Media play a crucial role in the gendered way in which children are socialized into the political world, a process that is surprisingly under-studied. This article examines messages communicated to Dutch children about gender and politics through NOS Jeugdjournaal , a popular Dutch news broadcast that is tailored to children aged nine to 12. We conducted a content analysis on episodes broadcast over a period of almost 30 years ( N = 252). The results show an overwhelming share of men politicians (a staggering 85 percent of featured politicians) in political coverage, which reflects the descriptive underrepresentation of women in Dutch politics rather than journalistic bias. Moreover, we find few differences in the way that men and women politicians are portrayed. Thereby, the children’s news outlet shows less bias than the political news for adults. However, children who watch NOS Jeugdjournaal mainly observe men politicians and are, thus, strongly socialized into thinking that politics is a masculine domain.

This article explores the challenges of conducting ethnographic fieldwork with right-wing and far-right male LGBTI+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people, as well as all other sexual orientations, gender identities, and expressions) activists in Brazil – a society characterised by complex racial dynamics – from the perspective of a male, non-white and non-heterosexual researcher based at a European academic institution. It questions the assumption that racial difference inevitably hinders such fieldwork for non-white ethnographers and challenges the notion of ethnonationalism as a universal feature of the radical right. Instead, it argues that in Global South contexts, non-ethnic forms of nationalism create distinct, intersectional pathways to field access. To navigate these, the article suggests the strategic mobilisation of visible (gender, sexuality and race) and invisible (social, cultural and mobility capital) ethnographic tools to negotiate acceptance and presence in the field. The findings illuminate the relational and intersectional power dynamics shaping encounters with right-wing and far-right activists, as well as underscoring the methodological and interpretative value of ethnographic research for studying the radical right.

Women constitute a large proportion of judges at all court levels in Angola. This influx of women judges has taken place in a period of post-civil war reconstruction under the auspices of a formerly left-leaning autocratic regime with a gender-friendly ideology and strong executive control. Combining a desk study and interviews with Angolan judges, we show that access to legal education, the large number of judicial vacancies, the introduction of a merit-based recruitment system and female role models have favoured women’s access to lower-level courts. While there are no obvious gender barriers to accessing high courts and judicial leadership positions for women, tight ruling party control over appointment procedures ensures that loyal party candidates are preferred, regardless of sex. Challenging the emerging literature on gender and judging in the Global South, we find that informal gatekeepers play a less important role than expected for women’s access to the bench.

Guided by comparative gender and politics scholarship, this article uses publicly available sources to examine two pro-choice policy reforms: the public funding of clinic abortions and safe zone legislation, designed to protect patients and medical providers from threats posed by protesters. It focuses on partisan and religious circumstances in four Canadian provinces where feminist movements were strong and where opposition to a pro-choice Supreme Court decision was so vehement that it turned violent. The study’s main contribution rests in a typology illustrating the diverse paths towards policy reform in Canada, whereby change unfolded differently across jurisdictions. My results dovetail with previous research in underlining the significance of religiosity to feminist–left party relations, even in a country with relatively weak levels of faith. The discussion stands out from earlier scholarship in documenting the importance of centrist governments at the federal and sub-national levels to pro-choice outcomes and in showing varied feminist–conservative party relationships.

Over the past three decades, numerous studies have analysed the political and electoral behaviour of the LGBTIQ+ population. These analyses have focused on differences compared to cis-heterosexual individuals, emphasising a tendency towards more liberal values and stronger support for progressive and left-wing parties (political distinctiveness). This study addresses a gap in this literature by applying qualitative techniques to a relevant case study (Spain) and focusing on a group that may be becoming increasingly visible: LGB+ right-wing voters. Through six focus groups composed of homosexual, bisexual and other participants with non-normative sexual orientations representing diverse profiles (ideology, gender and age), the findings reveal individualistic narratives, a lower perception of discrimination and a view of their own sexual orientation as constructed in a secondary, naturalistic and non-politicised manner. These conclusions, though limited to the country under study, may contribute to broadening and refining the understanding of ideological pluralism within the LGBTIQ+ community in comparable contexts.

