or motivate early aspirations; (3) how political ambition evolves across entry, persistence, and exit decisions, using an intersectional framework to understand how gender, age, and ethnicity shape candidates’ motivations and deterrents; (4) how care labour constrains women’s political mobility by limiting the political capital, experience, and resources needed for advancement, even when women possess high levels of ambition; and (5) how the gender gap in nascent political ambition has changed over two decades, and how encouragement and recruitment practices influence women’s likelihood of pursuing political careers.

Title	Details
Political Ambition in the Shadow of Violence: Elections, Gender and Political Machines in Colombia	View Paper Details
How perceptions of gendered barriers factor into women's nascent political ambition	View Paper Details
The Decreasing Gender Gap in Nascent Political Ambitions	View Paper Details
Political Penalty of Care: Exploring Political Ambition and Mobility through Care Labour	View Paper Details
Entry, Exit, and Everything in Between: An Intersectional Study of Political Ambition in Belgium	View Paper Details