gender politics research papers

Gender and politics research in Europe: towards a consolidation of a flourishing political science subfield?

• Special Issue
• Published: 21 January 2021
• Volume 20 , pages 105–122, ( 2021 )

Cite this article

• Petra Ahrens   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1867-4519 1 ,
• Silvia Erzeel   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3931-6953 2 ,
• Elizabeth Evans   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3237-8951 3 ,
• Johanna Kantola   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6214-1640 1 ,
• Roman Kuhar   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4294-7529 4 &
• Emanuela Lombardo   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7644-6891 5  

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Over the past twenty years, the field of “gender and politics” has flourished in European political science. An example of this is the growing number of “gender and politics” scholars and the increased attention paid to gender perspectives in the study of the political. Against this backdrop, we take stock of how the “gender and politics” field has developed over the years. We argue that the field has now entered a stage of “consolidation”, which is reflected in the growth, diversification and professionalization of the subfield, as well as in the increased disciplinary recognition from major gatekeepers in political science. But while consolidation comes with specific opportunities, it also presents some key challenges. We identify five such challenges: (1) the potential fragmentation of the field; (2) persisting hierarchies in knowledge production; (3) the continued marginalization of feminist political analysis in “mainstream” political science; (4) the changing link between academia and society; and (5) growing opposition to gender studies in parts of Europe and beyond. We argue that both the “gender and politics” field and political science in general should address these challenges in order to become a truly inclusive discipline.

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Introduction

Gender structures our understanding of all political phenomena and shapes such diverse issues as Brexit, COVID-19 or democratic backsliding (to name but a few). Indeed, the subfield of “gender and politics” has flourished in European political science over the last twenty years: There has been the establishment of a conference and a new journal; gender, sexuality and intersectionality in the study of the political (and indeed what counts as the political) is increasingly recognized by the broader political science community (Mügge et al. 2016 ); and a growing number of scholars have revealed and contested biases against gender and politics research in the discipline and its institutions.

We take stock of how the “gender and politics” field has developed over the past twenty years, taking 2001 as a starting point because it serves the purpose of this anniversary issue of European Political Science . The development of the “gender and politics”-subfield, however, has a longer history, and can be traced back to the late 1970s and 1980s (Costa and Sawer 2018 ; Lovenduski 2015 ). Given that “Gender and Politics” can no longer be considered a “new” or “emerging” field of study (see Dahlerup 2010 for a comparison), we ask in this article whether the subfield has now entered a new stage of “consolidation” and what this means for both the field itself and the discipline of political science. In order to answer these questions, we scrutinize different indicators of consolidation. For analytical purposes, we consider consolidation as a twofold process, characterized by both internal and external developments. Internal consolidation relates to the growth and integration of gender and politics research into a specialist (sub)field and autonomous knowledge community in political science. External consolidation relates to the external recognition that gender and politics research has received from other (sub)fields and major gatekeepers in political science (such as major political science associations and journals).

For the purpose of this article, we define “gender and politics” as a subfield of political science that is primarily concerned with the study of gender, sexuality and/or intersectionality perspectives in the study of the political. We, the authors, are committed to promoting a broad understanding of gender and politics research; we recognise the matrices of oppression that shape our politics and our societies (Hill Collins 2002 ) and the importance of intersectionality (Crenshaw 1991 ; Yuval-Davis 2012 ) as a lens with which to analyse “complex gender equality” (Verloo and Walby 2012 ), comprising gender, class, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression and other categories of social inequalities. We are aware that our knowledge is situated within a political science context mostly informed by the canons of the discipline in Europe and the USA, which shapes the way we approach gender and politics research. This reminds us of the need to keep decolonizing the discipline (Medie and Kang 2018 ; Mendoza 2012 ). Footnote 1

In the following sections, we reflect upon the internal and external consolidation of European gender and politics research over the last two decades. We consider the growth and increased professionalization of the subfield, as well as the increased recognition it receives from the broader discipline of political science. Next, we discuss five key challenges that hinder the further consolidation of the field: (1) the potential fragmentation and disintegration of the field, (2) persisting hierarchies in knowledge production, (3) the continued marginalization of feminist political analysis in “mainstream” political science, (4) the changing link between academia and “society”, and (5) growing opposition to gender studies in several parts of Europe. We argue that both the “gender and politics”-field and political sciences more in general will have to take up these challenges in the future in order to “become a truly inclusive discipline”—a question the EPS editors rightfully posed in the call for papers for this anniversary issue.

The consolidation of “gender and politics”—a twofold process

Although the focus of this article is on how the “gender and politics” subfield developed over the past twenty years, what we find today builds on actions that started well before 2000 and are (slowly) materialising (Celis et al. 2013 ; Costa and Sawer 2018 ; Dahlerup 2010 ; Lovenduski 2015 for overviews). We understand the development of “gender and politics” as a twofold consolidation process resulting internally in a specialist subfield and externally in recognition by political science as a discipline.

Internal consolidation: growth, diversification and professionalization

Over the years, the gender and politics subfield evolved from a primary concern with the study of “women in politics” to the study of “gender and politics” more broadly (Lovenduski 2015 ).

This evolution marks an expansion in research foci and strategies. Earlier studies were primarily concerned with making women’s political roles and activities more visible. Research questions developed out of a concern to explore the diversity of perspectives present in political life, to highlight women’s previously overlooked contributions to it, and to give a voice to their subjective experiences as marginalized groups. Recent studies pay relatively more attention to the study of gendered political processes, institutions and interactions. The research focus has shifted towards exposing and questioning gender hierarchies and inequalities in a variety of political phenomena. As part of this shift, increasing attention is also devoted to the study of men as “gendered beings” in politics (Connell 2002 ) and the interactions between gender and other social markers such as social class, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, age and disability (Crenshaw 1991 ; Hancock 2007 ; McCall 2005 ); although these perspectives and voices are still at risk of being marginalized in the field (see below).

A defining feature of politics and gender research is its rooting in, and dialogue with, two distinct academic disciplines: political sciences and gender studies. Thus, its research is often characterized by a multi- and interdisciplinary engagement to a degree that is often usual for gender studies, but less so for “mainstream” political science (see also Costa and Sawer 2018 ). Scholars within the politics and gender field often draw from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds such as anthropology, economics, philosophy, sociology and others. A multi- or interdisciplinary lens allows gender and politics scholars to address political phenomena from a multiplicity of angles that enhance a comprehensive understanding of political problems. It also keeps scholars alert to the risk of becoming self-referential, which could narrow analytical capacities. Moreover, gender and politics research has also been shaped by different strands of political activism such as feminist, LGBTQI+ and anti-racist movements. Thus, politics and gender research can draw upon political sciences, gender studies, and activist involvement as related but distinct sources.

In European political science, since the late 1970s, a number of national political science associations (PSAs) created women’s caucuses and/or committees on the status of women (Costa and Sawer 2018 : 246). The transnational ECPR Gender and Politics Standing Group established in 1986 (originally “Women and Politics”) brings together scholars around the world working on gender, sexuality and intersectionality in politics. The creation of this network proved to be foundational to the development, and eventual consolidation, of gender and politics as a subfield in Europe, not least because it “helped inspire activism and institutional transfer across European PSAs” (Costa and Sawer 2018 : 245). Not only did such a network provide an intellectual network for those interested in similar research agendas but it also provided an important source of solidarity amongst scholars who very often found themselves to be marginalised within their own departments, universities and national political science associations. Not surprisingly, such politics and gender groups appear often to be among the biggest and most frequented PSA sub-entities and moreover extended their scope over time to include sexuality politics and intersectionality (Costa and Sawer 2018 ). Similarly, the role of the ECPR standing group has expanded over time and it performs a number of important functions which have helped the field of gender and politics to flourish, including organising gender panels at “mainstream” political science conferences and, perhaps most importantly, the establishment of its own biennial conference, the European Conference on Politics and Gender (ECPG).

ECPG conferences have grown exponentially and mirrors the growth of the subfield, with the “sections” resembling often other political science subfields. Footnote 2 Despite the growth in numbers, and the accompanying professionalization, the importance of solidarity, empowerment and community remain core values of the conferences, particularly the desire to create non-hierarchical supportive and welcoming spaces, especially for first-time attendees. In addition to the many friendships that have been made over the years, important and valuable special issues and edited collections have been published, which grew out of conferences, workshops and panels of the standing group. As the subfield grew, so too did the number of research papers produced, and it became clear that despite the existence of a number of excellent gender and politics journals, there was a demand for more: accordingly, the European Journal of Politics and Gender was launched in 2017 (Ahrens et al. 2018 ). The journal, like the conference, is committed to intellectual plurality—in terms of theoretical, methodological and empirical approaches. Its recent inclusion in SCOPUS rankings is testament to the quality of work published.

External consolidation: disciplinary recognition

Internal consolidation proved essential to develop breadth, depth and impact, not least within our own discipline, political science. As for external consolidation, the gender and politics research received growing recognition and has—according to Kantola and Lombardo ( 2016 )—contributed to the study of politics in four crucial ways. First, it has encouraged scholars to raise new research questions and to rethink old ones. Rather than accepting the relative under-representation of women and gender issues in political life as an “empirical reality” (and therefore unworthy of scrutiny), gender and politics scholars have made them the centre point of attention, by asking what the causes and consequences of this under-representation are, and how we can assess the normative implications thereof.

Second, gender and politics scholarship has introduced a variety of analytical approaches to the study of the political. There is a strong belief that the analysis of gender cannot simply be added to existing frameworks, concepts, theories and methods, but that the latter also need to be refined and rethought. The concepts of “gender” and “intersectionality” have helped scholars to rethink the analysis of power hierarchies (Connell 2002 ; Hancock 2007 ; Hill Collins 2002 ). Standpoint epistemologies have questioned too strong claims on “strong objectivity” made in some domains of political science and have instead emphasized the role of “situated knowledge” (Harding 2004 : 81, 127).

Third, the subfield of gender and politics has also contributed to a new understanding of “the political”. Although many introductory textbooks on political science would show that “the political” has been defined in many ways by political scientists—ranging from the study of government and public life to the distribution of power—gender and politics scholars have specifically contributed to this discussion by drawing attention to the fact that “the personal is also political”. Hence, they have broadened the study of “the political” to include the study of the politics of everyday life (Phillips 1998 ).

