Abstract
The office of political party leader remains one that women rarely occupy. In the largest comparative study of party leadership to date, only 10.8% were women. One region which has made significant advances in this area is Northern Ireland. Since 2015, the two largest parties, Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party, have experienced a rapid feminisation of their leadership. Such a development is particularly remarkable given Northern Ireland’s historically poor record on gender equality. This article explores the puzzle of gendered leadership change in Northern Ireland to reveal that the transition was primarily facilitated through the parties’ informal practices rather than embedded structural change. In doing so, it demonstrates the relative importance of party- and system-level factors on women’s political presence. As a power-sharing democracy, this case also provides comparative insights for those interested in addressing persistently low levels of female representation in post-conflict settings.
Highlights
The office of political party leader remains one that women rarely occupy
Surveying the endogenous and exogenous factors that shape women’s political presence reveals some striking similarities between the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Féin, despite occupying opposite ends of a deeply divided party system. They both emerged in a context of ethnonational conflict, possess histories of masculinised leadership and participate in multiple political systems
They were both engaged in a process of modernisation or ‘rebranding’, albeit with clearly differing emphases on gender
Summary
The office of political party leader remains one that women rarely occupy. In the largest comparative study of party leadership to date, only 10.8% were women (Wauters and Pilet, 2015). While some recent organisational changes by the DUP and Sinn Féin have been identified as significant for gender equality (Braniff and Whiting, 2015; Matthews, 2014), the role of party rules in facilitating gendered political change in Northern Ireland remains understudied.
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