How do European parties engage with gender-based needs?
What is the goal of UNTWIST ?
UNTWIST assesses how different gender-based needs are located in regard to different existing policies and practices in six European countries.
And why evaluate public opinion surveys ?
Understanding and effectively representing gender-based needs requires insight into voters' needs and attitudes. But the value of these insights depends on the questions asked. WP3 investigates how well gender-based needs are captured in international and national surveys.
How we analysed party manifestos?
We collected 412 party electoral manifestos for European and national elections from all relevant parties in the six countries of hte UNTWIST project between 2003 and 2021. We trained and asked 11 coders to classify manifestos sentences and also complete a survey for additional information about each manifesto.
Exploring the dimensions
Political parties can engage with gender issues in many ways. To understand the nuances, we categorized each manifesto sentence into several dimensions:
Connotation
Domain
Goal vs. Issue vs. Policy
Attention increased over time, particularly in Spain, Switzerland and the UK. In other contexts, however, trends tend to be less linear.
Of the contexts we analyse, Spain and Germany devote relatively high levels of attention to gender-related topics, whereas Hungary and Denmark devote relatively little.
As compared to the past, parties now talk less about labour market and welfare issues and more about rights, violence, discrimination, and broader social concepts like patriarchy and heteronormativity.
Explore the Manifesto Gender Analysis data
Use our interactive tool to see how different parties have addressed gender-related issues in different countries and elections.
Categorized by
Parties should propose more concrete policies
Parties predominantly frame gender-related issues as aspirational goals or issues to be addressed rather than proposing specific policies for addressing them.
For policymakers and civil servants
Weak representation of labour and welfare
Without questioning the relevance of other gender-related topics, the decreasing relevance of gender equality in the labour market, welfare system, and related topics should be a source of concern.
More concrete policy proposal
Parties should engage more with concrete policy issues, including topics on which far right parties are building alternative narratives against gender equality.
Resources
For more detailed information and resources on the development and results from UNTWIST’s WP3, you can find here: