Achieving women’s equal political participation and representation is a priority for the international community, yet representative democracy continues to fail to deliver political equality for all women. Numerically under-represented in the world’s democracies, women, especially minoritised and marginalised women, experience a poverty of good representation.

These are ‘troubled times’, with potentially devastating crises (climate change, pandemics, widening economic inequality) having a disproportionately negative impact on the most marginalised women, amplifying the need for effective political representation. The rise of populism contests representative democracy’s ability to respond, and frequently deploys anti-feminist claims that undermine gender equality. New research evidencing how and when women in their diversity can be well represented is needed to strengthen democratic institutions and processes.

QUALREP addresses this through a theoretically-driven analysis of the quality of women’s representation, attentive to intersectional and ideological diversity and with concern for the most marginalised, across five European nations representing variation in gendered welfare regimes: Belgium; Poland; Portugal, Sweden and the UK. QUALREP takes some of the most difficult challenges for understanding the quality of women’s political representation head on by considering competing claims to represent the interests of women. Led by two PIs at the forefront of gender and politics research, but from different epistemological and methodological traditions, QUALREP brings together a research team of 11 country and comparative experts from six European institutions to create synergies that traverse the theoretical, quantitative and qualitative silos that inhibit progress. Utilising deep country knowledge, and established relationships with grassroots, policy-influencing and parliamentary stakeholders, QUALREP will deliver a step change in the study of gender and politics.

QUALREP examines the quality of women’s representation, attentive to women's diversity and with concern for the most marginalised, across five European nations: Belgium; Poland; Portugal, Sweden and the UK.