This article examines how United Nations human rights treaty bodies clarify international gender norms, focusing on the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). It conceptualises treaty bodies as norm practitioners and proposes a three-part model of norm clarification: interpretive pronouncements, strategic framing and normative reinforcement. Applying this model to a qualitative content analysis of 185 state-specific recommendations (2018–23), the article shows how CEDAW invokes, shapes and reinforces the norm of intersectionality. Intersectionality is embedded through legal interpretation, tailored framing and repeated references to treaty provisions and soft-law instruments. Regional variation reveals strategies that respond to differing institutional, political and legal environments. The article contributes to scholarship on international law, human rights and feminist global governance by modelling and empirically illustrating the process through which treaty bodies clarify abstract gender norms and render them actionable and politically resonant.

This article concerns the interplay of legal representation with credibility and how it affects LGBTIQ+ asylum seekers’ appeal cases in court. We argue that (quality) legal representation increases the likelihood of a positive decision and that these effects are even more pronounced for sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI)-related claims. Using a data set of 44,406 Swiss appeal case files from 2007 to 2023, we run regressions and confirm these hypotheses. We then assess the expected heightened role of credibility in SOGI-related cases. We show how legal representation and SOGI positively correlate with the presence of credibility-related terms in the case files. This study shows that legal representation with specific expertise in SOGI-related cases increases the probability of a positive decision at the appeal level. Specialised legal representatives are key intermediaries in shaping access to protection. These results raise political questions about justice in the asylum system.

This article explores the ethical and methodological challenges of researching anti-gender actors, particularly far-right nationalist groups, in wartime Ukraine. Rather than focusing on the far right as a political subject, it reflects on the consequences of this focus becoming central to Western and Russian interpretations of Ukrainian politics, especially in relation to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) rights. The Russian state has long used narratives of ‘Ukrainian Nazism’ to justify its aggression, putting scholars at risk of unintentionally reinforcing disinformation. Meanwhile, the wartime context has produced new alliances between LGBTQ activists and nationalist actors, complicating the analytical and emotional terrain. Exploring this new, complicated political landscape, the article proposes applying critical feminist friendship as a research ethic, allowing for situated critique, emotional accountability and solidarity with vulnerable communities. It argues for the need to critically engage with nationalism and militarisation within queer and feminist spaces, without losing sight of geopolitical asymmetries and local complexities.

Formal and informal rules mediate the relationship between descriptive and substantive representation. Women may be present in office but struggle to influence outcomes in the same way as their male counterparts, especially because parliaments and parties carry masculine blueprints that limit women’s individual and collective power. Yet, what happens when new institutions incorporate new actors to write new rules and when women occupy these institutions under gender parity from the start? Using participant observation and interview data from Chile’s first constitutional convention, we analyse how gender parity and newness combined to give ‘feminist designers’ significant influence over the convention’s procedural rules and, consequently, the final document. Newness and parity helped women secure the adoption of a feminist procedural code, which eliminated many of the masculine blueprints found in traditional parliaments. In turn, women delegates organised explicitly as feminists and led the redaction of a thoroughly feminist document.

Celis and Childs have called for a ‘second generation’ of feminist scholarship on representation that foregrounds intersectional heterogeneity and emphasises responsiveness to representatives beyond parliaments. We build on these important contributions, arguing that second-generation feminist scholarship and democratic design can make the greatest gains by operationalising intersectionality in close alignment with its origins in Black feminism and critical race theory. First, to foreground intersectional heterogeneity, we posit that feminist scholarship on representation must shift away from the overarching category ‘women’, exemplified in the popular operationalisation of intersectionality as ‘diversity among women’. We instead propose a margins-to-centre approach that centres the intersections of race, gender and other power structures. Second, we exemplify what this shift looks like in practice. We show how centring racially minoritised women and the intersecting structures that position them within political institutions transforms strategies to improve responsiveness to this intersectionally marginalised group.