Political parties have been described as being responsible for the male political over-representation almost everywhere in the world, and thus as the most important gatekeepers for women’s political representation. Exactly how political parties discriminate against women is, however, to a large extent, still shrouded in mystery. This paper suggests that informal practices in political parties’ candidate selection processes tend to benefit male aspirants over female ones. More specifically, the aim of this paper is to investigate which specific informal selection criteria (i.e. criteria for candidate selection that are not included in party statutes) that generate a large number of male representatives (and conversely, a small number of female parliamentarians). To perform the analysis, we use OLS regression analyses on an original dataset produced by International IDEA that covers 145 parties in 35 countries in Africa, Asia, and Central and Eastern Europe. The data includes questions to party representatives about which informal criteria (if any) that play a role in the selection of candidates. This data is accompanied by data on parliamentary representation (by party and sex) that we have collected from the website of each of the parliament. The analysis increases our knowledge about how informal party practices (related to issues such as clientelism, party loyalty, contact capital, etc.) shape women’s possibilities to accede to political office.
