The literature on vice presidencies fails to explain the women’s inclusion as vice-presidential candidates, as the strategies of ticket balancing predict a higher number of female running mates than what is observed. Based on theories of gender representation, this study develops hypotheses about the inclusion of women as vice-presidential candidates and tests them using an original dataset comprising 471 presidential tickets from Latin America (1978–2022), a region where women’s representation has expanded. The analysis reveals that small and left-wing parties nominate more women as vice presidents than major and right-wing parties. Although female vice-presidential candidates tend to have less political experience than their male presidential counterparts, they often add a diverse and complementary policy expertise to the ticket. The findings underscore that women’s inclusion as vice-presidential candidates depends mostly on partisan calculations, since gender quotas rarely apply to the vice presidency.

Existing research often interprets the limited impact of candidate gender on vote choice as evidence of minimal gender bias in politics. However, this overlooks the dual role of candidate gender, as both a heuristic for substantive representation and a trigger for sexism in voter decision-making. These competing mechanisms can diminish the effects of each other, obscuring the true influence of gender bias in electoral behavior. Using conjoint experiments in South Korea, a context where gender issues are highly politicized and sexism remains widespread, we examine how candidate gender affects voter evaluations in low- and high-information environments. Our findings reveal that in low-information settings, candidate gender serves as a cue for substantive representation, leading to co-sex voting among women, while simultaneously activating hostile sexism among male voters, reducing support for female candidates. In high-information settings, explicit candidate policy positions diminish the reliance on gender cues but do not eliminate gender bias. Instead, sexism manifests through opposition to gender-equity policies rather than direct discrimination against female candidates. These results suggest that information environments shape the expression of gender bias, rather than eliminating it, offering a more nuanced understanding of the conditions under which candidate gender influences electoral preferences.

This paper examines the gendered foundations of citizenship status among first-generation immigrants in Western Europe. It posits that foreign-born women are more likely than foreign-born men to become citizens in their new homeland if they originate from countries with greater gender inequality. Moreover, this relationship is amplified among highly educated female immigrants. In contrast, no gender gap in citizenship status exists among newcomers from origin countries with low gender inequality. The empirical analyses based on the individual-level data from the European Social Survey (ESS) 2010–22 confirm these expectations. These findings have important implications for our understanding of immigrant political integration in western democracies and the consequences of gender inequality around the world.

How can everyday entertainment shape gender politics in authoritarian regimes? Despite autocrats’ heavy control over media, political scientists studying authoritarianism largely neglect television programming. Particularly surprising given their target demographics, cooking shows are absent in political science gender analyses. Drawing from over 600 hours of Turkish cooking show content, I introduce conservative gender edutainment to capture the mechanisms by which TV shows facilitate authoritarian regimes’ gender construction projects. Using quantitative analysis of cooking show content, I first identify two complementary pedagogies — modeling and othering — that respectively teach adherence to, and vilify deviation from, regime-specified behavioral norms. I then use intertextual analysis to extract content that engagingly instructs viewers in the ideal woman in “New Turkey,” the neoconservative vision articulated by Turkey’s ruling (Justice and Development Party) AKP. Findings provide novel insight into vernacular channels of gender construction, while underscoring the added value TV-as-data holds for studies of identity politics in authoritarian contexts.

LGBTQ+ people remain underrepresented in politics, leading scholars to examine a variety of barriers to office. Based on work on women in politics, this paper focuses on one possible barrier: political finance. Is there a political financing gap between straight cisgender and LGBTQ+ candidates? Are there inequalities among LGBTQ+ candidates? If so, what explains them? This article explores these questions by combining a dataset of out LGBTQ+ candidates in the 2015–21 federal elections with political donations data from Elections Canada. When we examine bivariate financing gaps, we find LGBTQ+ candidates receive less money than their straight cisgender counterparts. These gaps are gendered: queer cisgender women, transgender, and nonbinary candidates receive the least money. When we adjust for other variables, we still find LGBTQ+ candidates in the Conservative Party and transgender and nonbinary candidates across parties receive less money. This article contributes to work on gender and identity in campaign finance and LGBTQ+ representation.

Research shows that women’s inclusion in decision-making bodies that produce anti-feminist policies can legitimize policies and institutions. When a woman attorney advocates for an anti-feminist outcome in the judiciary, are the courts perceived as more legitimate than when a man makes the same argument? Using a survey experiment where 1,395 participants read about a sexual harassment case argued by a male or female attorney, we find that female attorneys increase the legitimacy of anti-feminist rulings in only one specific instance: when a female attorney represents an employer and wins, and only for female participants who are much less likely to perceive that process as procedurally legitimate in the first place. Our results demonstrate that while there are some instances where attorney gender can legitimize judicial behavior, the courts are different from legislatures, and deploying women to advocate for anti-women outcomes has little impact on feelings of court legitimacy broadly.

