How radical right populist parties use the representation of women as an electoral tool

Although radical right populist parties in Europe are still predominantly led by and supported by men, there has been a marked increase in the number of women with high profile roles in these parties. Drawing on a new study, Ana Catalano Weeks, Bonnie M. Meguid, Miki Caul Kittilson and Hilde Coffé ask whether we should view this trend as a genuine step toward better representation for women

Breaking the Judicial Glass Ceiling: The Appointment of Women to High Courts Worldwide

The salience of judicial institutions in democratic and nondemocratic countries has increased, making it important to have women on these powerful and visible decision-making bodies. Yet, women have only recently gained entrance to peak judicial bodies including constitutional and supreme courts. The appointment of the first woman to a high court is a historic landmark, breaking traditional ideas of who can and should be on the court. Using a global, longitudinal data set we show that certain explanatory factors matter differently in wealthy, stable democracies and in developing countries. The method of selecting high court justices exerts influence in wealthy, stable democracies but not newer ones. Further, our findings suggest that in both sets of countries, appointments to high courts are not made in a domestic vacuum and are influenced by international norms of having women participate in governing institutions

Diverse and Inclusive High Courts: A Global and Intersectional Perspective

Critical race feminists call attention to the ways in which multiple and overlapping forms of privilege and discrimination shape individual experiences and perspectives. In this article, we argue that judiciaries cannot be fully inclusive if their composition does not reflect a society’s intersecting sources of disadvantage. We consider intersectional inclusion on high courts from a compar-ative perspective. Most existing practices of representation on high courts promote the inclusion of groups as if they are internally homogenous. We explore the attempts at and successes of promoting intersectional inclusion in the context of the high courts of Canada and South Africa. Although the inclusion of marginalized subgroups such as black women has not been automatic in South Africa, its progress is further along than Canada in promoting intersectional diversity on the highest court

Who stands in the way of women? Open vs. closed lists and candidate gender in Estonia

The literature on women's descriptive representation has looked at the debate on open and closed lists as a choice between electoral systems. This article instead focuses on whether voters or the parties are biased against female candidates. Using data from six Estonian elections, the article finds that voters are not consistently biased against female candidates and open lists do not necessarily decrease women's representation. However, unknown and non-incumbent female candidates fare significantly worse than similar men. The analysis also shows that parties do not place women in electable positions on closed lists, and closed lists do not improve women's representation

Disability and Political Representation: Analysing the Obstacles to Elected Office in the UK

Around 1 in 6 Europeans are disabled, yet there are few self-declared disabled politicians. Despite scholarly and political interest in the under-representation of various social groups, little attention has been paid to disabled people. This article identifies and analyses the barriers to elected office faced by disabled people by drawing upon interviews with 51 candidates and elected politicians in the UK. It reveals barriers which occur throughout the political recruitment process, from initial participation to selection and the election campaign. They broadly fall into (1) a lack of accessibility, including the built environment and documents; (2) a lack of resources to make events and activities accessible; and (3) ableism, including openly expressed prejudices but also a lack of awareness and willingness to make processes inclusive. While people with different impairments encounter some distinct barriers, all of them have similar experiences of obstacles and exclusion which go beyond those faced by people from other under-represented groups seeking elected office

Feminizing political parties: women’s party member organizations within European parliamentary parties

Party member women’s organizations were early features of party development. While some contemporary studies maintain these are important sites for the substantive representation of women, there is also a claim that they are in decline. Our primary purpose here is to establish the existence of party member women’s organizations – as one test of the first dimension of party feminization: the inclusion of women. We draw on new survey data of 17 European countries provided by Scarrow, Poguntke and Webb. We establish that almost half have a party member women’s organization. The new data also permits analysis of relationships between party member women’s organization and gender quotas for the top party leadership body (National Executive Committee (NEC)), women’s presence among the party leadership and candidate quota rules. Together we see these (i) as a means to establish whether women are marginalized within the party, thereby limiting descriptive representation and (ii) as surrogate measures for women’s substantive representation. We importantly find that the presence of a party member women’s organization does not come at the cost of women’s presence on the NEC. In the final section, we turn our attention to building a new comparative research agenda that more fully addresses substantive representation

Disability and Political Representation: Analysing the Obstacles to Elected Office in the UK

Around 1 in 6 Europeans are disabled, yet there are few self-declared disabled politicians. Despite scholarly and political interest in the under-representation of various social groups, little attention has been paid to disabled people. This article identifies and analyses the barriers to elected office faced by disabled people by drawing upon interviews with 51 candidates and elected politicians in the UK. It reveals barriers which occur throughout the political recruitment process, from initial participation to selection and the election campaign. They broadly fall into (1) a lack of accessibility, including the built environment and documents; (2) a lack of resources to make events and activities accessible; and (3) ableism, including openly expressed prejudices but also a lack of awareness and willingness to make processes inclusive. While people with different impairments encounter some distinct barriers, all of them have similar experiences of obstacles and exclusion which go beyond those faced by people from other under-represented groups seeking elected office