Tania Verge

• PhD in Political Science
• Full Professor at Pompeu Fabra University

If a Ministry of Equality and Feminisms were created from scratch in the government of your country or region, would you accept leading it? In May 2021, when asked by the just-invested Prime Minister of the Government of Catalonia, I answered, “Yes, I do.” It was a big question, and the task ahead was even bigger, but a close friend helped me kill...

Analyses of political, economic, and social actors’ discourses in favour or against gender quotas are extensive but, to date, only a handful of opinion studies have examined support for such a controversial policy whose enactment does not necessarily dissolve opposition. This is particularly the case of citizens holding modern sexism attitudes who...

Gender Equality and Policy Implementation in the Corporate World takes a unique approach to the issue of gender equality in corporations in the 21st century. It examines the implementation of specific policies that seek to promote women’s presence on corporate boards in fifteen democracies in Western and Central Eastern Europe, North America and Au...

While the multiple barriers women face to attain public office have been vastly documented, the operation of insider/outsider dynamics within political parties’ top decision-making bodies remains largely under-researched. This article provides new theoretical and empirical insights on how interpersonal resources create ingroups and outgroups in par...

Spain developed a mixed approach to gender equality on corporate boards by combining measures in the corporate governance code from 2006 to a law regulating a minimum presence of 40% for the underrepresented sex on the corporate boards of publicly traded firms and state-owned companies in 2007. The lax oversight of the implementation of statutory q...

Embedding randomized experiments in representative surveys of the Catalan population, this article shows that the survey instrument commonly used to measure citizens’ interest in politics is far from gender-neutral. By implicitly associating the political to maleoriented issues and male-dominated actors and domains, it artificially amplifies the ge...

In a 2021 Special Issue in European Political Science, Anika Gauja and Karina Kosiara-Pedersen review the sub-field of party politics research. In doing so, they argue party politics scholarship reflects the broader development of the political science discipline, illustrating the evolving relationship between politics researchers and the organisat...

Curricular reform is one of the most neglected policies when dealing with gender (in)equality in higher education. The relatively soft gender mandates included in domestic legislation in this domain and lax oversight mechanisms, or lack thereof, have led to pervasive gender-blind curricula, which deprives students of diverse role models and fails t...

This article develops an analytical framework to study the power struggles between status quo and gender equality actors underpinning the implementation of gender equality policies. While resistance to gender equality policies in different institutions has received considerable scholarly attention, examining this struggle in light of a multifaceted...

Las relaciones de poder de género subyacentes a la implementación de las políticas de igualdad conllevan siempre un despliegue de resistencias por parte de actores que defienden el statu quo y de contra-resistencias feministas que buscan contener tal oposición e impulsar la transformación institucional. Este proceso interactivo entre actores que pe...

Recomendaciones del proyecto UNIGUAL para implementar las políticas de igualdad y la interseccionalidad en las universidades https://www.unigual.es/publicaciones-y-recursos/

Building on historical and discursive institutionalism, this article examines the agent-based dynamics of gradual institutional change. Specifically, using marriage equality in the United States as a case study, we examine how actors’ ideational work enabled them to make use of the political and discursive opportunities afforded by multiple venues...

Reforming the gender-blind higher education curriculum is a crucial intervention for an effective implementation of gender mainstreaming across policy areas. This article examines the policy innovation adopted in Catalonia wherein quality assurance processes have been re-gendered and incentives to engage the professoriate in gender curricular refor...

This article examines parliaments as symbol-makers beyond the actions of individual Members of Parliament or parliamentary party groups. In doing so, it develops an analytical framework for studying how legislatures symbolically represent women and, more generally, how they stand for gender equality. The article identifies who are the symbol-makers...

Women’s breakthroughs in public office provide a stage for the symbolic re-enactment of ideas about women’s political presence and about gendered social constructions related to women’s and men’s leadership qualities. Drawing on gendered mediation studies in print media and using content and discourse analysis, we investigate the symbolic represent...

