Generations Apart? Intergenerational Relations and the Gendered Political Career Pipeline

This paper asks how intergenerational relationships among women in political parties shape women’s political career trajectories. While mentorship and women’s networks are widely promoted as mechanisms for advancing women’s representation, feminist institutionalist scholarship highlights how gendered informal institutions and homosocial networks and reproductions can constrain these processes. This study examines how such dynamics unfold within party organizations by examining relationships between women in youth wings and those in parent parties. Drawing on original interviews with women in the youth wings of political parties in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, the paper investigates how mentorship, solidarity, and disconnection are experienced by young women in political parties. The findings reveal that while women’s wings and senior mentors offer important forms of support, there is a distance between young women in youth wings and women members of parent parties. These distances can be attributed to perceived divergent ideas about gender equality, limited opportunities for meaningful engagement, and competition among party suborganizations for resources. This disconnect stands in contrast to what scholars have demonstrated about men’s networks and men’s political career trajectories. Whereas informal networks often integrate younger cohorts into party hierarchies, women’s intergenerational ties are more fragile and discontinuous. Many young women anticipate leaving and later rejoining party politics, reflecting nonlinear trajectories characteristic of women’s political careers. These dynamics suggest that intergenerational disconnection reproduces men’s organizational advantage and complicates efforts to build sustainable, inclusive political career pipelines.