Gender, parties, and institutions

The chapter sets out a state-of-the-art of feminist institutionalist approach to gender and political parties, evaluating theoretical and empirical trends across the field. It describes the feminist institutionalist turn in gender and politics scholarship more generally, and gender party research specifically. It outlines key dimensions of a feminist institutionalist approach to studying party politics - formal and informal institutions, power and resistance, and continuity and change - and makes the case for why they matter. As an introduction chapter, it also situates the contributions in the book within a broader research agenda, taking forward crucial questions at the heart of the study of political parties: who and what we study, where we study it, how we study it and, not least, why it matters. The chapter concludes with an outline of the structure of the volume, encompassing sections focusing on concepts, methods and cases, and change.