What Women’s Parties Want: An Investigation of the Issue Concerns of Women’s Parties in Europe, 1990–2020

Abstract Over the past 20–30 years, women’s parties have consistently formed across Europe, aiming to improve women’s substantive representation by politicizing gender issues. Despite their potential impact on the policy agenda, empirical knowledge of the full range and scope of issues these parties mobilize is limited. This paper presents a novel mixed-method text analysis of the issue concerns in an original dataset of European women’s parties’ manifestos spanning a 30-year period. I find that parties across contexts share concerns in social justice and social policy. However, two subtypes of women’s party can be differentiated based on issue focus and framing . Essentialist women’s parties predominantly represent women’s material interests, whereas feminist parties additionally tackle structural gender inequality issues, including gender-based violence and human security. These findings provide a foundation for incorporating women’s parties into growing research on party competition over gender issues.