- The Limits to Gender Equality: internal party procedures for recruitment and nomination of female candidates

Denmark is characterized as a non-quota country and the Nordic enfant terrible when it comes to women’s representation at national parliamentary level. Women’s representation to the Danish parliament has stagnated at 37-39 percent, which has remained the average since 1998. This development covers large inter-party differences. The low percentages of women’s representation in the two largest parties (25 percent of the Social Democrats and 35 percent of the Liberals) contrasts with the high percentage in the parties supporting the current Social Democratic government (l45 percent of the Red-Green Alliance, 56 percent of the Social-Liberal Party, and 79 percent of the Socialist People’s Party). At the same time, the average percentage of women candidates is lower than the percentage of women elected. The project provides new knowledge on non-quota system and on inter-party differences by focusing on internal practices and strategies of recruitment and nomination in five Danish political parties. It focuses on internal, informal measures to promote gender equality in representation (or the lack thereof) and asks why some parties are the laggards while others have achieved high levels of women’s representation? Exploring the diversity of practices and strategies for training, visibility and empowerment of women candidates as measures of gender equality/parity sheds light on ‘everyday democracy’ of political parties.