Women’s political leadership in gender equal contexts. Exploring leadership ideals and practices in the Swedish Parliament

While women are still heavily underrepresented in top political leadership positions worldwide, women’s access to such positions has increased tremendously in recent decades. This development has been especially pronounced in the Nordic countries. In such numerically gender equal contexts, women are not only more likely to attain leadership positions, but also plausibly more positively evaluated and fairly treated. In this article, we examine how leadership ideals are constructed in more gender equal political contexts and what implications that have for men’s and women’s political leadership in practice. Focusing on parliamentary leadership, we draw on original survey data with Swedish MPs and 36 interviews with almost all of the current top political leaders in the Swedish Parliament collected in 2021. We find indications that a new more androgynous, or even feminine, parliamentary leadership ideal has emerged which emphasize inclusion, the importance of listening and to find broad solutions— qualities that have been associated with a “feminine” leadership ideal. Yet, despite the congruity between the leadership ideal and feminine coded attributes, women still appear to face higher obstacles in their leadership roles in practice – women parliamentary leaders report to a higher extent than men parliamentary leaders that their competence and authority are being questioned and that they are exposed to harassments and sexism. We suggest that in order to explain this anomaly, theories on role congruity and masculine leadership roles ought to be complemented with a broader understanding of how gender shapes a given context in multiple ways.