The seminar will be held in English.

The Hamburg Political Science Seminar Series (HPS³) features international speakers presenting cutting-edge research in all subfields of political science.

We welcome on

Wednesday, January 13, 2027 - 16:30-18:00 CET in Allende-Platz 1 (AP 1) Room 110

Despina Alexiadou (University of Strathclyde Glasgow)

Title: Masculinized inclusion: Gender and Class in Democratic Parliaments

Abstract:
Politicians' social class has recently become a central focus on those studying political elites. Yet, there is still limitedempirical work on the intersection of class and gender and its potential effects on representation. This is puzzling as over the last thirty years we observe two parallel and yet, mostly not jointly researched, processes across the legislatures of advanced democracies. On the one hand, legislatures are becoming more genderequal. Women account for about thirty percent of legislators, up from eleven percent in the nineties. Higher gender parity in legislatures is associated with more legislation that protects the rights of women and children and higher congruence between legislatures and voters on cultural issues. On the otherhand, legislatures are also becoming more class unequal. Overtime, the number of legislators who come from the working and middle classes declines while the number of legislators who come from the liberal professional classes, such as lawyers and executives, is increasing. This change might be one of the reasons that legislatures, across Europe and the Americas, are found to be more congruent with affluent voters over economic issues. In this project we ask whether the two processes-the entry of women into politics and the parallel entry of a higher number of liberal professional in parliament-go hand in hand with significant implications, not only for descriptive but also for substantive representation. We address these questions by analysingcandidate and MP level data in the UK and Germany since the early eighties. Our study provides novel insights on how class and gender impact on MPs’election to parliament, their tenure in parliament and progression to legislative and executive roles and ultimately their impact on policy.

Keywords: class, gender, representation, UK, Germany, entry to politics, political careers

The HPS³ seminars take place in person at the UHH. Please find the preliminary program (pdf) on the HPS³ Website.

We invite everyone interested to attend the HPS Seminar Series and are looking forward to seeing you. 

No prior registration is needed.