Women's parties have a unique and important role to play in the representation of women and women's issues and interests. They are neither a new nor a rare phenomenon and have emerged in a variety of contexts across time and space. And yet we know relatively little about them. This article argues that women's parties matter and that the study of women's parties matters. We contend that women's parties constitute a discrete party family; while there is a diverse range of women's parties, they can be viewed as a coherent group with similar origins, ideology, and naming patterns. This article offers the first research framework for the comparative study of women's parties. Building our knowledge of women's parties, we argue, is important for those interested in gender and politics, particularly those concerned with the representation of women's issues and interests.

The U.K. Women's Equality Party (WEP) was established in 2015 to “bring about change by winning—support, votes and seats.” It has thus far recruited tens of thousands of members and run candidates in European, national, devolved, and local elections. This article provides one of the first empirical analyses of this new actor in U.K. politics. Adopting a feminist institutionalist lens, we examine the extent to which WEP “does things differently” by looking at its discourse, formal party rules, and informal ways of doing things “on the ground.” Drawing on a set of semistructured interviews, observations of local and national party meetings, and document analysis, we argue that while WEP has to some extent tried to set up alternative participatory structures and new “ways of working,” it has also at times fallen back on more traditional, centralized, and hierarchical modes of party organizing, as well as informal practices that are more typically associated with male-dominated parties.

This article examines a Japanese local party, Netto, as a new type of women's party. The Netto is defined as a “proactive women's party” to illustrate how it is different not only from conventional political parties but also from parties organized to promote feminist platforms. The Japanese Netto is a women-dominated party in which women constitute the majority of members and candidates, as well as party leadership. The party platform prioritizes practical women's interests such as safe food and child-rearing over women's labor or feminist issues. The gendered characteristics of Netto appeal to middle-class housewives and mothers, facilitating the electoral success of the party in urban areas. The party's notable features, such as rotation of deputies, term limits, donation of deputy salary, and volunteerism, distinguish Netto from conventional political parties. As such, the party provides an alternative model of political representation. The Netto party illustrates that not all women's parties use a feminist platform, but they still play an important role in changing male-dominated electoral politics.

Despite many similarities between them, the German Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) have represented women in parliament at different rates. This article argues that differences in party organization, electoral system rules, and left party strength interact to explain the varying levels of representation of conservative women in parliament. The CDU's corporatist structure allowed it to represent diverse interests and successfully respond to challenges for female support from the left. As a result of a weaker left party challenge and a classic catch-all party organization, the LDP's attempts to incorporate women have been less extensive and largely symbolic.

A central argument in theories on women's political interests has been that the sexual division of labor, inter alia, gives women greater experience of responsibility for the care of others, especially children, which in turn influences their political attitudes. However, the specifics of this claim have not been sufficiently examined in prior literature. By applying unique data on Swedish legislators’ subjective policy preferences and use of their parental leave over time, this article explores empirically whether the personal roles of members of parliament (MPs) in reproduction affect their political preferences, regardless of their sex. The analysis reveals that men's interest in social policy tends to increase after being on parental leave while in office, whereas women's interest in social and family policy remains strong, regardless. This finding might indicate a care experience mechanism at work, pertinent also to men, but with a possibly shallower content. The analysis raises the question: are care issues, previously seen as women's issues, now becoming human issues? It further contributes to the discussion on ways to measure gender other than using sex as proxy.

This paper presents a comparative “gender audit” of Egypt's two constitutions (2012, 2014) developed after a people's uprising in 2011 and 2013 led to the ousting of two presidents (Mubarak and Morsi respectively). Egypt's two constitutions are particularly compelling for the study of gender politics in transitional constitutionalism because while the number of women participating in the constitution writing process was very similar, the gendered outcomes were starkly different. While the political opportunity for mobilizing around women's rights was enhanced in the aftermath of Mubarak's demise, the capitalization of these opportunities by organized political forces with an anti-feminist agenda undermined the prospects of en-gendering the first post-Mubarak constitution. In contrast, the constitution of 2014, developed under severely circumscribed political space inhibiting women's mobilization, witnessed the exercise of women's constitutional agency to redress the containment of women's rights under the previous constitution and en-gender many elements of it, though the extent of its enforceability remains obscure. This paper draws on primary and secondary data to analyse, through a gender lens, the processes and outcomes involved in constitution drafting along three axes:context and political opportunity structures; coalitional politics, and political and ideological struggles.

