The Usefulness of Feminist Institutionalism and Male Dominance in Politics

Globally, men dominate nearly all legislatures, holding, on average, 77% of seats. While male overrepresentation is common to most political systems, the formal and informal factors that enable it are not fully understood. Feminist institutionalism, with its focus on the interplay between formal and informal institutions and the gendered consequences of these interactions, provides important tools for studying how recruitment practices contribute to male overrepresentation. Since parties recruit candidates, their conscious and unconscious biases regarding who constitutes a competitive candidate create and maintain male dominance. While male overrepresentation exists in many countries, we argue that the processes by which this outcome is reached vary across contexts. We explore how recruitment practices vary depending on timing (initial recruitment vs. re-nomination) and region (rural vs. urban), suggesting the need for approaches that take context seriously and recognize that formal rules and informal practices vary across states and within them. When employing institutionalist approaches, researchers are advised to define institutions broadly and to recognize that different institutions may produce similar outcomes in different settings, while the same set of institutions—including those that are thought to perpetuate male dominance—may produce different outcomes depending on the context.