Partisanship is the primary driver of voter decision-making in the United States. Partisans expect to prefer their party’s candidates’ issue stances and personal characteristics. Even when they learn negative information, motivated reasoning often keeps them from changing their candidate evaluations or vote choice. However, there is a “tipping point” at which partisans will update their priors and may vote against their preferred party’s candidate. This study seeks to determine whether voters are more likely to reach that tipping point when they see a woman in their party, and under what circumstances. We use a unique experimental design to vary a candidate’s gender, congruence with major elements of the party platform, and their participation in a scandal. We find that women are often evaluated more negatively and that subjects rely on substantive information more when evaluating women candidates. Our findings suggest that campaigns and campaign information may matter more for women candidates.

Following a 2018 FEC ruling, US congressional candidates are increasingly using campaign funds for childcare expenses incurred while campaigning. This policy has the potential to increase descriptive representation, but the policy’s viability is dependent on how voters react to candidates using campaign funds for childcare. Using a national survey experiment, we find that the framing around the use of this policy influences public opinion in meaningful ways. For Democratic respondents, positive framing treatments increase support for a hypothetical woman candidate, and candidate attack frames do not decrease candidate support. For Republican respondents, positive framing treatments do not increase candidate support, while candidate attack frames decrease candidate support. Regarding support for the policy of permitting the use of campaign funds for childcare, results were universally positive. Both positive and negative frames increased support for the policy. This research contributes to multiple literatures by evaluating the public opinion effects of candidates using campaign funds for childcare.

Past research alerts to the increasingly unpleasant climate surrounding public debate on social media. Female politicians, in particular, are reporting serious attacks targeted at them. Yet, research offers inconclusive insights regarding the gender gap in online incivility. This paper aims to address this gap by comparing politicians with varying levels of prominence and public status in different institutional contexts. Using a machine learning approach for analyzing over 23 million tweets addressed to politicians in Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, we find little consistent evidence of a gender gap in the proportion of incivility. However, more prominent politicians are considerably and consistently more likely than others to receive uncivil attacks. While prominence influences US male and female politicians’ probability to receive uncivil tweets the same way, women in our European sample receive incivility regardless of their status. Most importantly, the incivility varies in quality and across contexts, with women, especially in more plurality contexts, receiving more identity-based attacks than other politicians.

Intersectionality is increasingly being operationalized as part of gender mainstreaming efforts across national and multilateral contexts. One prominent example can be located in Sweden’s 2015 institutional commitment to centering future gender equality policy in an intersectional analysis. This article explores the complexities of institutionalizing intersectionality in Swedish gender equality policy processes, drawing on the situated insights of public sector gender experts and Afro-Swedish feminist activists and politicians. Key findings include the prevalence of additive interpretations of intersectionality that privilege gender, limitations in statistical practices, and uneven commitments to intersectional policymaking across different institutional contexts. Recommendations for enhancing intersectional policymaking include the incorporation of ‘Equity Data’ and qualitative insights through structured dialogues with intersectionally marginalized communities. Ultimately, this article emphasizes the necessity of centering the voices of both institutional insiders and intersectionally marginalized stakeholders to address the shortcomings of intersectional practice to enhance its transformative potential in Sweden.

Research on extremism has increasingly incorporated a gender perspective, revealing how the politics of extremism and gender fuel one another. Yet most evidence of the gendered politics of extremism is on far-right and Islamist non-state actors, neglecting other forms, including state-sanctioned extremism in which the state is complicit with the violent effects of extremism. This article investigates a type of state-sanctioned extremism, wherein nationalist movements, supported to varying degrees by governments, seek to “protect” Buddhism across Asia. Gendered motives, forms, and impacts of political extremism can be observed in Buddhist Protectionism movements, manifesting in societal conflict, hate speech and other acts of violence and intolerance against ethnic and religious minorities. We ask to what extent gender norms and structures affect the motives, forms, and impact of Buddhist extremism using an original dataset encompassing nationally representative surveys and qualitative research in selected communities in Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar. We find that extremist discourses and practices exist on a Buddhist Femonationalist Continuum across the three cases with misogyny and anti-Muslim threat narratives played up, both affirming the power of masculine hegemony and justifying the use of violence to control minority populations and women.

How does gender shape patterns of parliamentary speechmaking? We theorize and test three types of effects. The direct effect posits that female MPs speak less than their male peers. The access effect claims that the feminization of parliaments and parties is associated with higher gender bias in speech levels. The career effect foresees a greater gender bias in speech levels among MPs holding positions of power. Drawing on parliamentary speeches in South Africa (1999–2024), where high rates of female representation coexist with sexist norms and practices, we find evidence for all three effects. Female MPs make fewer speeches, and the growing feminization of institutions and the appointment of female MPs to leadership roles are not sufficient to reverse entrenched gender biases against women. Our findings highlight the need to go beyond the politics of presence and focus on the informal mechanisms that hinder women from performing their roles even when occupying positions of power.