Fourth, gender and politics scholars have, perhaps more than other subfields, paid attention to the connection between theory and praxis. For many gender and politics scholars, their academic work is connected to, even rooted in, a form of feminist commitment, either inside or outside academia. Inside academia, they question processes of knowledge production and engage in “critical scholarship with an explicitly normative dimension” (Celis et al. 2013 : 9), also opening doors for other marginalized issues, such as LGBTIQ+ studies. Outside academia, feminist scholars regularly connect with women’s movements and women’s policy agencies to ensure the societal relevance and embeddedness of their academic work.

Gender and politics is also increasingly mainstreamed in Europe’s major political science conferences, associations and top-ranked journals. Since the turn of the Century, gender and politics sections and workshops have become a fixture at the ECPR’s Joint Sessions of Workshops and General Conference (see Fig.  1 ). The Joint Sessions, which are organized annually and accommodate usually between 25 and 30 workshops, have continuously hosted one or two “gender and politics” workshops since 2007. At the General Conference, Europe’s largest gathering of political scientists, sections devoted to gender and politics are also a regular feature. Since the General Conference became an annual event in 2014, the yearly academic programmes have included between two and six sections with a topical focus on gender, sexuality or intersectionality perspectives, each accommodating between three to eight panels. A quick calculation based on the information available on the ECPR website indicates that on average 4% of the total number of panels organized at the General Conference include gender, sexuality or intersectionality as a primary focus (Fig.  2 ). In recent years, gender and politics scholarship also features among the conference highlights, with several roundtables devoted to the topic in the period 2016–2020.

Note: The ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops take place annually. The ECPR General Conference takes place annually since 2014, and bi-annually in 2001–2013. Coding was based on information available on ECPR website. Coding for Joint Sessions based on workshop title and abstract for 2010–2020 and title only for 2001–2009. Coding for General Conference based on section title and keywords for 2014–2020 and title only for 2001–2013. No data available for General Conference 2001, 2007 and 2009.

Absolute number of workshops and sections with focus on gender, sexuality and intersectionality perspectives at major ECPR conferences (2001–2020) .

Note: The ECPR General Conference takes place annually since 2014, and bi-annually in 2001–2013. Coding was based on information available on ECPR website: section titles and keywords for 2014–2020 and titles only for 2001–2013. No data available for General Conference 2001, 2007 and 2009.

Percentage of panels with focus on gender, sexuality and intersectionality at ECPR General Conference (2001–2020).

By contrast, it is interesting to note that the field has not become more mainstreamed in European political science conferences over the years. Figures  1 and 2 do not reveal a significant increase in the percentage of workshops, sections and panels over time, but rather a steady presence. Moreover, most workshops, sections and panels organized at the ECPR conferences adopt a focus on “gender” and “women”. “Sexuality” and “intersectionality” perspectives remain less evident.

Turning to the integration in political science journals, we consider the percentage of articles with a primary focus on gender, sexuality and intersectionality views in ECPR’s five major journals in Table 1 . Each of these journals has a broad issue focus and welcomes contributions from a variety of subfields. Overall, the percentage of articles on gender and politics is not high—10% at best, but more often (much) lower; yet, some journals (e.g. EPS in 2001–2005 and 2016–2020) have increased the number of gender-related articles by publishing special issues or thematic sections on the topic. In the absence of a comparative yardstick, it is difficult to assess the level of gender mainstreaming in absolute terms. More important, therefore, is an assessment of over-time evolutions. In line with the findings for the conferences, there is also no clear upward trend in the number of publications on gender-related topics over time across the different journals (with the exception of EJPR). Rather, the overall picture that emerges is one of over-time fluctuations and stagnation. A combination of factors might account for these patterns, including author considerations regarding journal “fit” and success rates (Closa et al. 2020 ), the composition of editorial boards and the gendered consequences thereof (Deschouwer 2020 ), the gendered nature of the review and publication processes (Teele and Thelen 2017 ; Stockemer et al. 2020 ; Grossman 2020 ), and the growing number and impact of more domain-specific journals.

Gender and politics has also became more institutionalised within political science curricula, through both elective courses and integration within existing programs (see European Political Science Special Issue 2016 for an overview). More prizes and awards have been named after women alongside the recognition of the contribution of gender and politics scholars to political sciences, while the number of women recipients increased (to some extent), despite a persistent “Matilda effect” (Costa and Sawer 2018 ). Several PSAs have formally committed to monitoring gender equality in their organization, for instance, IPSA’s 2009 Gender and Diversity Monitoring Report or ECPR with its annual Gender Study (since 2017) and its first Gender Equality Plan (2018). Finally, mainstreaming gender and promoting gender equality and diversity has become an unavoidable (although not preclusive) criterion for grant applications to several funding agencies, not least the European Union research frameworks. Yet, despite these promising points, the picture across Europe is much more ambivalent as the future key challenges in the next section show.

Future key challenges

While consolidation is a critical moment in the development of any field, it comes with specific opportunities and also presents some key challenges. As the previous sections discussed, the consolidation story is more nuanced—there is no “increasing” mainstreaming of gender. It is rather a story of fluctuation and perhaps even stagnation, at a rather low level, if one looks at the number of sections, panels and articles on gender in mainstream conferences and journals.

We have identified five key challenges that correspond to the processes of internal and external consolidation. Internal consolidation can be challenged by (1) potential fragmentation and disintegration and (2) persisting hierarchies in knowledge production. External consolidation, in turn, can be contested by (3) continued marginalization of feminist political analysis in “mainstream” political science, (4) the changing link between academia and “society”, and (5) growing opposition to gender studies in several parts of Europe and beyond.

Potential fragmentation and disintegration

Growth—both in terms of depth and breadth—also introduces the challenge of “keeping the crowd together” while forging strong networks beyond subfields and often also other disciplines. Similar to the experience of political science as a discipline more broadly, a growing field often goes hand in hand with the development of more specialist niches, self-contained “knowledge communities”, and separate “reward systems” (Costa and Sawer 2018 : 267; Jenkins 2018 ; Vickers 2015 : 20). While such increased levels of specialisation have important benefits, including the development of particular knowledge and increased diversification, it also has some drawbacks. Specialization might result in disintegration and fragmentation. When different subfields (“gender and political representation”, “gender and European Union politics”, “gender and social movements”, …) become separate “knowledge communities” operating as “self-contained silos made up of self-referential networks” (Vickers 2015 : 20), the focus might shift from exchange between communities to exchange within communities. Not only might such a development limit the transfer of knowledge and innovation from one silo to another, it might also lead to the creation of “echo-chambers of disconnected knowledge” (Christensen and Ball 2019 : 19). This is obviously at odds with the initial multi- or interdisciplinary foundations of gender and politics—a field that has prided itself in the fact that it values cross-boundary exchange.

Confronting hierarchies in knowledge production

For gender and politics scholars, the social locatedness of the researcher and the conditions under which research is produced are crucial for thinking through how to confront persistent hierarchies in the knowledge production process (Hill Collins 2002 ; Harding 2004 ). Feminist and LGBTIQ+ scholars have challenged the exclusion of women and sexual minorities and the marginalisation of gender and sexuality as legitimate frames of analysis within political science, thereby emphasising the importance of representation and diversity within the discipline. As such, it is vital that we acknowledge, confront and create strategies to resist the hegemony of voices from the global north, especially the voices from white scholars occupying positions of privilege (Medie and Kang 2018 ).

Reflecting upon the aspects of academia which give (and facilitate the giving of) lifeblood to its multiple intellectual projects—such as conferences, publishing, secure and permanent posts—quickly reveals the epistemic privileges and regimes that are sustained: conferences which are too expensive to attend and sometimes require visas; Anglo-American normative assumptions regarding what constitutes a research paper—both stylistically and substantively; and networks which reinforce patterns of exclusion within the job market. Thinking honestly about the power implicit within the gender and politics field necessitates that we act differently and devise new ways of working that offer not only greater accessibility but also offer a radically different vision of what academia could be. In this instance then we call for a greater reflection on praxis, and specifically recalling the role that social movements play as a key source of gender and politics research.

How we conceptualise the field of gender and politics necessarily shapes who we seek to include, and what flows from that in terms of what we consider legitimate and important knowledge. Interdisciplinarity and its importance for gender scholars is a critical aspect of this; avoiding the temptation to police the boundaries of politics and political science in order to create intellectual synergies across a variety of fields (Ashworth 2009 ). Refusing to shut down or close off what we consider political science to constitute is important, and mirrors concerns within feminist and LGBTIQ+ social movements (Braidotti 1991 ), especially when we, as gender and politics scholars, recognise that politics is about power and that power is gendered (Ahrens et al. 2018 ). Creating opportunities and spaces in which we pay attention to the politics of privilege but also to the politics of experiential knowledge, of standpoint theory, and of the politics of language, provides us with the opportunity to reimagine a more open and engaged political science. Bringing together the core strands within our field with theoretical frameworks which have not traditionally served as dominant frames or paradigms—notably postcolonial and decolonial theory—will raise fresh questions and challenges for us as a discipline forcing us to revisit received wisdoms, established concepts and traditional methods; for example, by making better use of decolonial research methods and better integrating participatory action research (PAR) into our methodology.

The reproduction of hegemonies and continued marginalization of feminist political analysis in “mainstream” political science

The ongoing questioning of hegemonies and marginalizations in political science is another key challenge for politics and gender subfield. Despite the evidence of its expansion and increasing consolidation in European political science, dominant approaches within the discipline, that according to a political science textbook open to pluralism such as Colin Hay’s ( 2002 ) are rational choice theory, behaviouralism and new institutionalism, still tend to treat gender and sexuality issues as a marginal area (Kantola and Lombardo 2017 ; Smith and Lee 2015 : 50). Gender and sexuality teaching and research in European political science and other departments tends to be marginalized (Mügge et al. 2016 ), demonstrating a resistance to mainstreaming gender by actors that seek to maintain their privileged status quo (Verge et al. 2018 ). Men are overrepresented in the discipline and political science still perpetuates androcentric biases (Celis et al. 2013 ). While, at the initiative of the ECPR, European political science journals are beginning to analyse their gender publication gap (Grossman 2020 ; Closa et al. 2020 ), identifying a gender submission gap of 22% of at least one woman author in European Political Science Review and 27% woman leading author in the European Journal of Political Research, studies show that women are still underrepresented in political science publications despite their number in the discipline (Teele and Thelen 2017 ). Gender citation gaps, produced by implicit biases, lack of senior women scholars, and men’s tendency to cite men, are problematic for women’s career advancement and create the perception that men’s research is more important than women’s (Brown and Samuels 2018 ). Maliniak et al.’s ( 2013 ) analysis of IR top journals shows that articles authored by men obtain 4.8 more citations than women-authored articles in the period 1980–2006, after controlling for many variables. It was thanks to academic-activist platforms such as Women and People of Color Also Know Stuff! Footnote 3 that the lack of gender and diversity in conference panels, as well as the devaluing of women and people of colour’s expertise in public institutions and the media was exposed (Wallace and Pepinsky 2019 ).

