Non-mainstream left parties, primaries, and women’s winning chances in leadership contests

This paper investigates how party primaries affect the likelihood of women winning mixed-gender leadership contests, considering the ideological orientation of political parties. Previous studies, which focused on center-left and center-right parties, found that women tend to fare worse than men under party primaries. However, it remains unclear whether this conclusion also applies to non-mainstream left parties that prioritize women’s issues. Using an original dataset encompassing 692 candidates from 204 mixed-gender leadership contests in green, far-left, center-left, and center-right parties across seven Western parliamentary countries over the past 15 years, we demonstrate that the impact of party primaries on women’s success depends on the party’s ideological orientation. This paper thus contributes to the debate on the trade-off between inclusiveness in candidate and leader selection, and the representation of marginalized groups, such as women.