Abstract
Denmark is characterized as a non-quota country and a Nordic enfant terrible when it comes to women’s political representation. Women’s representation at the national, parliamentary level 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% of the Social Democrats, and 35% of the Liberals) contrast with the high percentages in the parties supporting the current Social Democratic government (45% of the Red-Green Alliance, 56% of the Social-Liberal Party, and 79% 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 chapter serves as a counter example in the book, addressing internal differences in practices and strategies of recruitment and nomination in parties without formal quota systems and a lack of legislative quotas. It focuses on internal, informal measures to promote gender equality in representation (or the lack hereof) and asks why some parties are laggards while others have achieved high levels of women’s representation. The framing and focus of the chapter is are on the dilemmas of ‘everyday democracy’ of political parties (the meso-level), exploring the diversity of practices and strategies for training, visibility, and empowerment of women candidates as measures of gender equality/parity.
Translated title of the contribution | Stratgier og praktik for kønsrepræsentation i de danske politiske partier : Udfordringer for hverdagslivets politik. |
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Original language | English |
Title of host publication | Party Politics and the Implementation of Gender Quotas : Resisting Institutions |
Editors | Sabine Lang, Petra Meier, Birgit Sauer |
Number of pages | 21 |
Place of Publication | Cham, Switzerland |
Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan |
Publication date | Dec 2022 |
Pages | 29-49 |
Chapter | 2 |
ISBN (Print) | 978-3-031-08930-5 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 78-3-031-08931-2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Dec 2022 |
Series | Gender and Politics |
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ISSN | 2662-5814 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
Keywords
- dilemmas of everyday politics
- Denmark as a non-quota-country
- cross-party differences
- gender equality
- informal measures
- low performers
- High Performance
- candidate training
- candidate visibility
- candidate empowerments