Do Female National Party Leaders Promote Women’s Regional Leadership? A Cross-National Study of Extreme-Right Parties

This paper investigates whether the presence of a woman at the national level increases the likelihood that women attain regional leadership positions in extreme right parties, a party family where female leadership remains paradoxical despite its recent growth. Building on work showing that women’s trajectories in the radical right are shaped by distinctive organisational, ideological, and personalist mechanisms, we test the cross-level contagion hypothesis, whereby female national leaders may encourage imitation, legitimation, or diffusion effects within party structures. The analysis draws on a new longitudinal dataset (2008–2025) covering all aspirants to national and regional leadership positions across multilevel parliamentary democracies (Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK) in the main party families. Using statistical techniques, we examine whether female national leadership significantly increases women’s chances of rising to regional leadership within extreme right parties, and whether these dynamics differ from those in other ideological party families. The findings contribute to debates on gendered opportunity structures, gatekeeping, and the internal dynamics of the radical right in contemporary democracies.