Gender, Power and Political Change: Institutions, Representation and New Political Arenas

Abstract

This panel brings together research examining how gendered power operates across formal political institutions and emerging arenas of political communication and action. The first two papers examine gendered power within representative institutions. Drawing on survey data from Finnish local councillors, the first paper explores the mechanisms linking women's descriptive representation to substantive representation, focusing on shared experiences, motivations to represent women's interests, and electoral incentives. The second examines parliamentary seniority as a gendered informal institution, drawing on 100 in-depth interviews with parliamentarians in France, Italy, Norway and UK, showing how tenure can generate authority and autonomy while also imposing unequal social reproduction and care costs on parliamentarians. The other two papers shift attention beyond conventional representative institutions. The third examines the mediatization of female far-right leadership through the case of Lidewij de Vos in the Netherlands, asking how digital and legacy media contributed to the normalization and electoral appeal of extreme right. The fourth explores feminist political action in neoliberal arenas, examining how entrepreneurs, influencers, artists and other actors in the Finnish context engage with capitalist sites to articulate feminist demands and challenge established understandings.

Title	Details
Why Do Women Represent Women? Intrinsic Mechanisms and Political Context	View Paper Details
Co-Optation or Rearticulation? An Agonistic Approach to Popular Feminism	View Paper Details
Gender and Parliamentary Seniority: Power and Precarity Across Western Parliaments	View Paper Details
‘Softening’ the Great Replacement –female Far-Right Leadership and Mediatized Normalization in the Netherlands	View Paper Details