Despite being considered the de facto world leader in gender equality, the European Union has a significant problem — its extremely high rates of everyday violence against women (EVAW). Contrary to conventional wisdom about development and gender equality, recent survey research shows the most industrialized countries in Europe also report a higher prevalence of EVAW. In this article, I argue that family policies — particularly those associated with the universal breadwinning model and increased women’s labor market participation — are related to intimate partner violence. Utilizing a nationally representative and comparable dataset on EVAW in the European Union, I find state expenditure on in-kind childcare is associated with a higher likelihood of a woman experiencing intimate partner violence, while more generous parental leave schemes have the opposite relationship. This underscores that while family policies are often designed to rectify gender disparities in formal and caring work, they may also yield unintended yet profoundly negative consequences.

Why are women underrepresented in civil service management across rich democracies? We argue that government ideology matters for this question, and that women bureaucrats’ careers stagnate under right-wing governments, since they do not suppress gender-inequality-reinforcing promotion patterns. We examine this using administrative occupation data on all Danish central government employees, observed quarterly from 1998 to 2019. The evidence is consistent with our argument: Under left-wing governments, men and women in the civil service progress similarly, while women progress more slowly than men under right-wing governments. The gender gap in career progression widens at the higher echelons of the bureaucracy, where political attention is greater, and this gap is not reduced by the presence of women ministers.

Do citizens use gender-based heuristics to infer political parties’ ideological positions? We posit that citizens view more ‘gender inclusive’ parties as more left-leaning than comparable male-dominated organizations. Cues about gender inclusivity, moreover, come not only from women’s presence in parties’ legislative delegations but also from other visible signals of women’s incorporation into parties – including as leaders and supporters – and through organizational rules promoting women’s inclusion. We present analyses of election survey data from 21 Western publics over time, which show that, controlling for the left–right tones of parties’ manifestos, citizens perceive more gender-inclusive parties as more left-wing and that the cumulative impact of the various dimensions of gender inclusivity is substantial. We next report experimental evidence from four countries, which provides further support for gender-based heuristics. Our findings highlight the importance of not just the message but also the messenger in shaping citizens’ assessments of parties’ ideological perceptions.

Do larger polities hinder gender parity in elected office? We theorize that when populations grow faster than elected assemblies, a “seat congestion” effect intensifies competition for nominations, enabling men candidates to crowd out women. We test this argument using two nationwide natural experiments: Swedish municipal amalgamations in 1952 and 1973 that abruptly increased electorates. We track the effects in newly digitized historical panel data. Where electorate-per-seat ratios rose, growth in women’s representation slowed. Decomposition analyses show that expanding councils only partially offsets congestion. By identifying polity size as a systematic brake on descriptive representation, the study adds a demographic dimension to debates on institutional design and points to an overlooked cost of increasing jurisdictional size.

Amid growing public discourse about a “masculinity crisis,” political scientists have sought to measure masculinity as an identity distinct from binary sex. This paper advances a continuous framework for assessing self-perceived masculinity rather than fixed categories. We review measures of masculinity used across the social sciences, zeroing in on self-perceived measures and what they have contributed to the political science literature. Drawing on original survey data, we show that continuous masculinity (and femininity) predict political participation, attitudes on force issues, and broader ideological orientations. We conclude by calling for renewed attention to masculinity as a political identity—one that can be measured continuously and helps explain patterns of backlash, hierarchy maintenance, and participation in contemporary politics. Integrating expectancy–discrepancy models of masculine identity, we propose new directions for understanding how feelings of masculine threat and loss shape political behavior in an era of shifting gender norms.

Women receive a disproportionate share of the online abuse and violent threats made against politicians. Yet, mounting cross-national evidence also suggests that the long-observed gender disparity in citizens’ voting preferences has rapidly diminished – and arguably reversed – in recent decades. Emerging experimental research likewise suggests the broader public in many democratic countries is particularly sensitive to online abuse and threats against women politicians. Herein, we highlight the sexist beliefs of audiences as an important explanation for this apparent inconsistency. Analyzing data from a vignette experiment embedded within a wider survey administered to a demographically representative sample of the British electorate, we demonstrate that the sex of the candidate has only limited influence on observers’ tolerance for threats against politicians. However, respondents that held more sexist attitudes were both more tolerant of violent threats against politicians and particularly tolerant of abuse directed against female candidates. More concerningly, we find that priming sexist respondents to think about female candidates increased support for abusive behaviors against politicians more generally, irrespective of their sex. Our results add to the growing evidence that tolerance for political violence is driven not so much by partisan hostility and ideological polarization as by specific personality traits.