Given the gender stereotype that women are more ethical than men, people should assess female politicians as being less corruptible. Yet information about access to networks suggests that opportunities to engage in unethical behavior may counter this perception. Using a conjoint analysis in a nationally representative survey in Spain, a country sha...

This introduction to the Special Section ‘Parliaments as workplaces: gendered approaches to the study of legislatures’ makes the case for revisiting the conditions under which male and female Members of Parliament (MPs) and staff carry out their parliamentary duties, thereby furthering the understanding of parliaments’ inner workings. It shows that...

Despite the increasingly reported incidence of sexual harassment among female elected representatives and staff members around the world, many more cases may not surface due to the power asymmetries, partisan logics and male organisational culture underpinning parliaments. No workplace is immune to sexual harassment, but when such misconducts occur...

This article investigates how legislatures may re-present themselves through claim-making on behalf of the institution. Focusing on claims about gender equality, attention is paid to the Women's Parliament organized by the Parliament of Catalonia, an all-women event through which female members of Parliament and social activists came together to pu...

Curricular reform is one of the most neglected policies when dealing with gender (in)equality in higher education. The relatively soft gender mandates included in domestic legislation in this domain and lax oversight mechanisms, or lack thereof, have led to pervasive gender-blind curricula, which deprives students of diverse role models and fails t...

Gender equality goals for higher education are found in all national legislations. This notwithstanding, quality assurance conceptual frameworks and practitioners’ work in the European Higher Education Area have tended to be gender-blind and thus remained disconnected from gender equality concerns. Focusing on the policy innovations recently introd...

Pese al prolífico marco normativo sobre perspectiva de género en la docencia universitaria, su implementación no ha sido efectiva. Este artículo presta atención al currículum de la Ciencia Política. En primer lugar, a través de distintos indicadores cuantitativos, analizamos las guías docentes de primer curso de todos los grados de Ciencia Política...

This chapter constitutes the first attempt at examining the extent to which the diversity represented in Iberian legislatures reflects the existing diversity in the population, a crucial dimension on which to evaluate the quality of democracy. Drawing on original biographical data of MPs, our survey of diversity looks at gender, age, ethnicity, sex...

Drawing on the insights of studies examining opposition to gender equality policy, this article develops an actor-centric analytical framework of the contentious politics underpinning the entire policy process and suggests that resistance is a crucial meta factor explaining policy failure. Through a longitudinal study of corporate board gender quot...

Research on whether descriptive representation enhances the legitimacy of, closeness to and satisfaction with political institutions, as well as levels of political engagement, has produced mixed results. This may be caused by the empirical and methodological challenges underpinning this inquiry, like reverse causation and endogeneity. To overcome...

This research provides new theoretical and empirical insights into the gender politics of the springboards to chief executive office. The extremely masculinised composition of the relatively few top national executive positions has posed a serious impediment to empirically assessing the conditions that may facilitate women's under‐representation an...

Throughout the world, the number of women elected to legislatures has risen dramatically. Most of the quantitative research explaining party, district, or national differences has focused on the aggregate rather than the candidate level thereby overlooking women’s access to party ballots. In examining both the election and selection stages, we focu...

Focus on quotas has shifted attention away from other, more comprehensive and strategic reforms aimed at furthering gender equality in political parties. This article concentrates on the gender action plans adopted by three Spanish parties. Using a gendered and institutional approach, it examines the conditions that led to the layering of these pla...

Based on an integrated perspective of political representation, this chapter identifies the main gender differences in MPs’ traits and seniority in politics and investigates whether the feminization of parliaments impacts on how representation is exercised. We find that female and male MPs have a similar preparation, which debunks the meritocracy a...

Resumen: Las cuotas de género en la política y en los consejos de administración de las empresas presentan diferencias importantes en España respecto al grado de coerción, el periodo de implementación establecido y las sanciones por incumplimiento, indicando una regulación “fuerte” para las primeras y “débil” para las segundas. Para explicar por qu...

How is symbolic representation to be conceptualized and empirically examined? There is no unique answer to this question and each of its possible answers raises particular methodological challenges. The Dialogues section “Investigating symbolic representation” explores new directions for theorizing about and empirically investigating symbolic repre...

