Stuck Behind the Political “Glass Wall”: Women, Parties, and Promotions

Globally, 39 percent of political parties have women’s wings, yet their presence shows no correlation with increased women’s electoral candidacy among these parties. Why do these wings, intended to boost women's descriptive and substantive representation, fail to advance women to the top of the political hierarchy? I argue that while acting as a pathway into politics, women's wings often become career endpoints - a "glass wall" beyond which women cannot advance into the main party organization. The main party organization is the locus of decision-making for the party and where candidates often emerge from. I argue that two mechanisms create this “glass wall”: a) outright bias from male gatekeepers against promoting equally qualified women compared to men and b) seemingly gender-neutral promotion criteria (e.g., party networks, leadership experience) that women possess less of due to structural inequalities. I present qualitative, causal, and descriptive evidence from a novel survey of 1,054 post-holding party elites from two of India’s largest political parties - the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Aam Aadmi Party. First, I find descriptive evidence that, compared to men in other wings (e.g., youth or caste wings), women entering via women’s wings are significantly less likely to be promoted at all or to the main party organization. Then, through a forced-choice conjoint experiment, I show causal evidence that male elites are more likely to promote men over women, even when women are equally qualified. Additionally, combining evidence from the conjoint and descriptive tests, I find that women who enter the party through women’s wings possess less of the attributes predictive of promotions (e.g., leadership experience, financial resources, ability to deliver services, etc.) compared to men. Put together, these mechanisms prevent women from breaking the “glass wall” and entering the main party organization, blocking their pipeline to senior leadership and electoral candidacy. My research contributes to the literatures on party politics and gender and representation by identifying an underexplored institution (women’s wing) and an undertheorized process (internal party promotions) as key explanations for women's absence at the apex of politics - as party leaders and electoral candidates.