Congruence and responsiveness between the policy preferences of citizens and elites are considered key characteristics of democracy. Although these relationships between citizens and elites have been thoroughly examined, little attention has been devoted to differences in the representation of women and men in studies of congruence and responsiveness. Herein, I evaluate the presence of a gender gap both in terms of party congruence and party responsiveness with respect to the relationship between female and male supporters and the party they voted for. In addition, I examine whether the presence of elected women in parties decreases the gender gap in party congruence and responsiveness. My analyses of the data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and several national elections studies indicate that parties are generally as close and as responsive to the preferences of male supporters as to those of female supporters on the left–right ideological scale. However, the presence of elected women in parties favors women's representation and may thus reduce inequality in gender representation.

This article investigates how the introduction of gender quotas affected female representation in an open-list proportional representation system. Based on the Polish parliamentary elections of 2005, 2007, 2011, and 2015, it attempts to explain the gap between the share of female candidates and the share of female legislators. The authors estimate changes in individual electoral chances using logistic regression. Subsequently, counterfactual reasoning is applied to display the results in the metrics of seat shares. The analyses of candidate-level data demonstrate that after the introduction of quotas, significantly more women ran for office, but parties and voters, on average, changed their preferences to the disadvantage of female candidates, even when incumbency and previous electoral experience were controlled. The article demonstrates that women benefited from the introduction of quotas, but not right away. The desired effect of gender quotas (an increase in female legislative representation) was mitigated mainly by the unequal distribution of “electoral capital” among candidates of both genders. The impact of this factor was moderated by ballot ranking patterns. Once women acquire more electoral capital, the role of party elites’ negative bias in ballot ranking becomes more visible.

This essay asks how the democratic ideal of inclusion can be achieved in societies marked by power asymmetries along the lines of identity categories such as gender and race. It revisits debates of difference democracy of the 1990s, which promoted inclusion through a politics of presence of marginalized social groups. This strategy inevitably entails essentializing tendencies, confining the democratic subject within its physically embodied identity. Difference democrats did not take notice of the parallel emerging discourse on cyberfeminism exploring novel identity configurations on the Internet. This essay augments the politics of presence with digital identity reconfigurations. Neither difference democrats nor cyberfeminists distinguish between various participatory sites. Drawing on conceptions of participatory spaces from development studies and deliberative democracy, this essay generates a typology differentiating between empowered spaces such as parliaments, invited spaces such as citizens' assemblies, and the claimed spaces of social movements. The democratic functions these spaces fulfil are best facilitated by three different modes of identity performance: identity continuation, identity negation, and identity exploration. A pluralization of participatory sites and modes of identity performance facilitates inclusion while tackling the essentializing tendencies in difference democracy.

In Russia and Turkey, the pro-authoritarian regimes have largely relied on nationalistic narratives appealing to cultural authenticity, tradition, and religion for legitimacy and cultural resonance at the mass level. Within this narrative, as it is argued, traditional notions of family and femininity are endorsed so as to represent national power against the West and to invigorate social unity and morality in Russian and Turkish societies. The revival of traditional gender norms and patterns that characterize the prevailing gender climates in Russia and Turkey is visible in the restructuring of gender equality mechanisms, the organization of reproduction in accordance with pronatalist policies, women's employment patterns, and state policy on combating domestic violence. This analysis relies on empirical data obtained through in-depth interviews with academics, representatives of international organizations and nongovernmental organizations, feminist activists, experts from women's shelters, and public officials based in Russia and Turkey. It is supplemented with a review of relevant examples from political discourse employed by political leaders, legal regulations, and public policies on these four areas. The article concludes that the revival of traditional gender categories and stereotypes aggravates the inferior position of women and unleashes discriminatory attitudes toward them at home, in society, and in the labor market.

High levels of women in politics and paid work, together with the availability of paid parental leave and public child care, make the gender imbalance in business leadership in Iceland all the more confounding. This study analyzes business leaders’ attitudes toward gender and leadership positions after a gender quota law for company boards was implemented in 2013. We explore support for gender quotas and whether it is related to how respondents explain women's underrepresentation in leadership positions. A questionnaire was sent to 1,349 managers in the 250 largest companies in Iceland. Our findings indicate that women are more supportive of gender quotas than men. The way in which the respondents explain the underrepresentation of women as top managers is strongly related to their support for gender quotas. Those who believe that women are structurally disadvantaged are more likely to support gender quotas than those who adhere to individual explanations. Furthermore, male dominance at higher company levels is related to negative views on gender quotas, whereas this does not apply at lower levels. The research emphasizes the impact of business leaders on the recruitment of women to business leadership positions and, at the same time, has implications for policy interventions.