The relatively marginal status of gender and politics within political science not only underestimates the scope of this subfield but also influences the type of feminist political science approaches that are more accepted in the mainstream. Out of the five feminist approaches to political analysis that Kantola and Lombardo discuss in “Gender and Political Analysis” ( 2017 ), two have become more dominant in gender and politics debates: a women approach, that focuses on the role and position of women, and a gender approach, that focuses on the wider social structures that reproduce domination and inequalities. Approaches that focus on the intersection of gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, disability, age and other inequalities are recognised as important within the field, but are not consistently applied in research. Two approaches remain more marginal: discursive approaches, that focus on how gender is contested and constructed in political debates, and post-deconstruction approaches, that focus on the role of affects, emotions and bodily material in gender and politics.

The hegemonies and marginalizations reproduced within gender and politics are as problematic as those occurring in mainstream political science with gender studies. As crucial political phenomena such as democratization, democratic backsliding, economic crises, Europeanization or Covid-19 crisis need the whole plurality of political science perspectives to maximize the explanatory capacity of science, different feminist approaches to political analysis are needed to offer a comprehensive understanding of the political in all its angles (Guerrina et al. 2018 ; Kantola and Lombardo 2017 ). Consequently, implementing practices that make space for a diversity of voices, subfields, and approaches is crucial in the road to construct a truly inclusive and intellectually heterogeneous discipline.

The changing link between academia and “society”

Linking “theory” and “practice” (i.e. praxis) is central to most feminist scholarship, and to gender and politics debates too as indicated above. Rather than simply describing and explaining “the political”, feminist political analyses seek to promote gender equality and diversity in social relations and politics (Kantola and Lombardo 2017 ). As Brown ( 2002 ) argues, connecting theory and political praxis is, indeed, needed to prevent debates within increasingly professionalized disciplines such as political science, from becoming self-referential and thus narrow in their analytical and imaginative capacities. Brown criticizes US political science as a professionalized discipline becoming accountable only to itself, where political scientists are their own audience and judges, and its existence justified by peer-reviewed journals, conferences and prizes (Brown 2002 : 565).

The intimate and necessary link between academia and societal practices potentially constitute vulnerabilities within gender and politics scholarship, too. The rise of (radical) right populism has fuelled distrust in “elitist” or “leftist” science and constrains the relationship between academia, academic knowledge and the society. Gender and politics scholars have demonstrated the multiple ways in which feminist academic knowledge and societal critique can become co-opted and compromised, thus losing its critical political edge when trying to fit with the prevailing logics of neoliberal governance (Caglar et al. 2013 ; Griffin 2015 ; Prügl 2016 ). New concepts such as market feminism (Kantola and Squires 2012 ), governance feminism (Prügl 2016 ), or crisis governance feminism (Griffin 2015 ) describe the transformations that engaging with neoliberal polities and policy-making brings for feminist knowledge. Consequently, some scholars argue that governance feminism has been markedly silent about the gendered underpinnings of global governance and financial governance, focusing instead on supporting institutional measures to enhance women’s participation (Griffin 2015 : 66).

Academic feminist actors face particular challenges of not being heard when they engage in political debates about the economy, especially in the context of neoliberalism and the dominance of austerity politics. Simultaneously, academic feminist actors who are willing and able to negotiate the terrain of such a political context have adopted specific strategies to do this. Such strategies require both “discursive virtuosity” (speaking the right language without compromising one’s agenda) but also “affective virtuosity”, a term that Elomäki et al. ( 2019 ) have coined to move forward from the pessimistic governance feminism interpretations of these engagements to instead point to the ambivalences in the engagement with the neoliberal governance. Whereas discursive virtuosity is about manifesting command of contradictory aims and discourses in equality work (Brunila 2009 ), affective virtuosity entails not only the competence to analyse and negotiate the conflicting emotions in the room but also within oneself. Affective virtuosity then requires controlling one’s feelings and emotions in gender equality work that is done with practitioners, yet it also makes openings for moving forward the gender equality agendas in hostile environments (Elomäki et al. 2019 ).

Growing opposition to gender studies programs and research

Finally, growing opposition, known as “anti-gender movement” (Kuhar and Paternotte 2017 ), challenges gender studies programs and research in both Western and Eastern Europe. Gender studies departments and courses at universities have been attacked and denounced as nests of “gender ideology”. Several governments and research agencies restricted funding, abolished accredited study programs, defamed “gender” as conspiracy theory, denounced certain gender and sexuality research topics as ideological and unscientific, or publicly discredited respective scientists as a privileged elite spending taxpayers’ money on irrelevant issues.

The anti-gender movement grew over the last fifteen years, emerging from groups of so-called concerned citizens, who were closely linked to the new evangelisation processes of the Roman Catholic Church. Eventually they have grown into a broad network of not only religious, but also nationalist, radical right-wing and other actors, united in their struggle against a seemingly unstoppable and irreversible process of ensuring gender equality and sexual rights.

The anti-gender movement ideology has penetrated and became part of some official state politics as well. Best-known is certainly the decision of the Hungarian government in October 2018 to revoke the accreditation of gender study programs in Hungary. Orban’s successful attack on university autonomy and academic freedom led to Central European University (CEU) moving to Vienna, while the Hungarian Academy of Sciences lost its institutional and financial autonomy (Pető 2018 ). Similar anti-gender attacks increasingly appear also in other European countries, such as Poland, Italy, France, Romania and Bulgaria (Engeli 2020 ; Kuhar and Zobec 2017 ; Paternotte and Verloo 2020 ).

The denunciations, particularly when unchallenged by (political) science associations, threaten the gender and sexuality subfield: public funding calls exclude gender topics, scholars avoid gender-related topics for fear of political consequences or simply by political interventions into research processes (Paternotte and Verloo 2020 ). Over the years, we have witnessed several attempts of the anti-gender actors to establish an “alternative” field of knowledge production by negating “gender” as a concept and dismantling post-structural research in social sciences and humanities. Scientific journals run by anti-choice organizations, research institutes run by politicians, or methodologically problematic studies pushed through a peer review process and published in scientific journals, remain a key challenge for science and particularly gender and sexuality research Footnote 4 (Kuhar 2015 ; Paternotte and Verloo 2020 ). However, these attacks are also an opportunity for additional internal consolidation of the scientific field, as they create an increasing solidarity among politics and gender scholars.

Over the past twenty years, the field of “gender and politics” has flourished in European political science, which is exemplified by its internal growth, diversification and professionalization, and increased disciplinary recognition. This consolidation creates specific opportunities, but also brings several key challenges which will require new, innovative and feminist thinking to safeguard gender and politics research in the twenty years to come.

Regarding internal consolidation, we ought to address internal hegemonies and marginalizations within gender and politics by practicing academic reflexivity (Bacchi 2009) or developing awareness regarding biases that shape political analyses. This includes among others practicing openness to theoretical and methodological pluralism, interdisciplinary work, the combination of different feminist approaches to political analysis, and the continuous contestation of unequal norms and practices in the subfield. One way to respond to this demand is by organizing conference sections more along research topics or problems, and less along political science subfields, thereby potentially breaking up “knowledge communities” and promoting interdisciplinarity as an advantage.

Important steps still need to be taken to support the participation and career (in terms of conference fees, awards, networks) of minority scholars, early career scholars, scholars from the Global South and scholars at risk. Next to earmarking support funds and fee waivers, one additional practical step could be to further explore online participation as a possibility to make conferences more accessible for those with limited travel opportunities.

External resistances to gender and politics research come in the form of continued marginalization of feminist political analysis and growing anti-gender attacks in several parts of Europe. Making political sciences more inclusive thus requires not only a strong commitment, but also targeted actions by all actors involved. PSAs can recommend to and support journals in a) recruiting gender-race-sexuality diverse editorial boards, b) including gender experts among reviewers by default, and c) regularly inviting special issues on gender and politics research. They can also promote positive action policies (quotas, awards, and recognition of support) for gender, sexuality and intersectionality research(ers). Further core actions can include making data on inequality visible and accessible, monitoring resistance, and encouraging and rewarding collaborations across political science subfields in conferences or journals with some of them specifically addressing opposition to gender equality in the discipline.

For the broader societal context, issues of gender, sexuality, race and intersectionality require further consolidation in European political science curricula in order to ensure the continuation of the subfield through new generations of scholars and practitioners. Such a focus needs stronger (supranational) institutional commitments protecting academic freedom and gender equality, such as limiting research funding for institutions without a gender and diversity equality plan. Simultaneously, research into democratic backsliding, particularly in terms of how it endangers (political) scientific research and academic freedom, requires strong support from funding agencies, PSAs and universities.

Considering the fact that (political) science is accused of being detached from “ordinary people” and everyday life experiences, we also need more thought and discussion (and research) into how to make a bridge. Engaging more with stakeholders and making more social impact research available can help to bring theory and praxis closer together. Concomitantly, developing and sharing individual and collective strategies of alliances and empowerment to make gender mainstreaming work and cope with resistances, might help to break through the status quo within academic, political, and economic institutions.

In sum, we need to return to the origins of gender, sexuality and intersectionality research.

We understand decolonizing to refer to those strategies which include and amplify the perspectives of those outside of the west and the global north (understanding that these terms are themselves to some extent a construct of western imperialist epistemology) to disrupt and contest our understanding of subjectivities (Sabaratnam 2011 ).

The first ECPG in Belfast 2009 had some 300 participants to the most recent in Amsterdam, 2019 which attracted over 850 attendees. The growth of the conferences Sections included: European Politics; Governance and Public Policy; International Relations; Political Participation and Public Opinion; Political Theory; Power and Representation; Research Methods; Social Movements and Civil Society; and extended in 2013 with a section on Intersectionality and one on Sexuality.

