Full Description
What can gender tell us about political parties? Historically, and often still, political parties have been dominated by men from majority groups, and shaped by traditional gender relations and norms that generally disadvantage women. Gender is crucial in understanding the persistence of men's political overrepresentation and the corresponding marginalization of women in politics, as well as in exploring questions of why and how parties adapt and change, and what their role is in representative democracy.
Gendering Party Politics explores the relationship between gender, institutions, and political parties through a feminist institutionalist lens, advancing new theoretical, methodological, and empirical directions for party politics scholarship. The contributors synthesize two decades of research, introduce foundational concepts and frameworks, and present innovative methods and empirical cases from around the world. They also make the case as to why this research matters, evaluating the practical opportunities for and obstacles to transforming parties in more gender equitable ways. Each chapter demonstrates the wide-ranging applications of feminist institutionalism for understanding the complexities of gender dynamics within parties. Together, these contributions constitute a significant intervention into wider debates over the relationship between political parties, power, democracy, and representation.
Featuring insights from an international cast of leading scholars, Gendering Party Politics is essential for anyone interested in the evolving landscape of gender and politics, political parties and institutions, and political representation.
Chapter 8 of this work is available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International open access license. This part of the work is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.
Contents
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Gender, parties, and institutions
Elin Bjarnegard and Meryl Kenny
Part One: Concepts
2. Between party democracy and parity democracy
Petra Meier, Sabine Lang, and Birgit Sauer
3. Gender and political ambition
Louise Davidson-Schmich
4. The leaky pipeline of politics
Zahra Runderkamp and Meryl Kenny
5. Gender, newness, and party system change
Karen Beckwith
6. Political parties and roots of resistance to gender-equitable change
Cecilia Josefsson
Part Two: Methods and Cases
7. Preventing and handling violence in Danish political parties
Karina Kosiara-Pedersen
8. Young women aspirants and gendered ageism in Nigeria's political parties
Omomayowa O. Abati and Mayowa M. Adeniji
9. Collective candidate strategies and diverse representation in Brazil
Malu A.C. Gatto and Kristin N. Wylie
10. Women's institutional belonging and self-making in a right-wing party in India
Proma Raychaudhury
11. Quantifying gender and immigrant bias in Swedish candidate selection
Michal Grahn
12. Green parties and gender equality in the European Parliament
Petra Ahrens and Johanna Kantola
13. Women's parties as agents of contagion
Kimberly Cowell-Meyers
Part Three: Transforming Political Parties
14. From feminization to feministization through party gender action plans
Tania Verge
15. Gender sensitizing political parties and the feminist academic critical actor
Sarah Childs
16. Exploiting empowerment in Lebanon's sectarian political parties
Carmen Geha
Conclusion
17. Looking back, moving forward: editors' conversation with Joni Lovenduski and Pippa Norris
Joni Lovenduski, Pippa Norris, Elin Bjarnegard, Meryl Kenny
References
Index
