Investigating the ambitions of young women to run for national parliament : the case of Australia

Journal article


Ghazarian, Zareh, Woodbridge, Laura, Laughland-Booy, Jacqueline and Skrbis, Zlatko. (2023). Investigating the ambitions of young women to run for national parliament : the case of Australia. Australian Journal of Political Science. 58(4), pp. 461-476. https://doi.org/10.1080/10361146.2023.2269866
AuthorsGhazarian, Zareh, Woodbridge, Laura, Laughland-Booy, Jacqueline and Skrbis, Zlatko
Abstract

Like many liberal democracies, there is a gender gap in the Australian Parliament. While there has been growing momentum to increase the number of female parliamentarians in the national legislature, the Parliament of Australia continues to be a male dominated domain. This paper investigates the factors that contribute to maintaining the gender gap by focusing on the ambitions of young women to become a member of the national parliament. We find that the appeal of becoming a parliamentarian for young women is significantly curtailed by beliefs that the institution maintains stereotypical gender norms as well as a masculine, and misogynistic, culture. Furthermore, we find that young women believe they lack the skills and confidence required to occupy public office which further diminishes their political ambition.

KeywordsAustralian politics; gender; politics; political ambition; young people; Parliament of Australia; women; political leadership
Year01 Jan 2023
JournalAustralian Journal of Political Science
Journal citation58 (4), pp. 461-476
PublisherRoutledge
ISSN1036-1146
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1080/10361146.2023.2269866
Web address (URL)https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10361146.2023.2269866
Open accessPublished as ‘gold’ (paid) open access
Research or scholarlyResearch
Page range461-476
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Open
Output statusPublished
Publication dates
Online25 Oct 2023
Publication process dates
Accepted09 Oct 2023
Deposited18 Mar 2024
Additional information

© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.

Place of publicationUnited Kingdom
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