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Ahrens, P., Erzeel, S., Evans, E. et al. Gender and politics research in Europe: towards a consolidation of a flourishing political science subfield?. Eur Polit Sci 20 , 105–122 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41304-020-00304-8

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The gender gap in political psychology

Associated data.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Introduction

I investigated the authorship gender gap in research on political psychology.

The material comprises 1,166 articles published in the field’s flagship journal Political Psychology between 1997 and 2021. These were rated for author gender, methodology, purpose, and topic.

Women were underrepresented as authors (37.1% women), single authors (33.5% women), and lead authors (35.1% women). There were disproportionately many women lead authors in papers employing interviews or qualitative methodology, and in research with an applied purpose (these were all less cited). In contrast, men were overrepresented as authors of papers employing quantitative methods. Regarding topics, women were overrepresented as authors on Gender, Identity, Culture and Language, and Religion, and men were overrepresented as authors on Neuroscience and Evolutionary Psychology.

The (denigrated) methods, purposes, and topics of women doing research on politics correspond to the (denigrated) “feminine style” of women doing politics grounding knowledge in the concrete, lived reality of others; listening and giving voice to marginalized groups’ subjective experiences; and yielding power to get things done for others.

Women are not equally represented in science in terms of publications and impact. This is especially true in male-dominated fields such as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), in which women are severely underrepresented both in terms of raw numbers and in terms of prestige ( Larivière et al., 2013 ; West et al., 2013 ). Moreover, a large authorship gender gap in publishing can be found not only in fields dominated by men but also in fields that approach or have reached gender parity in participation, such as education or psychology ( West et al., 2013 ).

Psychology is a discipline that is often lauded by researchers who study gender gaps in academia due to the high rate of women participating in the field, from undergraduates to tenure-track professors (e.g., Ceci et al., 2014 ). An increasing number of women with master’s degrees and doctorates have transformed psychology from a men-dominated field to a women-dominated field. Despite this representation in numbers, women in psychology remain underrepresented as authors and in eminence—women in psychology are underrepresented in first-author publications in top journals ( Brown and Goh, 2016 ), in the citations their work receives ( Odic and Wojcik, 2020 ), in award received by divisions ( Eagly and Riger, 2014 ; Brown and Goh, 2016 ), and in eminence ( Eagly and Miller, 2016 ). Although political science is strongly dominated by men ( Tolleson-Rinehart and Carroll, 2006 ; Breuning and Sanders, 2007 ; Teele and Thelen, 2017 ; Thelwall et al., 2019 ), this may be less true in the subfield of political psychology.

This research aimed to assess whether there is an authorship gender gap in articles published in Political Psychology . The journal Political Psychology incorporates contributions with a variety of methodologies and topics, as well as both theoretical research and applied research. Exploring how the authorship gender gap varies between different types of contributions could reveal how women are situated within the field. First off, the size of the authorship gender gap may vary as a function of method—women generally tend to employ more qualitative research methods than men ( Eagly and Riger, 2014 ; Thelwall et al., 2019 ). For instance, in political science, journals that publish qualitative research tend to have more female authors than journals that publish only quantitative research ( Teele and Thelen, 2017 ). Second, the purpose of the paper may be associated with the size of the authorship gender gap. Large-scale bibliometric analyses across all fields of research show that theoretical papers are more typical of men, whereas women are overrepresented as authors in papers intended to have a social impact ( Thelwall et al., 2019 ). Third, authorship gender gaps may vary across topics. For instance, gender studies are one of the few social sciences fields dominated by women ( Kretschmer et al., 2012 ), suggesting that women might not be underrepresented as authors of research on this topic.

The purpose of the present research was to investigate the possible gender gap within the field of political psychology or, more specifically, the field’s flagship journal Political Psychology . I expected women to be generally underrepresented as authors, but the size of the authorship gender gap varies according to the methods, purposes, and topics of the paper. Moreover, I also investigated whether the authorship gender gap has narrowed in the last decades (as suggested by Brown and Goh, 2016 ) and whether papers authored by women are cited less (as suggested by Odic and Wojcik, 2020 ). Pertinent to the last point, I also explored whether the number of citations varies with method, purpose, or topic. Some previous studies, run on articles published in the journal Leadership Quarterly , suggest that quantitative, review, methods, and theory articles may be cited more than qualitative articles ( Antonakis et al., 2014 ). Women could thus be expected to be cited less, and this could at least in part be explained by different citation rates for different types of papers.

Materials and methods

Two doctoral students, both of whom identified as women, were employed as research assistants, and they rated all articles that appeared in the journal Political Psychology from the start of 1997 to the end of 2021. No power calculations were made—we sought to include all articles that were available online at the time the data were collected. Between the beginning of 1997 and the end of 2021, the journal published 1,166 research articles, which constituted the material for the present study.

All articles were rated by both raters for author gender, method, purpose, and topic. Each article was rated dichotomously on all employed variables, i.e., either employing a certain method vs. not doing so, having vs. not having applied relevance, or dealing vs. not dealing with a certain topic. The rating scheme and rating criteria were discussed, developed, and revised together in the initial stages of rating, and the final rating scheme that was employed for all articles was arrived at through joint discussion after both research assistants had rated around a hundred articles. After these initial discussions, the research assistants did not discuss their ratings with each other.

The coding of methods was rather straightforward, either a given method was employed or it was not. For the article to be coded as having applied relevance, a real-world problem had to motivate a research question, or the applied relevance had to be mentioned in the abstract. Regarding the topic, the focus was on the framework within which the research was conducted. For instance, speculating upon an “identity” or “evolutionary psychology” explanation of the results did not suffice for the paper to be coded as being within these fields. In addition to discussions with the two research assistants, I relied on political psychology handbooks and research on the submissions to the journal Political Psychology ( Mintz and Mograbi, 2015 ) in developing the rating scheme.

There were generally more men ( n = 1681) than women ( n = 991) as authors (37.1% women). Looking at the first author or single author, there were again more men ( n = 757) than women ( n = 409; 35.1% women), and the same was true when looking only at single authors (250 men, 126 women; 33.5% women). Women were thus similarly underrepresented both as co-authors and as lead authors.

The gender gap in lead authorship over time is plotted in Figure 1 . There is no indication that the gender gap in authorship would have decreased over time [the linear correlation between the year of publication and the percentage of female lead authors was r (25) = 0.02]. However, the slight dip in the percentage of female lead authors suggested investigating gender representation among the editors of the journal. Between 1997 and 2021, there were two to four (co-)editors each year. The editors were all male from the beginning of 2006 to the end of 2011. All other years, there was one woman among the (co-)editors. Between 2006 and 2011, the all-male years, only 29.7% of lead authors were women. In contrast, the average of those years in which one woman was included as (co-)editor, the percentage of women lead authors was 36.6% [this difference in percentages did not reach conventional levels of statistical significance, F (1, 24) = 3.25, p = 0.084].

The percentage of female first authors over time.

To analyze differences between topics, methods, and purposes, one rater’s rating of the gender of the lead author (first author or single author) was used as the independent variable (rater’s agreement on author gender was 99.5%, and kappa was 0.989).

Tables 1 – 3 show the number of male and female lead authors by method, purpose, and topic, respectively. Not surprisingly, given that the proportion of female lead authors was only 0.351, there were fewer women than men in almost all categories. However, there were some exceptions. Regarding methods, there were as many women as men employing qualitative methods and interviews (the number of women and men lead authors employing these methods did not differ statistically significantly at p < 0.05). Regarding the topic, there were as many women as men lead authors writing about Gender, Religion, Social Control, and Class (the number of women and men lead authors writing on these topics did not differ statistically significantly at p < 0.05).

Number of papers with male and female lead authors across methods.

The Chi-square and the Phi statistics show whether either gender is disproportionately represented as lead author. The inter-rater agreement and Cohen’s kappa statistics estimate inter-rater reliability.

Number of papers with male and female lead authors across theme.

Given the generally large authorship gender gap in favor of men, more informative than analyzing the absolute numbers of men and women as lead authors were to look at the relative number of men and women. Chi-square tests were run to investigate, given the general overrepresentation of men, whether the authorship gender gap varied across methods ( Table 1 ), purposes ( Table 2 ), and topics ( Table 3 ). Regarding methods, there were disproportionately many women lead authors in papers employing qualitative methods or interviews. In contrast, men were overrepresented as authors of papers employing quantitative methods. There were also disproportionately many women lead authors in research with an applied purpose. Regarding the topic, there were disproportionately many women lead authors within the fields of Gender, Identity, Culture and Language, and Religion. There were some indications that this might also be true for Ethnicity and Political Participation, although conventional levels of statistical significance were not reached. On the contrary, there were disproportionately many men as lead authors in papers on Evolutionary Psychology and Neuroscience.

Number of papers with male and female lead authors across purpose.

To alleviate fears that the above results were being driven by only some variables, I analyzed the associations between variables: methods, purposes, and topics. The strongest association was between qualitative methods and the topic of Culture and Language, with an effect size of φ = 0.252 [χ 2 (1, 1066) = 74.784]. Entering these two variables into a binary logistic regression predicting author gender gave very similar coefficient estimates regardless of whether the two variables were entered alone or simultaneously (all coefficient p -values in both types of models were statistically significant at p < 0.01). This suggests that the associations between, on the one hand, methods, purposes, and topic and, on the other hand, gender were generally rather independent of each other.

Regarding the number of citations, there was no gender bias. Male lead authors had an average of 102 ( SD = 192) citations, and female first authors had an average of 93 [ SD = 166; F (1, 1164) = 0.722, ns]. Of the 50 most-cited articles, 18 (36%) had a female lead author, which is almost exactly what one would expect given that 37% of all lead authors were women. Similarly, when looking at the top 10 most-cited articles, three of them had a female lead author.

Although articles authored by women were, contrary to expectations, not cited less frequently, the types of papers for which women were overrepresented as authors were cited less frequently. As expected, papers employing qualitative methods ( Table 4 ) and having an applied focus ( Table 5 ) were cited less often. However, the topics that women authors were overrepresented on were not cited particularly poorly, with the exception of Culture and Language ( Table 6 ).

Mean number of citations across employed methods.