In examining what the presence of female politicians symbolize to citizens, especially to women, scholars have sought to empirically prove whether it enhances the legitimacy of, closeness to, and satisfaction with political institutions, as well as levels of political efficacy and participation. By taking stock of the burgeoning quantitative resear...

The extent to which politics is still a “man’s game” is made evident every time a top political office has a female holder for the first time. These incredibly revealing moments may give a new social meaning to women in politics—women’s political presence—and women and politics—gendered social constructions about women’s capacity to rule. This arti...

Disregard of gender and of women’s contributions in the higher education curriculum is still a widespread phenomenon. Building on feminist institutionalism, this article explores the forms and types of resistance that efforts to engender the higher education curriculum must contend with and discusses the ways in which resistance to curricular refor...

Contagion theory, one of the most appealing explanations of women’s representation, posits that when small parties start actively promoting women candidates, larger parties will be incentivised to follow suit and contagion will eventually spread throughout the party system. In examining the diffusion of gender quotas in Spain and Portugal, this art...

Ideology is one of the most relevant variables in explaining the level of women’s representation attained by political parties. While left-wing parties are typically the best performers, extant research has tended to overlook the diversity of the left block and predominantly focused on mainstream left-wing political parties, namely the Social Democ...

Party office is a crucial political resource for those seeking a political career. It provides advantageous access to the distribution of the patronage parties are entitled to in party government democracies. This article aims at measuring this comparative advantage while simultaneously investigating whether it benefits women and men equally in pol...

Recent global developments, including the feminization of parliaments and the rise of gender quotas, have transformed the ways in which parties and legislatures operate. This introduction to the special issue ‘Candidate Selection: Parties and Legislatures in a New Era’ puts these recent developments in context, making the case for revisiting the ‘s...

About two decades after the introduction of party quotas, in the mid-2000s both Portugal and Spain enacted legislative gender quotas. The simultaneous implementation of party and legislative quotas raises questions about the potential interactions between two types of candidate quotas sharing the same goal – granting gender equality in political re...

The Virtues of Engendering Quantitative Methods Courses - Volume 49 Issue 3 - Tània Verge

Is women's chronic minority status worldwide explained by a lack of women wishing to stand for political office or by party selectors’ disinterest in selecting women candidates? This debate continues among gender politics scholars; however, an increasing number of studies highlight the need to further investigate how the demands of party selectors...

The post-office occupation of former cabinet members remains basically unexplored in both single-case and comparative studies. Is being a minister just a career tout court, or does serving in executive office facilitate movement to other positions? This article sheds new light on this question by advancing the theoretical development and empirical...

The combination of studies on federalism and gender studies has fueled a burgeoning research that examines the impact of the territorial distribution of power on equality policies and on the strategies of the women's movement. This article explores how the main territorial dynamics of the State of Autonomies have affected three key areas of public...

Independence movements are today present in several stateless territorially concentrated nations, irrespective of their level of self-government. Among advanced industrial democracies, the stronger secessionist movements are found in Belgium, Canada, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom (Keating 1996; Sorens 2005). In the absence of a secession cla...

Women’s political presence is expected to impact on citizens’ political attitudes by symbolizing that women are just as capable to govern as men, which provides a role model effect to female citizens and signals the inclusiveness of the political system to all social groups. Research on whether women’s representation enhances the legitimacy of, clo...

Women’s political presence is expected to impact on citizens’ political attitudes by symbolizing that women are just as capable to govern as men, which provides a role model effect to female citizens and signals the inclusiveness of the political system to all social groups. Research on whether women’s representation enhances the legitimacy of, clo...

In 2007 Spain introduced statutory electoral and corporate board gender quotas as part of a broader gender equality programme. These quotas greatly differ with regard to the parity criteria in use, the period of application, and the measures for promoting compliance or sanctioning non-compliance. Electoral quotas are by far the most successful ones...

