Doing Politics Differently? Applying a Feminist Institutionalist Lens to the U.K. Women's Equality Party

Abstract

The U.K. Women's Equality Party (WEP) was established in 2015 to bring about change by winning-support, votes and seats. It has thus far recruited tens of thousands of members and run candidates in European, national, devolved, and local elections. This article provides one of the first empirical analyses of this new actor in U.K. politics. Adopting a feminist institutionalist lens, we examine the extent to which WEP does things differently by looking at its discourse, formal party rules, and informal ways of doing things on the ground. Drawing on a set of semistructured interviews, observations of local and national party meetings, and document analysis, we argue that while WEP has to some extent tried to set up alternative participatory structures and new ways of working, it has also at times fallen back on more traditional, centralized, and hierarchical modes of party organizing, as well as informal practices that are more typically associated with male-dominated parties.