Networks of power: Gender representation, power relations and political participation in three national parliaments

The paper delves into the unequal power relations and gender representation in Spanish, Slovenian and British national parliaments. We employ qualitative content corpus analysis alongside quantitative methods to examine the participation of male and female parliamentarians in debates on key political topics such as healthcare, migration, education, energy, and finance. The interplay between political gender representation and the concept of political power is also explored. Our findings underscore the persistence of gendered and male-dominated political landscapes wherein the political representation of women alone neither warrants their participation in debates nor grants them equal political power. Women parliamentarians face considerable barriers in delivering fewer speeches and having their arguments acknowledged. We argue that these disparities contribute significantly to the enduring inequalities in national politics.