Cost of Inclusion?: Democratic Representation and Re-gendering the Party System in Iceland

Abstract Book of the 7th International Conference on Gender Studies and Sexuality

Year: 2026

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Cost of Inclusion?: Democratic Representation and Re-gendering the Party System in Iceland

Dr Jun Shiota

ABSTRACT:

While existing studies have primarily focused on the emergence of women’s parties, it has paid little attention to the mechanisms underlying their decline. This paper addresses this gap by examining the case of the Women’s Alliance in Iceland, revealing why and how a women’s party declines and ultimately dissolves. The Women’s Alliance achieved electoral success in Iceland’s 1983 election by politicizing gender inequality and challenging the male-dominated structure of party competition. The party generated contagion effects in other parties in both descriptive and substantive representation, re-gendering the party system. However, this process entailed the co-optation of gender issues by established parties and the multiplication of political channels through which women’s interests were institutionalized. This resulted in the erosion of the distinctive advantages, including issue ownership over gender equality, symbolic legitimacy as representatives of women, and distinctive position as a supplier of women politicians, which enjoyed by the Women’s Alliance within interparty competition. Drawing on this case study, this paper advances the concept of “diffusion dilemma”, arguing that women’s parties, through their impact on the party system, lose the key conditions necessary for their organizational maintenance. The paper concludes that this process should not be understood simply as the cost of inclusion, but rather as a broader development of democratic representation through the re-gendering of the party system.

Keywords: Diffusion Dilemma; Gender Politics; The Women’s Alliance; Women’s Party; Women’s Representation