Expert institutions are increasingly expected not only to provide the best professional expertise but also to ensure equal presence of women. Yet while descriptive gender representation in bureaucracies and courts is extensively researched, we largely lack studies of women’s presence on expert advisory bodies. Drawing on large-n data on the composition of Norwegian expert advisory commissions, the paper investigates and evaluates how the share of women on these commissions has developed over the last half-century. It finds that while overall gender parity was achieved in recent decades, women remain strongly under-represented among commission chairs, particularly academic chairs, and among academic members from the powerful economics discipline. Normatively speaking, the developments toward parity are promising, and we find no empirical indication that proportional representation and competence requirements are in tension. On the contrary, persistent gender gaps among economists on commissions and academic chairs may endanger adequate provision of expertise into policy-making.

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.

Measuring the relationship between descriptive and substantive representation presents empirical and theoretical challenges. This article makes a distinctive empirical contribution that draws on the latest theoretical developments on the substantive representation of women (SRW). I provide an explorative qualitative analysis of representative claims in French parliamentary debates over a twenty-year period. I focus on three core questions: who is making claims? What are the claims saying? Which women are represented by the claims? The analysis considers the interplay between these questions and finds that SRW is complex and full of contestations. Most SRW comes from women and parties of the left, while most resistance (anti-SRW) comes from men and parties of the right. However, some women cross party lines to work together, while ideological differences emerge between women sharing descriptive traits. Crucially, I find that support for SRW is often restricted to claims that uphold the gendered and racialized status quo.

Many countries globally have adopted national policy commitments to address violence against women (VAW). Yet the implementation of these policies largely relies on subnational governments’ actions. Why do some but not all subnational governments adopt policies to implement VAW response services? Surprisingly, few studies have addressed this question. Drawing on norm diffusion and gender policy reform theories, we assess the factors driving the adoption of these local policies in Indonesia. Since Indonesia adopted its domestic violence law in 2004, only one-third of cities/regencies have adopted local regulations (peraturan daerah) on VAW response services. Using event history analysis, we analyzed data from 509 cities/regencies from 2004 to 2022. Our findings show that the presence of local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) connected to national and transnational VAW advocacy networks, and women’s local legislative representation are significant factors. However, province-level morality regulations constrain the progressive effects of the VAW advocacy networks and women’s political presence.

The social organization of care refers to the institutions, norms, and practices that govern the distribution of caring responsibilities and access to caring resources in unequal ways (Glenn 2000; 2012). There is compelling evidence that everywhere women still do the bulk of unpaid care work and that this restricts their opportunities to participate in economic and political life. These inequalities further spill over into the wider economy as many care occupations are poorly paid and predominantly filled by racialized and immigrant women, as well as women from less privileged socioeconomic backgrounds. Feminist scholarship demonstrates that care is not only an issue in its own right. It also lies at the heart of many other political phenomena from the development of welfare states (Ciccia and Sainsbury 2018; Gordon 1991; Koven and Michel 2013), to democratic backsliding and the rise of far-right parties (Briggs 2018; Farris and Rottenberg 2017; Meguid et al. 2025), to the politics of race, immigration, and same-sex families (Ayoub and Stoeckl 2024; Ferree 2021; Hancock 2004). Therefore, the social organization of care is a root cause of gender and intersecting inequalities.

Care and social reproduction are two prominent feminist frameworks for analyzing women’s oppression and envisioning emancipatory paths. Although they are sometimes used interchangeably, they have emerged from different intellectual traditions. Different strands of social reproduction theory move within a common Marxist tradition of anti-capitalist critique, while research on care has not developed as a unified field but rather along several parallel strands (Ciccia 2025; Fine 2007). These different orientations are often overlooked, leading to considerable misunderstandings of scholarship on care. Additionally, care is often viewed as occupying an uncomfortable position within contemporary feminisms due to its presumed association with mothering (Robinson 2015; Sevenhuijsen 1998) and white women (Davis 1981; Nadasen 2021; Raghuram 2016). Because of these complexities, the relationship between social reproduction and care remains contested, particularly when it comes to their ability to embrace divisions among women and understand the social organization of care as shaped by intersecting hierarchies of gender, class, race, nation, sexuality, ability, and age.

The White House Gender Policy Council (GPC) was established by President Joe Biden in 2021. It built on earlier offices like the White House Council on Women and Girls, which was created during the Barack Obama administration but was dissolved under the first Donald Trump administration, and the White House Office for Women’s Initiatives and Outreach, which existed during the Bill Clinton administration but was eliminated by the George W. Bush administration. The GPC was responsible for the advancement of gender equity and equality in both domestic and foreign policy. Jennifer Klein (JK) and Rachel Vogelstein (RV) served, respectively, as Director and Deputy Director until the GPC was dismantled by the second Trump administration in 2025. This is a slightly edited version of an interview that took place with Mona Lena Krook (MLK) via Zoom on February 16, 2026.