In recent decades, populist mobilization has significantly reshaped the European political landscape. Right-wing populist parties have been particularly influential in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe, where they have frequently served in executive cabinet appointments. Drawing on an original data set covering cabinet composition in 12 countries from 1992 to 2019, this study investigates whether radical right-wing and populist governments are as likely as their mainstream counterparts to appoint women to cabinet positions. The findings reveal that radical right parties in government significantly reduce the likelihood of appointing women to cabinet positions, while populist parties don’t have the same effect. Moreover, the degree of populism within governing parties substantially magnifies the exclusion of women from the executive. These results offer new insight into the complexities of populism in the region and its implications for women’s descriptive representation in the executive branch.

Free and open public debate is a cornerstone of democratic representation, yet many politicians refrain from participating in policy debates. This study examines how political violence contributes to such silencing and whether it disproportionately affects historically marginalized groups. Using a unique Swedish politician survey (five waves, N = 43,000), we analyze whether violence reduces marginalized politicians’ participation in debates and whether it disproportionately silences debates challenging hegemonic male interests. We find that women and immigrant-background politicians are significantly more likely than their counterparts to report withdrawing from public debates because of violence and to avoid a broader range of topics. Women are particularly likely to refrain from debates on gender equality, while immigrant-background politicians are not more likely to avoid immigration debates. These chilling effects suggest that violence can narrow the range of voices present in policy debates, potentially diminishing marginalized groups’ ability to represent constituents and reinforcing hegemonic men’s political dominance.

Do attacks against politicians exacerbate the political underrepresentation of marginalized groups? Existing research suggests that candidates and officeholders from underrepresented groups are more likely to become targets of political violence, but little is known about the consequences of indirect exposure to political violence for descriptive representation and political ambition. Focusing on the case of women in politics, we study how the prevalence of political violence affects both the descriptive representation and the political ambition of women in Germany – Europe's largest democracy. Combining an analysis of observational data measuring crimes against politicians with evidence from original and pre‐registered survey experiments, we first demonstrate that attacks on political elites are not associated with fewer female candidates on party lists for local elections. Examining political ambitions and underlying microfoundations with different samples of respondents varying in their likelihood of considering political candidacy, we provide survey‐experimental evidence that information about the prevalence of political crime does not reduce willingness to run for office or engage in politics among female respondents with high political interest but may do so among those with low political interest. Taken together, this study highlights the resilience of underrepresented groups in the face of increasing political violence. However, we also show that political violence may create a pipeline problem if it deters the wider population of women from even considering to run for office.

This article provides a case study analysis of the provision of gender and political studies education in the United Kingdom (UK). The article notes the lack of gender and politics modules available to students at the undergraduate level and links this to the under-representation of women within the discipline but also to the wider political and economic context. The article reflects upon the extent to which the study of gender and politics has been promoted within the UK, arguing that despite the key role played by national groups such as the Political Studies Association’s Women and Politics group, the wider discipline is yet to view gender as a core part of the curricula.

Over time, gender and politics research has made progress in identifying those factors that result in low numbers of women in political institutions and in making evidence‐informed suggestions about how to ameliorate them. These factors include discrimination in party recruitment processes, male‐dominated political culture and broader gender inequalities in society. In contrast, little is known about public opinion regarding these drivers of women's political under‐representation, especially whether to who or what women assign blame for the under‐representation of women in politics differs from men. This article provides the first discussion and analysis of blame assignment for women's numeric under‐representation in politics. In doing so, it outlines and operationalises a framework that distinguishes between meritocratic explanations of women's under‐representation, whereby the blame for women not holding political office in greater numbers is assigned to women themselves, and structural explanations, whereby social forces external to women are seen to result in their numeric under‐representation. Cross‐national data from 27 European countries is used to show that women are significantly more likely than men to assign blame for women's numeric under‐representation to structural factors. The hierarchical nature of the dataset is exploited using multilevel models and significant differences in levels of structural blame assignment between countries is found as well as between‐country variation in the probability of women assigning blame to structural explanations for women's under‐representation. Finally, the category of structural explanations is disaggregated in order to assess their relative prominence and to provide strong corroborative evidence that women predominantly assign blame for women's under‐representation to political culture over other structural blame factors. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the study's findings for policy makers contemplating the pursuit of gender equality policies aimed at increasing women's political representation and makes suggestions for the direction of future research in this area.

