Gender and Diversity in Contemporary Politics

Diversity has become a central concept in contemporary European political discourse. New actors, like naturalized immigrants or new European member states, are entering the political stage and bringing with them a variety of new issues. How these issues are addressed is mediated by a range of actors including: national governments; supranational institutions; political parties; social movements; the media; and individual citizens. In particular diversities pose new theoretical, empirical, normative and methodological questions to the study of gender and politics. This section studies diversities through a gendered lens and investigates: the cooptation of gender equality by nationalist populist parties to exclude ethnic minorities (panel 1); intersecting debates on gender, sexuality and religion in a transnationally and cross-national framework (panel 2); the practical implementation of gender equality and diversity policies (panel 3); whether gender-neutral policies lead to gender and diversity blindness (panel 4); the extent to which women as a group represent ‘women’ (panel 5); and the methodological challenges diversities pose for gender and politics research (panel 6). We propose six panels, each including a chair and discussant. The selection of panel conveners, chairs and discussants guarantees a well-balanced representation of scholars from across Europe and at different career stages.