ALIGN micro-grants funds

Open call for interest

Political parties and gender norms

In 2022 ALIGN launched a new research stream on gender norms, women’s participation and voice and agency in sub-national and local politics. Preliminary scoping of the existing literature highlighted several research gaps about this level of governance, including on the role of political parties as institutions imbued in and sustaining unequal gendered norms and therefore with considerable gendered impact on democratic representation. 

There is substantial research on women’s experiences within political party structures and the use of quotas to support them attaining decision-making positions and tickets to run for office. There is, however, a lack of gender norms-aware research on women’s experiences of the ‘inner lives’ of political parties on community and sub-national level outside of the so-called established democracies in the global North, and Europe and North America in particular.

The studies that do focus on women’s experiences show informal patriarchal norms and violence in political parties are amongst leading factors that push women away from formal politics. Despite this, in many countries women choose to join, work for, or volunteer for political parties. This contradiction underscores the need to better understand women's motivations for joining political parties, and their experiences of engaging with them as members or supporters. Such a study will provide insights into how to make political parties more inclusive and ultimately enhance the resilience and sustainability of democracies. 

Objectives

ALIGN seeks to contribute to the research on gender and political parties by supporting a 9-month, empirical research project, which would answer the following question:

Why do women join, volunteer for, or otherwise engage with, political parties in their communities and what role do gender norms play in their decisions and motivations to start and remain engaged?

We are interested in exploring any of the following factors and issues as they interact with gender norms and shape how women join and volunteer for political parties:

• social and cultural values and attitudes of individual women, for example, being feminist, pro-women’s rights, anti-gender/ LGBTQI+, anti-elitist, etc.;
• economic factors, such as women’s poverty, lack of economic opportunities in the community or professional career/occupational interest; 
• identities and associated values, such as religious affiliation, caste, sexuality, and ethnicity;
• political parties’ and politicians’ institutional support structures, policies and ideologies, reputation, incumbency, and access to various forms of capital, including patronage networks;
• history and presence of social and political movements, such as anti-colonial and liberation movements; and other, alternative means of doing politics and participating in decision making in the community;
• processes and actors involved in the recruitment and mobilization of members and volunteers.

The research should be a cross-party comparative study within a single case study country outside of the OECD grouping that are Partially Free or hybrid multi-party democracies. Focus on so-called partially free democracies is tied to the unique function that political parties play in democracies and in service of or opposition to democratic erosion and backsliding by autocratising government initiatives.

The research should centre the experiences and voices of women who actively support and engage with various political parties such as those who organize rallies, mobilize voters during campaigns, do online campaigns as influencers and bloggers on social media and more.