This paper explores the extent to which non-mainstream left parties distinguish themselves from other party families regarding women’s presence in party leadership roles due to their ideological orientations. It also identifies the specific stage of the leadership selection process that sets these parties apart. Drawing from an original dataset comprising 2,219 regional-level leadership aspirants from 47 parties and their regional branches across six Western parliamentary countries since 2009, our study reveals a significantly higher presence of women at the top within the nonmainstream left parties. This finding remains robust even after controlling for factors that ‘weaken’ party leadership positions and, notably in the case of the Greens, the type of leadership employed. Our analysis also indicates that their distinctiveness emerges during the process of generating leadership aspirants rather than during the selection among them. Consequently, we assert that specific party ideologies remain a potent explanatory factor for women's descriptive representation.
