https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1387-858X
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ABSTRACT
Scholars of comparative politics have increasingly turned to parties to explain the variation in women's representation. However, the literature has not fully considered that green parties may provide unique insight into women's representation due to their longstanding ideological attachment to feminism. To understand the question of women's representation in green parties, this analysis examines green parties in 20 European countries. Relying on data from party websites and quotaproject.org, the following categories were examined: the inclusion of women in leadership positions, the inclusion of enforced gender quotas in party structure, the inclusion of women's party member organizations, the structure of recruitment processes, and the content of party platforms. The results show that European green parties maintain a higher level of commitment to gender equality than their individual parliaments. This piece contributes to the growing literature on green parties by examining the ideological connection between green parties and feminism, as well as studying a larger cross-section of green parties than previous studies.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Dr Priscilla Lambert and Dr Kevin Corder for their advice and mentorship on this project, as well as several anonymous reviewers for their insightful suggestions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Naomi Bick is currently a graduate student at Western Michigan University. Her scholarship focuses on environmental politics and women and politics.
ORCID
Naomi Bick http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1387-858X
Notes
1 On the topic of gender identity, the term “woman” used throughout the analysis refers not only to cis-gendered women, but all those who share a gendered female identity including trans women and nonbinary individuals who present as female, as described by intersectional feminist theory (De Vries Citation2015). Though the green party individuals are coded in this analysis by visual representations on websites and name recognition searches, and appeared to be all cis-gendered individuals, the interworking of identity and political power suggest that gender not only plays a role in cis-gendered men and women’s lives, but for all individuals experiencing gender. As such, especially as more trans and nonbinary individuals are elected to office, definitions of gender and womanhood should be treated with careful consideration.
2 Even though Iceland is not a part of the EGP or European Union, it was included in this discussion because it is still considered alongside other European countries due to its shared history with them.