Parliamentary Stayers in Western Democracies: Mind the Gender-Gap in Political Endurance

LIEPP's Discriminations and category-based policies research group and the CEE are pleased to convene this seminar : 

Parliamentary Stayers in Western Democracies: Mind the Gender-Gap in Political Endurance 

Tuesday 22 Novembre, 12:30 - 14:00, hybrid event (Zoom or in person)

Location : Sciences Po, 1 place Saint-Thomas d'Aquin 75007 

Room : Salle K.011

Mandatory registration 

Speaker : 

• Ragnhild Louise Muriaas (University of Bergen)

Ragnhild Louise Muriaas is a Professor of Political Science at the Department of Government, University of Bergen

Earlier this year Ragnhild Louise Muriaas started a project funded by The European Research Council (ERC-Consolidator) with the title “Gender-Gap in Political Endurance: a novel political inclusion theory” (SUCCESS). The paper discuss the novelty of the concept of political endurance and aims to establish how the size of a gender gap in political endurance varies over time and countries in western democracies.Ragnhild Louise Muriaas obtained her PhD in comparative politics at the University of Bergen in 2008. Her research concerns questions of politics and gender with a focus on representation, political careers, and political financing. She was the PI of a large FRIPRO project financed by the Research Council of Norway called “Money Talks: Gendered Electoral Financing in Democratic and Democratizing States” (2016-2021) and she is currently also a research partner in a project on gender aspects of political violence.

She has published four books—one monography, two edited volumes and a text book, and she has published articles in such journals as the American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, African Affairs, Political Studies and International Political Science Review. From 2017 to 2021 she served as the Vice Dean of Research at the Faculty of Social Sciences and the leader of the board at the Centre for Women's and Gender Research (SKOK) at the University of Bergen. She is a visiting scholar at LIEPP this semester and will join the Center for European Studies and Comparative Politics in the Spring.

Discussant : 

• Elisa Bellè (CEE)

Abstract : 

Based on research conducted by Ragnhild Louise Muriaas and Torill Stavenes

Read the paper : Parliamentary Stayers in Western Democracies: Mind the Gender-Gap in Political Endurance 

Read the presentation 

The scholars study how gender shapes political endurance in parliaments, building on the research documenting how newcomers are disadvantaged their first term in office, while senior members enjoy certain privileges. Thus, if there are gender gaps in political endurance women could face more barriers than men in getting their job done as representatives. They put forward three different measures to study gender gaps in political endurance to find out if, how and when men are more likely than women to be a parliamentary stayer. Studying the endurance of all parliamentarians in 10 western democracies from 1965 to 2021 they show that there are gender gaps in political endurance across the different measurements, but that gender gaps are particularly apparent if they concentrate on those that have served as parliamentarians for three or more terms.

For more information, read LIEPP's interview with Ragnhild Muriaas "Why endurance matters to assess the gender gap in political representation"