Women at the Grassroots: A Cross-National Analysis of Female Party Members

The share of women in parliaments and governments do not correspond to their share in the population (e.g. Caul, 1999 ; Matland 2005 ; Krook, 2007). Also in political parties, women are underrepresented, not only among party members (Scarrow & Gezgor, 2010 ; van Haute et al, 2013), but even more so when moving up in the party hierarchy (O’Brien, 2015 ; Wauters & Pilet, 2015). Parties are, however, key players both for the numerical representation of women in parliament and government, and for the consideration of their interests (Childs & Webb, 2011; Celis et al, 2013). Moreover, the formal role and impact of party members have significantly increased the last few decades (Cross & Blais, 2012; Pilet & Cross, 2014), which renders an analysis of who joins parties highly relevant, also from a gender perspective. Existing research on this topic at the individual level has focussed on single-country studies (Pedersen et al, 2004 ; Allern et al, 2014 ; Van Haute et al, 2015) or even single-case studies (Childs & Webb, 2011). The occasional cross-country analysis was conducted at the party level (Scarrow & Gezgor, 2010). We intend to conduct an international-comparative analysis at the individual level. By analysing the data of the 2014 Citizenship survey of the International Social Survey Programma (ISSP), we will be able to sketch a profile of women party members across a large number of countries. We will make a double comparison: on the one hand between male and female party members, on the other hand between women belonging to a political party and women who don’t. This will yield insights in which women join political parties and which barriers they encounter.