Advances in the Study of Gender Inequality in Politics

Session Submission Type: In-Person Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Research on women’s representation in politics has made groundbreaking progress in the last decades but there is still much to be learned: Where does political gender inequality come from? To what extent deeply rooted cultural factors affect women’s participation in politics? How do intra-household dynamics over the course of women’s lives affect their likelihood of running for office? Are gender inequalities exacerbated or diminished in the era of right-wing populism? Do political inequalities vanish or persist once elected to office? This panel puts together a series of papers addressing these and other fascinating questions with state-of-the-art experimental, qualitative, and observational techniques, covering both wealthy and emerging economies. Some of the participants have made key contributions to the field in recent years, and we expect the panel discussion to capture the attention of a wide and diverse audience in political science.

Brulé, Chauchard, and Henize investigate alternative mechanisms by which women exert versus are deprived of effective power after they assume office in the context of widespread intimidation, violence, and social pressure that pushes elected women away from occupying the institutionally central positions they are legally mandated to fill. The authors will present results from a large-scale field experiment in India which randomizes formal discussion rules to identify their impact on the engagement of elected leaders in decision making processes.

Weeks, Meguid, Kittilson, and Coffé revisit the role of historically anti-feminist parties in modern politics. Drawing on cross-national longitudinal data, they show that far-right populist parties deploy gender equality and women’s right to bolster their nationalist agendas. Their paper offers a timely explanation for recent electoral competitiveness of extremist parties.

Frödin and Rickne use extremely detailed longitudinal data of the family composition and trajectories of political candidates in Sweden to test existing theories of the influence of male and female parents in the political behavior of their offspring. Their longitudinal data allow them to test whether the gradual increase of women’s participation in politics is weakening intergenerational transmission of political behavior within families.

Gallego, Queralt, and Tur-Prats study how in-household gender equality shape women’s active participation in politics. They connect in-household gender equality with historical family structures, shaping cultural attitudes and labor market participation of women. The longitudinal structure of their historical and modern-day municipality-level data allows them to identify persistence and change of attitudes and political behavior of women in Spain.

Prof. Mona Lena Krook has kindly agreed to chair the panel. We will also bring on board two first-rate discussants, Prof. Alexandra Hartman and Prof. Rachel Bernhard.

Sub Unit

• Theme Panel

Individual Presentations

• Proxy Politics: Representation and Political Inequality in Rural India - Rachel E. Brule, Boston University; Simon Chauchard, Leiden University; Alyssa Heinze, University of California, Berkeley

• When Radical Right Populist Parties Appeal to Women (Pre-Recorded) - Ana Catalano Weeks, University of Bath; Bonnie M. Meguid, University of Rochester; Miki Caul Kittilson, Arizona State University; Hilde Roza Coffe, University of Bath

• Historical Origins of the Gender Gap in Political Representation - Aina Gallego, Institut de Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals; Didac Queralt, Yale University; Ana Tur Prats

Chair

• Mona Lena Krook Rutgers University, New Brunswick

Discussants

• Rachel Bernhard University of California, Davis

• Alexandra Hartman UCL