Being a Woman Politician on the Isle of Man: How Smallness Explains Political Culture

Abstract This article explores the distinctive experience of women as legislators in a small democracy, drawing on a multimethod study of the Isle of Man. Experiences of gender in a small democracy’s politics are not merely quantitatively different, for instance in terms of constituents per representative; but qualitatively different as a result of the interconnected ramifications of quantitative differences. We find pervasive effects from the absence of strong party institutionalization, the intersection of intimacy and vulnerability, and the constraints of strictly limited capacity. Understanding gender and politics in a small democracy is an important contribution to island feminism, and acts as a corrective to an understanding of the interrelations of gender and politics within democratic constitutions based only on the experience of women in large democracies. The study also shows the pervasive importance of smallness even for a European democracy with close cultural ties to a large democracy.