Research consistently shows that LGBTQ+ people form a highly politically engaged group, and recent elections show a growing presence of openly LGBTQ+ candidates and representatives. Yet it remains unclear how political parties facilitate (or constrain) LGBTQ+ political participation from within, and how LGBTQ+ party members themselves understand political representation. This project looks at LGBTQ+ party wings (i.e. formal intra-party organizations designed to promote LGBTQ+ inclusion), by focusing in particular on the experiences and perspectives of their members.
We explore why LGBTQ+ party members join their party and its wing; their participation within the party; their political career ambitions; and their experiences with violence within and outside the party. We take intersectional heterogeneity into account, analyzing how gender identity, sexuality, ethnicity, and other social identities shape experiences within the wing and the party.
The project is the first systematic comparative study of LGBTQ+ wings across various countries, including Sweden, Spain, Australia and the Netherlands. It combines explorative interviews with executive wing members with a large-scale survey of their grassroots members. Moreover, using an innovative visual conjoint experiment, we test what forms of representation LGBTQ+ members value most, and the trade-offs they are willing to make between descriptive representation (LGBTQ+ or other minority candidates) and substantive representation focused on LGBTQ+ policy issues.
In short, this project advances our understanding of the experiences of LGBTQ+ members in political parties and what LGBTQ+ communities themselves view as meaningful political representation.