Gender is central to the political disputes in Latin America today. Although conflicts concerning women and LGBTQ rights are not new, only recently have they become a dividing line in the public identities of parties, politicians, and candidates. The second decade of the 2000s brought the opposition to gender forward in the platforms of far-right movements and leaders, raising popular support as they mobilized conservative frameworks and antagonized feminist and LGBTQ activism. Their promises to protect the family from a supposed moral disorder made gender a popular category, strategically presented as an “ideology” threatening children, marriage, the natural order, and national values. Elections such as those in Brazil and Costa Rica in 2018 indicate that conflicts concerning gender and sexuality can also produce new electoral cleavages.

During the last four decades, Latin America has witnessed the political strengthening of collective actors with conflicting agendas: feminist and LGBTQ+ movements on one side, and Catholic and Pentecostal Evangelical sectors on the other. While the first two movements focus on gender equality and the extension of sexual and reproductive rights, the Pentecostal and Catholic sectors have also adopted a political identity, but with an agenda prioritizing the defense of religious freedom and Christian sexual morality. Far from being a holdover from the past, the political strategies employed by these religious sectors continue to affect public debate across much of Latin America today.

In Latin America, it is difficult to win approval for policies that allow induced abortion and same-sex marriage. Social movements face more obstacles in promoting these policies than in promoting other gender and LGBTQ policies because abortion and same-sex marriage are particularly contentious issues. These policies involve doctrinal or countercultural topics, and supporters of these legislative changes must confront groups that mobilize to block these reform efforts (Blofield 2006; Corrales 2015; Díez 2015; Friedman 2019; Grzymała-Busse 2015; Htun 2003). Yet in the period following democratic transitions, some Latin American countries successfully liberalized their legislation concerning abortion and marriage equality.

Mexico is usually described as a secular country with a Catholic following that remains above the regional average. In this context, a strong presence of feminist institutional activism and a relatively weak performance of Evangelical religious conservative activism have developed (Pérez Guadalupe 2017). This essay reviews these usual descriptions in order to adjust this image, undertaking the task of avoiding both overestimating and underestimating the scope of these activisms. The essay also identifies emerging challenges for research on politics and gender in Mexico and Latin America more generally.

In Peru, the adoption of a new school curriculum based on gender equality and nondiscrimination against sexual minorities led to the mobilization in 2016 of organizations connected to conservative churches under the slogan Con Mis Hijos No Te Metas (Don't Mess with My Children). This new countermovement uses street protests, the courts, and Congress to disseminate an antigender agenda that goes beyond its initial opposition to sexual education. Organizations in the countermovement consider the concept of gender to be a dangerous imperialist ideology, arguing that the state violates individual freedoms when it uses gender as one of the pillars of public policy.

Who is entitled to have rights? This essay examines how right-wing movements attempt to prevent individuals, especially women and members of LGBT groups, from accessing equal rights through the use of terms such as “moral worth” and “family values.” At the core of our discussion of the backlash against social rights in Latin America is the need to compare and contrast the case examined here with similar movements outside the region. The vast enterprise of studies on right-wing movements in Western Europe rarely travels outside a few national boundaries. Eastern Europe and the United States are occasionally included. For the most part, right-wing movements are not seen as comparable. Sometimes the reason for excluding Latin America is expressly stated, particularly because the historical experiences are so distinct—for example, the long duration of personal or military dictatorships. Interpretations of right-wing movements in Latin America by scholars outside the region tend to view them as associated with the period of authoritarian rule in the 1970s and 1980s or misunderstand them as having little impact on political life (Meyer and Staggenborg 1996, 1630). Analysis within the region has tended to focus on right-wing political parties, religious groups, or the military (Fortes 2016, Goldstein 2019; Hunter 1997; Luna and Rovira 2014). There are few studies of right-wing movements comparing regions. Latin America is thus seen as largely irrelevant to the comparative study of right-wing movements.