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Women's Parties: A New Party Family

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2019

Kimberly B. Cowell-Meyers Open the ORCID record for Kimberly B. Cowell-Meyers [Opens in a new window] ,
Elizabeth Evans  and
Ki-young Shin
Kimberly B. Cowell-Meyers
Affiliation:
American University
Elizabeth Evans
Affiliation:
Goldsmiths University of London
Ki-young Shin
Affiliation:
Ochanomizu University
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Abstract

Women's parties have a unique and important role to play in the representation of women and women's issues and interests. They are neither a new nor a rare phenomenon and have emerged in a variety of contexts across time and space. And yet we know relatively little about them. This article argues that women's parties matter and that the study of women's parties matters. We contend that women's parties constitute a discrete party family; while there is a diverse range of women's parties, they can be viewed as a coherent group with similar origins, ideology, and naming patterns. This article offers the first research framework for the comparative study of women's parties. Building our knowledge of women's parties, we argue, is important for those interested in gender and politics, particularly those concerned with the representation of women's issues and interests.

Keywords

Women's partieswomen's representationparty families
Type
Research Article
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 16 , Special Issue 1: Special Symposium on Women's Parties , March 2020 , pp. 4 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2019

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