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The Women's Movement Knocks on the Door: Theorizing the Strategy, Context and Impact of Frauen Macht Politik (FraP!) on Women's Representation in Swiss Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2019

Kimberly B. Cowell-Meyers Open the ORCID record for Kimberly B. Cowell-Meyers [Opens in a new window]
Kimberly B. Cowell-Meyers*
Affiliation:
American University
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Abstract

“Get up, stand up and live! That's a movement.” — Elisabeth Joris (Joris 2015b)

Are women's parties effective? More than 50 women's parties have emerged since 1990 in countries all over the world, contesting and winning seats in local, national, and regional legislatures. Although women's parties are not infrequent, appear in a variety of contexts, and advance common agendas related to inclusion and equality, we know very little about their experiences or whether they have been able to achieve their goals. In this article, Frauen Macht Politik (FraP!) is examined to consider whether and how women's parties present an avenue for advancing women's movement goals. The evidence shows that forming a party can help the movement to set the public agenda, can increase the attention paid to their issues, and can influence the formal institutions of politics. Many variables neglected elsewhere in the literature shape the ability of niche parties to affect the commitments of more established parties: the nature of the small party; its composition, intent, reach, and resources; its institutional context; and the boundaries of the organization. These features also determine the extent to which women's movements can use a political party to influence the representativeness of a political system.

Keywords

women's partieswomen's movementspolitical partiescontagionsocial movementswomen's representationSwitzerland
Type
Research Article
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 16 , Special Issue 1: Special Symposium on Women's Parties , March 2020 , pp. 48 - 77
Copyright
Copyright © The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2019

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Footnotes

This research was funded through grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation, in coordination with the University of Zürich, the Carrie Chapman Catt Center at Iowa State University, and the School of Public Affairs at American University. None of it would have been possible without the support of Sonja Walti, Christine Scheidegger, and Fabrizio Gilardi and the meticulous and penetrating work of Werner Seitz. All of it was inspired and sustained by the courageous leadership of the women of FraP!, many of whom lent their time and insights to this project. The author wishes to thank especially Elisabeth Joris, Christine Goll and Zita Küng of FraP! and the anonymous reviewers who greatly strengthened the piece.

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