F and η 2 statistics for the difference in mean citations between papers in which the method was or was not present.

Mean number of citations across purposes.

F and η 2 statistics for the difference in mean citations between papers in which the purpose was or was not present.

Mean number of citations across themes.

F and η 2 statistics for the difference in mean citations between papers in which the theme was or was not present.

The first finding was that only 37.1% of the authors who published their articles in Political Psychology in 1997–2021 were women (33.5% single authors, 35.1% first authors). The average for the top 200 psychology journals from 2003 to 2018 was 44.2% ( Odic and Wojcik, 2020 ). The most important finding for a wider audience was that the authorship gender gap was not identical across various methodological approaches, research purposes, and research topics—i.e., women scholars were different in how (methods), why (purpose), and what (theme) they did. This result was especially intriguing given that the journal investigates politics. Politics is of course not gender-neutral—women politicians are expected to be different in how, why, and what they do. One of the questions the results provoke is whether research on politics is gendered similarly to how politics is gendered. That is, gender differences in what political psychologist do may be parallel to gender differences in what politicians do.

Regarding methodology, women were, relative to the general authorship gender gap in favor of men, overrepresented as lead authors in research employing qualitative methods and interviews. Women were also overrepresented in research with an applied purpose. These results are consistent with previous large-scale cross-disciplinary bibliometric results ( Thelwall et al., 2019 ). The similarities between how and why women do research and how and why women do politics are striking. A “feminine style” in women’s political discourse has been argued to consist, among other things, of basing political judgments on concrete, lived experience; valuing inclusivity and the relational nature of being; conceptualizing the power of public office as a capacity to “get things done”; and moving women’s issues to the forefront of the public arena ( Blankenship and Robson, 1995 ). This “feminine style” ascribed to women politicians could just as well describe the results for women scholars. Several approaches within qualitative research, especially when interviews are employed, have been thought of as seeking to capture “lived experience” ( Frechette et al., 2020 ), legitimize the subjectivity of human reality ( Morgan and Drury, 2003 ), or “give voice” to those who are rarely heard ( Larkin et al., 2006 ). Women in politics and women scholars seem to ground their knowledge in the concrete, lived reality of others (their electorate or their research participants), listening and giving voice to marginalized groups’ subjective experiences, and yielding their own power or their voice for the sake of others. This is all very consistent with the broader stereotype of women as highly communal (i.e., kind, warm, empathetic, and caring) and less agentic (i.e., analytical, independent, and competitive) than men ( Fiske et al., 2002 ).

In addition, consistent with these broader stereotypes are the topics, on which women were, given the general authorship gender gap in favor of men, overrepresented: Gender, Identity, Culture and Language, and Religion. Two topics that narrowly missed the cut-off points for statistical significance were Political participation and Ethnicity. It is again rather striking that the topics women scholars work on are the very same type of topics that women politicians are associated with. In electoral politics, even though women’s overall proportions in the governments of developed democracies have increased considerably over the last few decades, women cabinet ministers in charge of the most prestigious (i.e., pivotal, resourceful, and visible) positions remain an exception ( Krook and O’Brien, 2012 ; Kroeber and Hüffelmann, 2021 ). Women members of government typically preside over low-prestige portfolios, such as Women, Equality, Minority Affairs, Culture, Minority Affairs, and Immigration ( Kroeber and Hüffelmann, 2021 ). These portfolios are very similar in content to the above topics on which women authors were overrepresented.

Besides affinities in the methods, purposes, and topics, of women scholars and politicians, there are similarities in the prestige that they are afforded. Regarding research methods, policymakers are infatuated with the number and quantitative methods, particularly at the intersection of science and bureaucracy ( Porter, 1995 ). Also in the present study, qualitative research was poorly cited. This was consistent with previous research on the citation rates of leadership research ( Antonakis et al., 2014 ), as well as with the present result that papers with a more applied focus were poorly cited. That applied papers, like qualitative papers, may lack prestige can be inferred not only from citation rates but also from a recent Association for Psychological Science presidential column, in which it was noted that “Many of us in academia may be walking around with an implicit or explicit ‘basic is better’ attitude” ( Medin, 2012 ). Thus, although women were not per se less likely to be cited than men, the type of research that women did was less likely to be cited.

Regarding the topics of the research, Gender, Identity, Culture and Language, and Religion, also maybe Ethnicity and Political Identity, are all topics that in eyes of both other psychologists and laypeople are perceived as less rigorous, mainstream, and objective than research in areas of psychology, and the researchers engaged with this type of research on identity or “me-search” ( Rios and Roth, 2020 ) are seen as more subjective and less intelligent ( Rios and Roth, 2020 ; Brown et al., 2022 ).

Both women politicians and scholars appear to focus on similar issues, and these issues are denigrated. In retrospect, this is perhaps not that surprising. Just as “intelligence” in political leadership is associated with masculinity (for a meta-analysis, see Koenig et al., 2011 ), so is being a “rational” and an “objective” scientist ( Carli et al., 2016 ). These parallels offer intriguing questions for future research. For instance—given that female politicians can increase their chances of electoral success by focusing on “soft” issues in the election campaign ( Herrnson et al., 2003 )—one can ask whether papers authored by women are more likely to be accepted if they focus on “soft” topics, are qualitative, or are applied. Another instance, as in politics, in which men can capture “soft issues” ( Herrnson et al., 2003 ), are qualitative papers or papers on “women’s topics” more likely to be published when authored by men? On a very general level, it would be interesting to investigate whether “women’s topics” are considered less scientific because women focus on these topics, or whether women focus on these topics because they are rejected when venturing into areas perceived as requiring more masculine characteristics, such as “rationality” and “objectivity” ( Carli et al., 2016 ).

Those men were overrepresented in research employing quantitative methods and in research rooted in Neuroscience and Evolutionary Psychology also aligns well with the above-discussed gender stereotypes. Although the number of papers on these topics was rather small, the notion that at least Evolutionary Psychology (e.g., Meredith, 2013 ) is dominated by men aligns well with previous research. In terms of future research, our results regarding the overrepresentation of men do offer some intriguing suggestions. Both Neuroscience and Evolutionary Psychology can be argued to take a rather essentialist approach. For instance, in a much-cited paper, DeLamater and Hyde (1998) argued that modern essentialism, within which they count both Evolutionary Psychology and Brain Research, consists of a belief that certain phenomena are natural, inevitable, and biologically determined. They contrast this belief with that of social constructionism, the belief that reality is socially constructed, which emphasizes language as an important means by which we interpret experience. Essentialist claims about inevitable differences with regard to sex and gender have been argued to be incompatible with feminism (e.g., Kelly, 2014 ), and the controversies surrounding this topic have come to reach larger audiences (e.g., Hufendiek, 2022 ). This could in part explain why women do not venture into working on these themes. Interesting questions could be whether men are disproportionately overrepresented as authors in other psychological or social sciences research that takes an essentialist approach to sex or more broadly an essentialist approach to individual differences.

An important takeaway for future research is that merely looking at the numerical representation of women is not enough. Probing deeper by looking at authorship gender gaps as a function of the topics, methods, and purposes of the research can shed light on the processes underlying these gaps. To what extent can research also within other disciplines be described as women researching (possibly derided) women’s issues and, in doing so, employing certain (possibly derided) methods?

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Regions & Countries

1. views of the state of gender equality in politics.

A narrow majority of U.S. adults (53%) say there are too few women in high political offices in the United States today. Some 37% say there are about the right number of women and 8% say there are too many women elected to higher offices.

The share saying there are too few women in high political offices is down from 59% since we last asked this question in 2018 .

Views on this differ widely by gender and political affiliation. And there are also differences between Democratic men and women and between Republican men and women.

Most women (63%) say there are too few women in high political offices. Three-in-ten say there are about the right number of women and just 5% say there are too many.

Views are more divided among men: 42% say there are too few women and 46% say there are about the right number. About one-in-ten men (11%) say there are too many women in high political offices.

By partisanship

Three-quarters of Democrats and Democratic leaners say there are too few women in high political offices today. A much smaller share of Republicans and Republican leaners (29%) say the same. A majority of Republicans (56%) say there are about the right number of women in these offices.

Republican women are about twice as likely as Republican men to say there are too few women in high political offices (40% vs. 19%). Republican men are about as likely to say there are too few women in these elected offices as they are to say there are too many.

About six-in-ten Republican men (62%) say there are about the right number of women in high political offices, compared with 51% of Republican women.

Majorities of Democratic men and women say there are too few women in high political offices. But Democratic women (82%) are more likely than Democratic men (67%) to say this.

The ideal number of women and men in high elected positions

Most people (77%) who say there are too few women in high political offices say it would be ideal to have about an equal number of men and women in these offices. About one-in-ten (9%) say it would be ideal if there were more women than there are now but still not as many women as men . And 13% say it would be ideal to have more women than men in these positions.

Majorities of Democrats and Republicans who say there are too few women in high elected offices say it would be ideal for there to be about an equal number of men and women . Still, there are some differences in these views by party. Among those who say there are too few women in these offices:

• 18% of Democrats – but just 4% of Republicans – say it would be ideal for there to be more women than men in high political offices.
• Republicans (15%) are about twice as likely as Democrats (7%) to say it would be ideal to have more women in high political offices than there are now, but still not as many women as men .

Will there ever be as many women as men in high political offices?

Looking ahead, about half of Americans (52%) say that, as more women run for office, it is only a matter of time before there are as many women as men in high political offices. A smaller but sizeable share (46%) say men will continue to hold more high political offices in the future. These views are unchanged from five years ago.

A majority of men (58%) say it’s only a matter of time before there are as many women as men in high political offices. A smaller share of women (46%) say the same, while 51% say men will continue to hold more of these positions, even as more women run for office.

More than half of Republicans (54%) say it’s only a matter of time before there are as many women as men in high elected offices. Democrats are more divided: 51% agree, while 48% say men will continue to hold more high political offices in the future.

Majorities of Republican and Democratic men (59% and 57%, respectively) say there will eventually be as many women as men in high political offices. Republican women are about evenly divided, while Democratic women are somewhat more likely to say men will continue to hold more of these offices (53%) than to say it’s only a matter of time before there are as many women as men in these positions (45%).

