Discourses and meanings surrounding the gendering of 'new political parties' in Spain (2008-2018)

Abstract

During the last years we have been going through a series of events that have shaken the logic of traditional politics and the political party system in Spain. In this exploratory work, based on deep interviews with politicians, we analyze the discourses about the nature of these emerging parties in Spain up to 2018. The main aim is to identify in their speech the presence of worldviews, words or meanings that lead to a "more feminist” idea of politics within their own party and in the political environment in general. In this sense, the research results reveal that the variable “ideology” (left / right) could be more explanatory than the variable “new party”. In their speeches these new parties show different degrees of sensitivity towards the introduction of a genre perspective relating to a number of categories such as leadership, presence of women in parties and the value of their contribution, possible barriers against the normalization of their contribution or adherence to feminist postulates as a source of new political signifiers.