This article investigates how identity-based and network-driven mobilization can catalyze democratic participation in contexts marked by political apathy. We examine Estamos Listas (“We, women, are ready”), an all-women political movement that emerged in Medellín after Colombia’s failed 2016 peace referendum and rapidly built an organization of over 2,000 affiliates, ultimately winning 29,000 votes in the 2019 local elections. To assess its impact on turnout, we leverage Colombia’s gender-segregated polling stations and implement a difference-in-differences design comparing turnout trends in women-majority and men-majority precincts before and after the movement’s entry into electoral competition. The results show that Estamos Listas significantly increased women’s turnout, and that precinct-level vote shares for the movement are positively associated with gains in overall participation. To uncover the mechanisms behind this mobilization, we complement our analysis with elite interviews and an original voter survey. We find that the party’s strategy centered on “trust circles”—locally embedded, peer-to-peer networks that mobilized women through interpersonal ties. These horizontal networks enhanced women’s sense of political efficacy, which translated into electoral participation. At the same time, party leaders deployed an ambiguous framing of women as political outsiders while consciously avoiding divisive issues such as abortion or explicit feminist self-labelling, allowing them to broaden their appeal and mitigate potential backlash. Our findings contribute to research on identity-based mobilization by showing how strategies grounded in shared identities and interpersonal ties can lower barriers to participation and activate new constituencies. We also extend scholarship on women’s parties by testing the conditions under which they can succeed. More broadly, this study illustrates how grassroots organizing in low-trust environments can promote democratic renewal.