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Table of Contents

Many in east asia say men and women make equally good leaders, despite few female heads of government, women and political leadership ahead of the 2024 election, the data on women leaders, republican gains in 2022 midterms driven mostly by turnout advantage, fewer than a third of un member states have ever had a woman leader, most popular.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

Gender and Politics Research Paper

This sample gender research paper on gender and politics features: 6900 words (approx. 23 pages) and a bibliography with 52 sources. Browse other research paper examples for more inspiration. If you need a thorough research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers for help. This is how your paper can get an A! Feel free to contact our writing service for professional assistance. We offer high-quality assignments for reasonable rates.

I. Introduction

Academic writing, editing, proofreading, and problem solving services, get 10% off with 24start discount code, ii. evolution of the study of women and comparative politics and strategies for research, iii. themes, theories, and approaches of comparative research on women and politics, a. women and political representation, b. feminist comparative policy, c. gender, policy, and the welfare state, d. state feminism, e. policy formation and implementation, f. women’s movements, iv. practical implications, v. future directions, vi. conclusion.

In 1976, Peter Merkl observed that the field of comparative politics had been woefully deficient with respect to the study of women (Merkl, 1976). Few comparative studies on gender existed, almost no presentations or panels appeared at professional meetings, and no academic journal specialized in the publication of research in the subfield. More than 40 years later, the study of women, and more broadly gender, in comparative politics has flourished, becoming an important area of research. A recent issue of Perspectives on Politics dedicated a whole section of the journal to a review of comparative politics of gender. This research paper is intended as an overview for students who wish to gain a general understanding of the evolution of this field of study. Several aspects of the study of women in comparative politics are summarized in this research paper. The first section highlights how the comparative study of women and politics has evolved since the 1970s, noting an increase in the number of scholars in the field and the acceptance of this area of research into mainstream political science journals. The second section examines some of the key themes and theories, including women and representation and feminist comparative public policy. The growth of studies on gender regimes and the welfare state, state feminism, the formation and implementation of women-friendly policies, and the influence of women’s movements on policy debates are presented. Next, some practical implications of these studies are noted, followed by a discussion of future directions of research.

Comparative political science has been around since the time of Aristotle. In its modern configuration, the subfield has been defined as involving both a comparative method of study and a substantive area focus on understanding the societies and politics of countries and regions of the world (Hull, 1999). In its early stages, comparative politics took a more formal-legalistic approach, using historical analysis or descriptive studies of political institutions and governments primarily in Western Europe and the United States. However, with the growth of behavioral perspectives and critiques in the 1950s and 1960s, comparative studies moved toward more empirical methods and theory building (Hull, 1999). Comparative studies of political behavior, political culture, democratization, development, public policy, and the state became more common and more global, with no single theoretical paradigm dominating the field (Hull, 1999). Even with these expansions in themes and methods, women were still remarkably absent, both as a subject of study and as practitioners in the field early on (Gruberg, 1999). Part of the reason was that gender was considered at the time to be a “marginal” or unimportant area for comparative political study. Since so few women were in key positions of political leadership around the world, the notion of women having power or political influence was perceived as irrelevant. Even the notion of gendered policy making was not considered, much less fully articulated or well developed, in comparative perspective. Furthermore, women entering political science were counseled to be careful to do “mainstream” work in order to be successful in the completion of a dissertation or accepted in the job market. Very little incentive existed for opening up new areas of research related to women and comparative public policy or political representation, or gender and politics more broadly (Hull, 1999). By the late 1970s, this began to change as political science, and comparative politics in particular, was impacted by feminist critiques and increased numbers of women in the discipline. Changes within the American Political Science Association itself, the role of key conferences in providing the impetus for research, and the creation of new academic journals all helped the study of women and comparative politics to become accepted in the discipline. For example, the seminal conference “Social and Political Change: The Role of Women” held at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1974 called attention to the need to incorporate women into political and social studies (Merkl, 1976). The formation of the Women’s Caucus for Political Science in 1969 provided mentoring and support for women entering all subfields of political science. And finally, the creation of several key academic journals, including Signs in 1975, Women and Politics in 1980 (known since 2004 as Women, Politics, and Public Policy), and most recently Politics and Gender in 2005, all fostered interest in research on women and politics. By the late 1990s, mainstream journals such as Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, PS: Political Science and Politics, and Perspectives in Political Science all were publishing articles in which women were central in the analysis of various comparative topics. By the 21st century, research on women and comparative politics was much more widespread and acknowledged in political science than previously reported by studies of the discipline at the end of the 1990s (Gruberg, 1999; Hull, 1999). Over time, multiple methodological and theoretical debates also emerged. Much like the debates in political science as a whole, the debates surrounding the comparative study of women and politics, and more recently gender and comparative politics, have focused on whether to do large cross-national, quantitative studies or to employ smaller, detailed case studies (Mazur & Perry, 1998). The advantage of small qualitative studies is their ability to capture the complexities of cultural contexts and the interplay of race, class, and gender issues. The obvious disadvantages are the inability to generalize about cross-national patterns or to replicate particular research findings over time. On the other hand, larger, quantitative studies using data sets can offer more generalization but miss the nuances of difference that can be key in understanding the impact of identity and gender issues in particular. Since the late 1990s, some scholars have chosen “not to choose,” that is, to try to find some combination of qualitative and quantitative methodologies such as those created by the Research Network on Gender Politics and the State (RNGS; Mazur & Perry, 1998). This network brings together more than 46 scholars to study and explore theories about gender, policy making, and state processes. Publishing a variety of books and articles over the past 10 years, these scholars have addressed some of the thorny problems of depth versus generalizability by using a combination of detailed interviews, data collection from numerous sources, numerous case studies, and more in empirical research.

Since the advent of comparative research on women and politics, several areas of inquiry have emerged, only a few of which will be discussed here. These include studies of women and political representation and feminist comparative policy, analyses of gender regimes and the welfare state, state feminism, policy formation and implementation, and the impact of women’s movements. Although women, or more broadly gender, have been commonly used as a variable rather than an analytical tool, more recent theoretical work in comparative research, overlapping with feminist international relations and women’s studies, has started to examine the possible gendered nature of policy, bureaucracies, and the state (Beckwith, 2010).

The earliest comparative studies of women and politics focused first on issues of female representation in industrialized countries or the states of Western Europe, Canada, and the United States. Researchers were primarily interested in whether women were elected to key political positions and what circumstances tended to favor the access of women to political office. Formal politics, such as voting, elections, the role of political parties, and work of legislators were at the heart of these studies, with later work considering the role of women in civil society. Early classic works in these areas were Politics and Sexual Equality: The Comparative Position of Women in Western Democracies (Norris, 1987), Gender and Political Parties (Norris & Lovenduski, 1993), and Women and Politics Worldwide (Nelson & Chowdhury, 1994). In the past 15 years, studies on representation became more complex, focusing on what combination of factors contributed to a lesser or greater degree to the legislative representation of women. Political or institutional, cultural, and socioeconomic explanations also emerged as possibilities for investigation. Research also gradually moved beyond industrialized states to central and eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa (see Kenworthy & Malami, 1999). For example, institutional explanations looked at the nature of the electoral system itself, the construction and size of political parties and party candidate lists, the timing of women’s access to the vote, and levels of democracy. Although some studies disagreed, generally proportional representation (PR) in parliaments was viewed as more favorable than district-based systems as the number of seats available to women in PR systems tended to be higher (Matland & Studlar, 1996). Political parties with open party lists and term limits were also seen as favoring the advancement of women (Htun & Jones, 2002; Krook, 2005). And overall, the quality of democracy—that is, systems with multiple, competitive political parties, high voter turnout, and regular elections—also increased the representation of women (Lindberg, 2004; see also Viterna, Fallon, & Beckfield, 2008). A second area of interest focused on religious or cultural factors in determining levels of representation of women. Initial studies on cultural or religious factors ranged from examining the effects of Muslim or Catholic cultures in hindering women’s election to political office to studying aggregated attitudes toward gender equality (Tripp & Kang, 2008). Some research attempted to use binary variables measuring whether a state ratified the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women to examine attitudes about women’s equality and the connection between these attitudes and women’s representation (Tripp & Kang, 2008). More recent studies, including those by Inglehart and Norris (2003), have largely used data sets such as the World Values Survey, with information from more than 70 countries, finding that well-educated, less religious, and single respondents in postindustrial states were most likely to support equal representation for women. Pursuing a third area of interest, scholars have explored socioeconomic factors affecting women’s representation, in particular women’s levels of education and participation in the labor force. These studies have yielded mixed results. Paxton (1997), for example, found that levels of education or numbers of women in the workplace are not as important as institutional factors that may limit women’s access to political processes. On the other hand, Kenworthy and Malami (1999) discovered that the type of professional occupation indeed might enhance women’s participation. More recent research has returned to the question of whether development impacts women’s representation. Viterna, Fallon, and Beckfield (2008) have argued that in order to have a better understanding of this relationship, taking into account different political systems and economic circumstances, studies must examine developed and developing countries separately. Levels of democracy may still be important, but economic development does matter. In the past 6 years, researchers also explored the impact of quotas and to what degree they enhance women’s representation around the world. These studies call into question earlier institutional, cultural, or socioeconomic explanatory variables (Tripp & Kang, 2008). Quotas refer to a prescribed number of seats in parliament, on political party lists, or in political leadership allocated to women within a political system. Quotas can be mandated informally through party practice or tradition, or more formally through legislative rules, constitutional amendments, and the like. Recent books on the impact and effectiveness of quotas include Representing Women? Female Legislators in West European Parliaments (Diez, 2005) and Women, Quotas, and Politics (Dahlerup, 2006). Articles on the subject have also appeared in several journals, including most recently a comprehensive study on the global impact of quotas by Tripp and Kang (2008) and work on quotas in Latin America by Jones (2009), both in Comparative Political Studies. Tripp and Kang’s (2008) study is particularly instructive in pointing to the impact of quotas vis-à-vis previous understanding of female representation. The nature of the electoral system, specifically in terms of proportional representation or levels of democracy, was earlier considered most important in determining the level of representation of women. However, the introduction of quotas in a variety of systems, democratic or not, has shown that although PR systems may still be important in some parts of the world, the existence of quotas, regardless of the type of regime, may be even more critical. Quotas also seem to matter more than religious or cultural factors as many predominantly Muslin countries have adopted quotas for women, raising their representation in the political process. This phenomenon contradicts earlier research pointing to the restrictive nature of religions such as Islam or Catholicism on women’s political rights. Furthermore, the existence of quotas may also be more important than the length of time women have had the vote in a particular country or the country’s degree of economic development. Quotas, according to Tripp and Kang (2008), seem to have helped women overcome limitations traditionally created by economic underdevelopment, authoritarian regimes, cultural contexts, or the features of regular electoral politics, thus challenging previous notions of whether political, cultural, or economic factors are most important in understanding the evolution of women’s representation. What is more uncertain is whether quotas create a permanent avenue for representation of women and greater impact in the policy-making process. As Tripp and Kang (2008) admitted, more longitudinal studies including future data on women’s representation and effectiveness in the political process are needed to learn whether quotas are indeed the key to ensuring political equality for women. Further work is also needed on understanding which women are privileged in the quota selection process. In other words, to what degree do race, class, and gender, or issues of intersectionality and positionality, matter? Additionally, more comparative work on women’s representation in developing areas, especially Africa, would be helpful in understanding the possibilities for social change.