Although statutory quotas have considerably expanded worldwide, the bulk of gender quotas in place are party quotas used in the selection of candidates and composition of party bodies. This article aims to examine whether reforms addressing women's representation translate into greater power for women within political parties, thus providing new in...

In compounded polities, political parties need to co-ordinate their governing strategies across the central and the regional tiers of government. The coalition game is also more complex in these contexts, especially for the state-wide parties (SWP) that alternate in central office, as their need for cohesiveness across party levels is higher and th...

When democracy was restored in Southern Europe in the 1970s, Greece, Portugal and Spain elected less than 7% of women in their respective national parliaments. Despite sharing similar political, cultural and socioeconomic traits, some decades later, women's representation shows great variation across the region, even if party gender quotas were pro...

Reacting to a profound electoral and organisational crisis, in the mid-1980s the Communist Party of Spain initiated a process of party change which envisioned empowering members in decision-making processes and establishing closer and wider relations with civil society. Party change eventually led to the creation of a new organisation, United Left....

This article examines the interaction between political decentralisation and state-wide parties’ strategies on territorial politics using Spain as a case study. It finds that electoral and territorial logics of action largely drive change. Parties in central government often become reluctant decentralisers as they seek to control the devolution pro...

This article explores the hitherto underresearched relationship between state architecture and women’s political representation, specifically their descriptive or numerical presence. Using a qualitative comparative case study of gender quota reforms in Spain and Britain, we ask how party organizational dynamics mediate the relationship between form...

This article provides a dynamic framework through which factionalism can be examined and the circumstances of individual parties compared in multi-level contexts. We discuss the interaction between factionalism and party structure by setting out a model of factional organization dependent on the tolerance of host parties to dissent and their degree...

This chapter examines the characteristics of party patronage in Spain. Appointments have been extensively used since the transition to democracy by Spanish parties, but the depth of patronage practices is nonetheless limited, mostly due to constitutional constraints and the influence of the bureaucratic corps. Thus, Spain presents a sort of dual sy...

This article explores the role of individual resources, situational factors, and the socialization process in the persistence of a gender gap in political dispositions, principally in political interest. We pay special attention to situational factors, especially those related to the time devoted to housework and caring responsibilities. Despite th...

This article accounts for the particular steps Spain took to institutionalise gender equality in political representation. While some West European countries, where the ‘incremental track’ was considered too slow or too ineffective, recently shifted to the ‘fast track’ (notably, Belgium, France, Italy and Portugal), Spain adopted a legislative quot...

Este artículo explora el rol de los recursos individuales, los factores situacionales y el proceso de socialización en la persistencia de las diferencias de género en las actitudes políticas, principalmente en el interés por la política. Prestamos especial atención a los factores situacionales, sobre todo aquellos que tienen que ver con el tiempo d...

Este artículo explora el rol de los recursos individuales, los factores situacionales y el proceso de socialización en la persistencia de las diferencias de género en las actitudes políticas, principalmente en el interés por la política. Prestamos especial atención a los factores situacionales, sobre todo aquellos que tienen que ver con el tiempo d...

The aim of this article is twofold. First it sheds light on the types of relationship established by political parties with interest groups in new democracies through the identification of the strategies applied by parties towards civil society. Analysis of the Spanish case allows the mapping of three different strategies: the creation and/or spons...

The introduction of quotas can help women overcome certain obstacles to political office that thwart an egalitarian representation. Various countries have recently adopted quota laws in order to grant a gender-balanced composition of political office. However, the effectiveness of quota laws is constrained by several discriminatory manoeuvres that...

El articulo se desarrolla en tres partes diferenciadas. Las tres primeras secciones examinaran, respectivamente, las estrategias retoricas, de accion y de discriminacion positiva desarrolladas por los tres partidos espanoles de ambito nacional a traves del estudio de los programas electorales y de las resoluciones de sus congresos internos, de las...

This article explores the gender regime that regulates access to, and the biased power distribution embedded in, political office at the local level, a seriously underresearched unit of analysis. Ultimately, it aims to contribute to wider reflection on the informal rules entrenched in political parties' candidate selection processes. I do so by ana...

