Women’s Organizations of Political Parties: Formal Possibilities, Informal Challenges and Discursive Controversies

Abstract

Feminist research focusing on gender policy successes in the 1990s and 2000s emphasized the strengths of women’s organizations of political parties in advancing key gender equality issues in Finland. However, both the “feminism” and “politics” of political parties’ women’s organizations, hitherto apparent in Finland and elsewhere in Europe, are now deemed outdated, a paradox that is critically explored in this article. The analysis is based on interview data with women and men politicians and party workers and is structured around the key research question: how are the women’s organizations of political parties discursively constructed by the interviewed politicians and party workers and with what effects? These discursive constructions are studied in relation to: (i) the formal institutional position of the women’s organizations of political parties, (ii) informal institutional position vis-à-vis the mother party, and (iii) discursive controversies surrounding their feminism and politics. The discourse analysis reveals the contradictions and challenges faced by women’s political organizations in contemporary politics.