The Gender Politics of Access to Party Office

• In Event: Party Activists, Party Members, and Intra-Party Democracy

Abstract

Holding a party office is one of the most critical resources for building a successful political career. Different resources, such as access to information, patronage, and recruitment opportunities, accompany party offices. Several works have noted that party office is unevenly distributed across genders. Still, most studies have focused on party leaders, leaving unaccounted for how party members access top decision-making bodies within parties. This article fills this gap in the literature by investigating the organizational determinants and gendered political opportunities shaping women’s access to political parties’ executive committees (NECs). Empirically, we build on a novel dataset capturing the composition of NECs of all major political parties in Austria, Czechia, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Spain over the last decades.

Authors

• Javier Martinez Canto, IBEI

• Tània Verge, Universitat Pompeu Fabra