For many years the Spanish United Left/Izquierda Unida (IU) had a low share of parliamentary seats and a radical left-wing profile, and subsequently no governing potential. In the late 1990s, however, the party moved from its traditional role as an opposition party to one with real ambitions for government. The IU managed to establish itself as a g...

In order to analyse the relationships between state-wide parties (SWP) and non-state wide parties (NSWP) which act as sister parties it is useful to apply the dimensions that measure the degree of vertical integration between the state and sub-state levels of party organization in multilevel contexts. The case studied is that of the relationships b...

Communist, post-Communist and radical socialist political parties have recently been brought into the coalition equation in a number of democratic states. This article seeks to develop and apply an analytical framework suitable for understanding under what conditions this occurs. It concentrates primarily on coalition formation at the sub-state lev...

El artículo examina los factores que sostienen el techo de cristal que padecen las mujeres en el nivel local y, por extensión, en la vida política, prestando una especial atención a los factores de demanda, en particular a la cultura organizativa predominante en los partidos. Tal examen se realiza a partir del análisis de la aplicación de la parida...

Izquierda Unida/United Left (IU) has recently moved from its traditional opposition role to a new governing status. Despite lacking governing experience, having a non-pivotal and non-central ideological position, and displaying high degrees of factionalism, IU managed to establish itself as a governing partner for an array of very different parties...

Political representation is a complex concept due to its multidimensional and contested nature. This lack of unequivocal meaning has triggered a theoretical dispute about what ‘acting for others’ should actually involve. In this article we argue that the main actors involved in the process of political representation (political parties and the elec...

The article examines the factors that support a glass ceiling for women in politics, especially at the local level, and, by extension, in political life, focusing on the demand factors, in particular the predominant organizational culture within political parties.To do so we analyse the application of legal parity in the 2007 local elections, the f...

This article analyses the strategies used by the three state-level Spanish political parties (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, Popular Party and United Left) in relation to civil society and their evolution during the period 1977-2004. It will be shown that competition and co-optation were replaced by different collaboration mechanisms along the 1...

This article analyses the strategies used by the three state-level Spanish political parties (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, Popular Party and United Left) in relation to civil society and their evolution during the period 1977-2004. It will be shown that competition and co-optation were replaced by different collaboration mechanisms along the 1...

El presenta artículo realiza un análisis en profundidad de la respuesta de las tres formaciones políticas de ámbito estatal (Partido Socialista, Partido Popular e Izquierda Unida) a la reivindicación de una presencia equilibrada de mujeres y hombres en los puestos de responsabilidad política; una demanda que atañe a los partidos en tanto que entre...

La crisis de los partidos es una tesis muy extendida y apoyada por el estudio de diferentes indicadores que evalúan el desempeño de los partidos en sus funciones representativas. El primer objetivo de este artículo es ver si España sigue las tendencias observadas en las democracias europeas. En segundo lugar, se analiza cómo afectan a los partidos...

Research on the 'contagion effect' suggests that the dynamics of diffusion and competition influence a political party's propensity to adopt candidate gender quotas. Led by the work of Matland and Studlar (1996), 'contagion theory' suggests that the adoption of gender quotas by small (generally leftist) parties on the political periphery will incen...

This paper explores the hitherto under-researched relationship between political decentralization and women's political representation, specifically their descriptive or numerical presence. In doing so, we adopt a party-centered approach, arguing that political parties are a key mediating variable between the formal institutions of the state and ge...

In compounded polities, political parties need to coordinate their electoral and governing strategies across the central and the regional tiers of government. The coalition game is also more complex, especially for the state-wide parties (SWPs) which alternate in government at the central level, as their need for cohesiveness across party levels is...

Doctor-member candidate in the Juan March Institute and Ph.D candidate researcher in the EUI (raul.gomez@eui.eu). He holds a BA in Law (2002) and in Political Science (2004, University of Murcia), a MA in Political Science (2007, UAM) and a MA in Social Science (2008, Juan March Institute). His main research interests are electoral behaviour, polit...