Gendering Parliaments, Parties, and Institutions

Abstract

This panel examines how political parties, parliaments, and institutional rules remain deeply gendered, even as women’s descriptive representation has increased across many democratic systems. The panel analyses how formal and informal institutions shape political careers, authority, and recruitment in ways that systematically advantage some actors while constraining others. Empirically, the single-case and comparative contributions cover a range of topics. These include mentoring and support systems to new members of parliament in Norway and UK; seniority as a gendered informal institution in parliaments in France, Italy, Norway and UK; the origins, evolution and functions of women’s organisations within Italian parties; the impact gender-targeted public funding on women’s parliamentary representation across 158 countries; and gendered patterns of political ambition among party members in Denmark. Together, the papers address therefore address mechanisms and practices with potential to both enable or hold back women’s descriptive and substantive representation and political influence within parties and parliaments. Methodologically, the panel combines qualitative interviews, organizational analysis, and large-scale cross-national quantitative data.

Title	Details
The Decreasing Gender Gap in Nascent Political Ambitions	View Paper Details
Gender-Targeted Public Funding and Female Parliamentary Representation	View Paper Details
Who Seeks What Advice from Whom? An In-Depth Analysis of Gendered Patterns of Mentoring in Parliament	View Paper Details
Gender and Parliamentary Seniority: Power and Precarity Across Western Parliaments	View Paper Details
A Room of One's Own? Women’s Groups in Political Parties and Their Agency Capacity	View Paper Details