Along with women and representation, a key area of research is the study of feminist comparative policy. This research has coincided with the emergence of various new social policies, ranging from equal job opportunities, shared part-time work, welfare programs, and parental leave to policies dealing with reproductive rights, sexual harassment, and violence against women in states globally. Feminist comparative policy research is interested in understanding the similarities and differences in the formation, implementation, and effects of these policies on women, and the area is moving from studies at the state level to examinations of the impact of policies of transnational organizations such as the European Union or the UN (Gottfried & Reese, 2003). The underlying hope of researchers here is that scholars and practitioners worldwide can learn from each other what policies pragmatically solve public problems and better the lives of both men and women. In the 1990s and early 21st century, much of this work focused on the West or women in the industrialized states. Ackelsberg (1992) found that several authors made contributions, including Gelb and Palley (1987), Sassoon (1987), and Boneparth and Stoper (1988). They explored how policies can affect men and women differently as well as to what degree women impact the policy-making process. This work raised important questions, such as: Who benefits and who does not when public problems are defined a certain way? Can women who are often marginalized or lack accessibility to decision makers affect policy? And how are inequalities reinforced, changed, or redefined by policy reform? By the 21st century, the RNGS group, among others, began making major contributions to this research, expanding the topics and theoretical issues pursued (Mazur, 2002). Gottfried and Reese (2003) found in their comprehensive review of feminist comparative policy research at least four categories or aspects of policy study that have appeared recently in the literature. These include gender regimes, policy, and the welfare state; the emergence of state feminism and its effects; the process of women-friendly policy formation and the challenges of policy implementation; and the role of women’s movements in shaping social policy debates. Some of the themes and findings in each of these areas are discussed next.

Since the 1990s, scholars in women’s studies, sociology, and political science have all been interested in trying to understand how gender is constructed in the politics of the welfare state. This work first moved toward reframing old welfare state typologies and theories into more gender-sensitive models, and then sought new ways of examining questions related to concepts of the nature of families, work, social care, and the state (Gottfried & Reese, 2003). Key to this work have been the contributions of Walby (1999), who examined the nature of gender regimes, Acker (2006), who introduced the concept of inequality regimes, and Lewis (1992), who elaborated on the concept and role of the male breadwinner model in social policy. Gender regimes refer to systems or patterns of gender equality or inequality in gender relations found in the household, the market, civil society, and the state. Walby (1999) was interested in how gender regimes in industrialized states move from private (within the family or the personal) to public domains (economics, civil society, policy, and government). She argued that four aspects were important in understanding gender regimes and the possibility for these transitions: (1) Gender regimes were social systems or gender orders coexisting with differing degrees of inequality or equality; (2) such regimes can be differentiated in a variety of ways along market, regulatory, or socially driven dimensions; (3) a number of public domains can exist where gender regimes operate simultaneously; and (4) gender regimes can also be created as a series of gendered social activities and traditions, constructed, reconstructed, and reinforced from one generation to the next. Gender regimes do not have to be static and can change over time. Acker (2006), a sociologist, took these ideas a step further and posited the notion of inequality regimes as an analytical approach to explain the creation and maintenance of inequalities in work organizations. Drawing on the concepts of intersectionality and the mutual and reinforcing reproduction of class, race, and gender relations of inequality (see O’Loughlin, Converse, & Hoeschst, 1998), she set the stage for the possibilities of detailed and complex comparisons of inequality, identity, and power relations in a variety of forms within the welfare state and beyond. Lewis (1992) focused on another aspect of gendered policy making by exploring the importance of the male breadwinner model. This model contains several assumptions about the role of men in the family and the household, including the idea that men are the primary providers. Lewis, and later Orloff (2002), found that this model has often permeated assumptions of policymakers and gendered the creation of social policy across industrialized states. Women become caught in situations in which welfare benefits or labor policies are determined by gendered assumptions that do not apply to the realities of their day-to-day lives. And even though the breadwinner model has waned or shifted with societal changes in different countries, it still carries a great deal of political power (Orloff, 2002). Armed with these theoretical frameworks, scholars in feminist comparative policy have examined public policies related to job training, employment, education, paid work, welfare, and many other areas. They have also investigated the institutional arrangements and political contexts that have fostered these policies. While the focus has generally been on case studies of industrialized states, recent research has started to explore labor and welfare policies and institutions in central and eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America (Pribble, 2005). One of the interesting findings in much of this work is that social, political, and economic changes, or the move from private to public gender regimes, are not always matched by new definitions of gender roles or greater economic, social, or political equality for women (see Pascall & Lewis, 2004). As will be discussed later, only when active women’s movements, creating fundamental shifts in perceptions and calling attention to equal treatment, are present do policies seem to be implemented and more likely to change conditions of inequality (Gottfried & Reese, 2003; Katzenstein & Mueller, 1987; Keiser, 1997; Montoya, 2004; Sainsbury, 1999).

Another important area of comparative research on women and politics is the study of state feminism. State feminism refers to the emergence, within governments, of women’s policy machineries created to handle the advancement of women or women’s policy issues. These machineries can take many different forms, such as formal ministries, offices within a particular department of the state, or special formal commissions or committees created by the parliament or legislature. According to the UN Commission on the Status of Women, women’s policy machineries are any formal entity recognized and supported by the state as dealing with the promotion of equality for women. They usually are central, policy-coordinating units (see, e.g., the following UN document related to the Commission on the Status of Women: E/CN.6/1988/3; see also E/CN.6/2009/15). By 2009, two thirds of the world’s states had created women’s policy agencies and continued to play an important role in articulating issues related to women and girls (see, e.g., the following UN document related to the Commission on the Status of Women: E/CN.6/2009/15). Feminist comparative research has used a variety of strategies in examining state feminism (Squires & Kantola, 2008). Approaches have included single-country case studies, multiple case comparisons selecting most similar cases, and comparisons of case studies considered to be most different. Recent studies have moved from industrialized states to developing countries. Regardless of the number of policy cases or types of states, researchers have generally been interested in whether these machineries have an impact on women-friendly policy formation and are effective in improving the lives of women. Success might be measured in terms of whether women or advocacy groups were actually brought into critical policymaking processes and whether a redefinition of policy goals and practices occurred that addressed feminist goals of equality (Squires & Kantola, 2008). Academic studies done by the RNGS group, as well as research initiated by the UN Division for the Advancement of Women and the UN Commission on the Status of Women, have produced a complicated picture of the impact of women’s policy machineries in various regions of the world. For example, Mazur (2002) acknowledged the role of femocrats (a term coined by Australian feminists to describe the professional female workers in policy offices who supported gender equality agendas) in bringing feminist issues into the public discourse and the realm of formal politics. Weldon (2002) later explored the possibilities of a continuum of government responsiveness, arguing that the existence of women’s agencies did not necessarily mean that they were always effective. More recently, Outshoorn and Kantola (2007) have asked why, almost a decade after the proliferation of women’s policy machineries, more progress has not been made on the achievement of equality for women. They found that often gender mainstreaming efforts triggered the creation of a single women’s agency but at the expense of more widespread policy initiatives and funding for programs across government departments. The slowing of policy implementation also may have been caused by a need for expertise that was hard to find or by difficulty in addressing the needs of the multiple identities of women and their experiences. Furthermore, the larger economic situation and specific tensions between feminist policy goals and neoliberal market agendas collided in such a way that parties of the political right would attempt to reduce or to hold the line on costs of new social programs promoted by these agencies. Recent work by the Division for the Advancement of Women, under the auspices of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, has also acknowledged that women’s agencies must address a wide variety of issues and be supported financially and politically by governments if they are to be more effective. Recently, special attention has been given to the role these agencies may play in the fight against HIV/AIDS and the need to enhance their capacities to address education, prevention, and health issues. However, the UN itself acknowledges that without appropriate staffing, levels of financial support, and political will on the part of states, these tasks will be difficult (see, e.g., the UN document related to the Commission on the Status of Women: E/CN.6/2009/15). Nearly all these studies agree that the success of women’s policy machineries depends more on external factors than on the internal features of the bureaucracies themselves (Squires & Kantola, 2008). In other words, the general economic, social, and political environment, as well as the nature and strength of women’s mobilization, matter in the sustaining of these agencies and their effectiveness. State feminism, and its ability to formulate or to implement policy, arguably is susceptible to how visible, vocal, and influential women’s movements might be and whatever shifts or changes might be occurring within a country or region.

