If you stay, you want to stand: How time spent in youth wings eliminates the gender gap in political ambition

The gender gap in political ambition has long been considered a universal truth about party members. However, given that young people who today join youth wings have been politically socialized in an era when parties are more open than ever to fielding women, does this gap remain the case among young people who join parties? Using an original online survey fielded in 2019-2020 with over 1700 youth wing members of four centre-left and centre-right parties from Italy and Spain, we find, firstly, that women who join youth wings are much less likely than men to say they did so with a view to becoming a candidate. However, those women who have been youth wing members for at least a year are as likely as men to say they want to stand for office in the future. Based on our findings, we argue that while senior parties undoubtedly play an important gatekeeping role which tends to undermine women’s career aspirations, youth wings may be doing the opposite for their active female members.