Mainstreaming gender in political science education requires legislation, structures, instruments, and critical actors, not to mention a favourable political context for putting the issue on the agenda. This article examines these issues in the Spanish context with particular reference to the opportunities afforded to the mainstreaming of gender in higher education as a result of the European Higher Education Area and the policies pursued by the Socialist Zapatero government (2004–2011). Upon the back of these initiatives, undergraduate gender and politics studies were introduced for the first time in Spanish universities, having from the most part until then been the reserve of interdisciplinary Masters programmes on gender. While the opportunities to embed gender within political science education have been opened up, this process of mainstreaming has also been characterised by resistance. These issues are unpacked through a case study of the development of the gender and politics network within the Spanish Association of Political and Administrative Science, as well as through reference to the project of a pioneering textbook on mainstreaming gender in political science.

Self-placement measures of masculinity and femininity have been gaining popularity in political science research, but questions remain about their long-term stability and the extent to which political views may impact gender identities. Taking advantage of two waves of measures of masculinity and femininity self-placement in an online panel, a categorical measure of masculinity and femininity (making use of a six-point scale, anchored scale) is found to be both highly stable and more stable than a scalar measure (making use of a 0 to 100 scale). The scalar measure is also found to be responsive to political views, such that men who report support for Donald Trump in the US Presidential elections identify as more masculine in the follow-up study. Overall, both measures are found to be relatively stable, bolstering the case that they are measuring a stable underlying construct.

How do citizens evaluate lesbian and gay (LG) party leaders? While recent scholarship has provided a window into how individuals evaluate openly gay legislative candidates, few studies have examined voter evaluations of LG individuals in executive positions, where voters may have different expectations of political leaders. This study assesses public perceptions of LG party leaders, with a focus on leader deservingness, competency, and electoral viability. Results from a conjoint experiment in the United Kingdom indicate that LG leaders receive lower leadership evaluations than straight leaders on all dimensions. Additionally, we find that gay women and men face similar penalties. This finding holds regardless of the leader’s level of legislative experience. Thus, LG party leaders face a significant disadvantage compared to their straight counterparts when seeking the top position within their party.

Politicians appear to overestimate how conservative public opinion is in the U.S. and other Western democracies. Whether this “conservative bias” extends to voters remains unclear but has important implications for belief formation and behavior. I examine this in the context of abortion access after the Dobbs decision. Despite the salience of the topic, original survey data collected post-Dobbs reveal consistent underestimation of public support for abortion access. Individuals identifying as “pro-life” drive most of this underestimation, suggesting the presence of egocentric biases in which “pro-life” Americans overestimate the commonality of their views. Conservative biases among voters may contribute to a skewed information environment for politicians, potentially providing leverage for further restrictions on abortion access.

In its first twenty years, Politics & Gender has played a key role in the development of a robust and thriving literature on electoral gender quotas. This article reviews the 76 articles published on this topic in the journal between 2005 and 2024. It first takes a chronological view, analyzing publication patterns over time to show how the field has expanded through research articles, Critical Perspectives essays, book reviews, and Notes from the Field. As part of this survey, it identifies publications that have been particularly influential in shaping knowledge on quotas and their various impacts. The article then takes a thematic view, showing how work published in Politics & Gender has advanced knowledge in the fields of comparative politics and international relations. It focuses on five main literatures: candidate selection, electoral reform, political careers, policy-making processes, and stereotypes and public opinion. The final part of the article reflects on the broader integration of quota research into political science. Quota scholars are increasingly publishing their work in top disciplinary journals, at the same time that quotas have attracted growing interest among authors who would not consider gender to be a central axis of their research program. The article concludes by advocating a dual strategy of engaging debates at multiple levels and across intellectual arenas.

How does cognitive household labour – the ‘mental load’ involved in anticipating, fulfilling, and monitoring household needs – influence decisions about whether and how to participate in public life? Studies suggest women take on the vast majority of this load, yet the impact of these private sector inequalities on participation in public life is underexplored. To make progress on these questions, we contribute new causal evidence about the effect of prompting respondents to think about their own mental loads in a survey experiment fielded to employed British parents. Our main argument is that priming the mental load will crowd out interest in political and labour market participation. In line with expectations, our survey experiment finds a strong negative effect of mental load priming on intentions to engage in politics and at work. Our results offer new insights about the continuing relevance of household-based inequalities to gender equality in public life.

Do citizens evaluate quota and non-quota politicians similarly? Do voters perceive quota-elected politicians as less competent and autonomous? Despite the proliferation of gender quotas, it remains unclear how citizens view female quota politicians compared to their non-quota male and female counterparts. This is particularly important in electoral systems where competitive and reserved seats both exist. We conducted a vignette experiment in Morocco where we randomized information about how politicians were elected and their legislative behavior. We find no evidence that voters evaluate quota women as less competent than non-quota male and female politicians. Our data demonstrate partial support for the argument that quota women are perceived as pawns of their parties, although information about legislative behavior can mitigate this perception.