Related to the study of state feminism is an interest in policy itself and understanding the similarities and differences of policy formation and implementation crossnationally. Along with the work of the RNGS group, several institutes and organizations have appeared in the past 30 years to extend the comparative research on women and policy. Among the most active and well-known groups are the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, which works in affiliation with the George Washington University; the Center for Women Policy Studies, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.; and the Institute for Research on Women, located at Rutgers University. Although the work of these groups has often focused on internal policy making and implementation in the United States or Europe, interest has increased in the formation and implementation of policy for the advancement of women in developing countries as well. Many of these institutes have sponsored recent symposia, research projects, and special conferences related to the study of women and politics in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Scholars associated with these groups have published numerous studies using case studies, cross-national statistical analyses, or both, and have drawn a variety of conclusions. As early as 1997, Keiser found that legislation of a policy does not guarantee implementation or enforcement. Using child support policies as a case in point, Keiser noted that only where women have a strong political base and can push for accountability can policies achieve appropriate levels of enforcement (Keiser, 1997). In their review of workplace policy research, Gottfried and Reese (2003) found multiple causal factors in effective policy formation and implementation. In particular, rates of women’s unionization, types of legal systems, modernization of gender regimes, changing social and political divisions of power and authority, economic markets, and the pressures of transnational feminist networks—to name just a few—could all impact policy debates and actions to varying degrees. Gottfried and Reese also noted that further research needed to be done to clarify the role of policy recommendations and guidelines promoted by the UN and the European Union in enhancing the strength of policy implementation. In 2004, Montoya asked theoretical questions about what makes some policies harder to implement than others and called for more complex models of research for understanding policy formation and implementation. Starting with the acknowledgment of societal values, she built a two-dimensional model focusing on various types of mechanisms needed for policy formation and the potential strategies and resources required for women’s rights advocates to act and to interact with their political environments to ensure policy implementation. Focusing on the Italian experience as a case study, she concluded that depending on the policy issue, policy advocates both inside and outside government, with the potential for alliances and coordinated efforts, can affect policy outcomes. In 2006, Hannan took up the challenge of assessing some of the broad implications and outcomes of the frameworks and recommendations for gender policy promoted by the UN Platform for Action from the Beijing Conference. She found that whereas numerous women’s agencies and national polices had been created for the advancement of women and girls, the results were indeed quite mixed. Disturbing gaps continued between policy intent and policy outcomes. No matter whether it was health care, education, or the reduction of violence against women, progress was very uneven from state to state and region to region. Discrimination and public attitudes had not necessarily changed or improved at the same rate as reform efforts in legal or policy frameworks (Hannan, 2006). Current research explores not only types of policies and their outcomes but also the importance of distilling issues related to the influence of women’s movements, feminist activism, and gender issues more broadly defined. For example, Chappell (2007) has called for a shift from an agenda of comparative research on women and politics to an understanding of the role of gender norms and gendered institutions in policy making. In March 2010, Beckwith reviewed the logics of a comparative politics of gender, briefly enumerating the benefits of a comparative study of gendered analysis of political phenomena (Beckwith, 2010). This research has led to work on gender and courts, as well as opening up the possibility for studying both men’s and women’s positions in political structures at all government levels and in policy discourses.

Since the groundbreaking work of Katzenstein and Mueller in 1987 on consciousness, political opportunity, and policy making, scholars have explored the variety of ways that feminist goals and practices connect to policy, the state, and other political structures (Katzenstein & Mueller, 1987). While Mazur (2002) cautioned that the role of women’s movements is not always clear-cut, most feminist comparative studies have agreed that some level of women’s mobilization, through either autonomous movements or larger formal organizations such as unions and political parties, has been key in the formation and effectiveness of women-friendly policies in Europe and Latin America (DiMarco, 2008; Kahn & Meehan, 1992). Recent literature has continued to pose complex questions surrounding the evolution and role of women’s movements in civil society in different cultural contexts. Some of this scholarship has also explored the strength or viability of cooperation among local women’s nongovernmental organizations and global networks in influencing gender policy. For instance, Orr (2008) found that in some east European states, ethnic and regional divisions limited the ability of women’s organizations to work together on issues related to equality. Comparative scholarship on women and politics in the Middle East pointed to positive relationships between transnational women’s networks and global rights agendas promoted by the UN and women’s movements, as well as the important role women have had in shaping civil society (Moghadam & Sadiqi, 2006). Research shows that women’s activism does not necessarily reproduce Western gender frameworks but involves pragmatic and context-specific strategies that are still responsive to global trends promoting the advancement of women (Moghadam & Sadiqi, 2006). Although more studies need to be done regarding trends in Africa, early work suggests that here, too, cultural context matters and that strategies to improve women’s lives may not depend only on influencing formal structures of political systems but rather on the creation of local and communal women’s organizations and networks (Goetz & Hassim, 2003; Lindberg, 2004).

Practical implications for policy development and research can be drawn from the work on women and comparative politics over the past several decades. First and foremost, context matters; policies formed in the United States on pay equity and parental leave, for example, may not work or even be appropriate for countries in Asia or the Middle East, because of differing histories, cultures, economic systems, gender regimes, and political structures. Even though scholars and practitioners have much to learn from each other, importing gender policies from one country to the next should be considered with great caution and understanding that circumstances and conditions can differ from state to state. At the same time, that wisdom does not mean that general guidelines on the equal treatment of women should not be discussed or that general theorizing and empirical research should be abandoned. The creation of universal policies for all may not be possible, but international bodies such as the UN, the European Union, the African Union, and other transnational networks have roles to play in drawing attention to the condition of women worldwide and providing recommendations, support, and possible strategies for improvement where appropriate. Furthermore, the comparative study of similarities and differences in policy making can provide insights for policymakers within states, as well as point to broad patterns and themes cross-nationally. Placing gender at the center of these studies can also improve understandings of politics and political behavior generally. The use of quotas as a practical solution for increasing women’s representation in political systems is also important to note. Although further research should be done on the longevity and real influences on political processes overall, comparative research so far seems to suggest that this type of institutional reform may work at least partially to break old patriarchal norms and provide more representation to women in some contexts.

The study of women and comparative politics continues to be one of the dynamic areas within political science, with much research yet to be done. Only a few future directions can be suggested here. First, it is clear that more work is needed on the representation, political influences, and policy processes of women in developing countries. A paucity of research exists on women and Africa in particular. So far, most studies have focused on South Africa or Uganda, and few have gone beyond discussing issues of representation and policy formation (see Goetz & Hassim, 2003; Lindberg, 2004). Additional research on a wider variety of countries and policies would improve the understanding of diverse historical, cultural, social, economic, and political factors in the region, as well as gender activism and policy reform from state to state. As already discussed, continued research is needed on quotas as a practical solution for the advancement of women in politics. What is the long-term impact of quotas? Does election through quotas affect the perceptions of women by their peers? Are they viewed as equally qualified, or does the quota selection process tend to color their acceptance by fellow legislators, inhibiting their performance as policymakers? What happens after quota systems are lifted? And does the existence of quotas in party lists, parliaments, or other political bodies have any spillover effect in the direction of other policies related to equal treatment either for women or for other marginalized groups? And do race and class among women also matter in who is elected through quotas? These questions might be very interesting to explore in a variety of cultural contexts. Additional work on the process of policy transfer through international organizations like the African Union, the European Union, or the UN would also be useful. As yet, the academic literature has only started to explore to what extent states take these recommendations seriously and whether such policy recommendations are effective in improving women’s lives. With respect to policy outcomes as well as issues of representation and quotas, more longitudinal research is needed to understand the longer term impact of strategies, programs, and agendas for the advancement of women. Shifts to focusing on gender more broadly in comparative studies also open up the possibilities for more work on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues and public policy. To date, some comparative work has been done on politics and policies related to homosexuality and gay rights in Canada and the United States (Smith, 2008). However, considerably more research is needed to understand gender dynamics, political mobilization, and possible new directions for policy creation, reform, and implementation in this area in other countries around the world.

This research paper has traced the evolution of the study of women and comparative politics from the later 1970s to the present. Using methodologies common to political science, comparative research on women and politics has moved from topics focused on representation of women in various governments around the world to the study of feminist comparative policy. Over time, theoretical frames have incorporated intersectionality, gender regimes, and interests in gender as an analytical category, especially with respect to the state and policy-making practices. Practical implications for research include the recognition that historical, cultural, social, and political contexts matter in understanding policy formation and implementation. Case studies are vital in gaining these insights, and yet cross-national studies are still important in efforts to understand broad patterns and relationships of representation. Future directions for research include the need for more comparative work on women and politics in developing countries, especially Africa, and the topic of comparative public policy and sexual diversity. It is hoped that this research paper prompts students to consider doing research of their own in this dynamic area of political science.

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ASU senior's thesis explores gender, politics and perception

Lydia dawson will share research at national conference on undergraduate research.

Lydia Dawson, a senior at ASU's School of Politics and Global Studies, has been selected to present her thesis on how public officials' Instagram comments and gender affect their public perception at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research. Courtesy photo

For all its benefits, social media is an environment that remains rife with judgement, especially if you're a public figure, and — according to an Arizona State University student's recent research — especially if you're a woman.

Lydia Dawson, a senior at ASU's School of Politics and Global Studies , recently conducted an experiment that found female politicians were more harshly judged overall for negative Instagram comments.

Dawson's experiment served as the basis for her thesis for Barrett, The Honors College. She was recently selected to present it at The National Conference on Undergraduate Research in Long Beach, California, in April.

Dawson's idea began in Gina Woodall ’s POS 435: Women and Politics class. 

“I took Dr. Woodall's Women and Politics class in the fall of 2022 and absolutely loved it, so when I was considering thesis ideas in the spring of 2023, I knew I wanted to explore themes related to gender and politics," she said.

Dawson’s thesis explores how politicians are treated over Instagram comments and how this impacts voters' perceptions of them, with a particular focus on the gendered aspect of this. 

“I initially approached Dr. Woodall with the idea of performing a content analysis of Instagram comments to examine if there was any difference in the types (negative/positive) of comments male and female politicians received,” Dawson said. “After she mentioned the possibility of applying for lab space, we discussed running an experiment to test how negative Instagram comments alter voters' perceptions of politicians, and whether or not this differed based on the politician's gender.” 

The experiment separated the participants into four groups, assigned them each to either a female or male politician, and showed them each the same hypothetical politician’s profile with the only difference being the name and gender on it. They were then told to evaluate the politician on six different metrics. The experimental group was then shown negative Instagram comments that had been attributed to their assigned politician and were asked to evaluate the politician a second time.

“I was shocked to find that the female politician received higher scores on all six metrics both before and after the presentation of the comments, as literature in this field has shown that female candidates typically score lower than male candidates on the metrics I presented,” Dawson said.

She noted that there were many interesting results, most of which were less positive for female politicians. 

Dawson's experiment showed that while the female politician scored higher both before and after the stimulus was presented overall, the female politician’s scores were more harshly affected than her male counterpart. 

Aside from some interesting findings, Dawson's thesis has also led to her deciding to pursue a PhD in political science with an emphasis on gender and politics, rather than becoming a lawyer like she had initially planned, due to her newly found love of research.

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