This thesis examines the relationship between Parliament and women in the early twentieth century. It does so with particular reference to legislation affecting women’s lives and gender equality, the contribution of women to Parliamentary standing committees and select committees, and women staff in the House of Commons and House of Lords. Four pieces of legislation are studied in detail: the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918 that allowed women to become Members of Parliament; the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 that widened employment opportunities for women; the Guardianship of Infants Act 1925 that enabled guardianship of children to be granted equally for men and women; and finally the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise Act) 1928 that gave women the vote on the same terms as men. Together these Acts encompass an important and diverse range of issues. This thesis contends that a full comprehension of its Parliamentary passage enables each Act to be better understood and evaluated in its contemporary context. The contribution of women MPs to standing committees, which scrutinise legislation, and the participation of women as members, witnesses and staff to select committees of inquiry, is studied here for the first time, filling a significant gap in the historiography. Finally this thesis provides an analysis of the work and lives of women working in Parliament, letting us view Parliament as an environment for women and enabling the House of Commons and House of Lords to be brought into the broader literature of women workers. This thesis, by considering Parliament in the context of its relationship with women, enables a new understanding of the nature of Parliament in this period, which more accurately reflects its diverse nature. In this way this thesis gives new insights into how Parliament viewed and interacted with women in the early twentieth century.

Egyptian women’s activists are widely regarded as pioneers in calling for women’s rights in the Arab world. However, the struggle for women’s rights in Egypt is a complex one that has led to many achievements, but has also involved numerous setbacks. The media has been central throughout this struggle and all of this has always taken place in a highly politicized environment, which involved changes in the state’s approach to women’s rights. Thus, this study investigates the interplay between women, media and politics in Egypt. It uses theories of authoritarianism that have been used to describe the nature of the incumbent Egyptian regime, as well as notions pertaining to the corporatist tactics it resorts to in order to analyze the manner in which the state deals with women’s activists and their access to the media. This involves a particular emphasis on the privately owned media which has flourished in Egypt in recent years. Also, because the Egyptian government is directly and actively involved in ‘women’s issues’, the study uses the notion of state feminism to analyze its efforts in this regard and how they relate to media treatment of women and their rights. In addition, the study draws on theories of post and neo colonialism to analyze how efforts in the area of women’s rights by both the government and activists relate to the international framework, which promotes a specific version of women’s rights. This is done by interviewing female members of political parties, NGOs and a governmental women’s organization, as well as using archival research to analyze the information available in the publications of these organizations. Other methods employed in this study are critical discourse analysis to analyze media treatment of women’s political empowerment, in addition to focus groups to investigate Egyptian female audiences’ reception of political drama. As a result, the study breaks new ground in theorizing the relationship between the state and women’s activists and thus explains the activists’ media access. It also develops the notion of state feminism and relates it to the media. Finally, the study reveals and theorizes how the privately owned media in Egypt is subtly controlled by the state.

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Examining women intellectuals’ political networks across different political parties, organisations and institutions, my PhD thesis aims to provide an in-depth analysis of women intellectuals’ political engagement, communication and identification during the War of Resistance (1937-1945) and the following Civil War (1946-1949). Taking “network” as an approach to study modern Chinese history, this thesis aims to reveal and interpret the historical dynamics of war, politics and gender in the 1930s and 1940s China, at national, local and individual levels. Focusing on “women intellectuals” as both a social and political group active in the KMT-held major cities, this thesis places their networks in the spaces of knowledge and identity making, in the context of China’s war and crisis. I consider the process of their political engagement and identification as both a reflection and a component of the wartime geo-political landscape. I also argue that the War of Resistance enlarged the geographical, social, cultural and political spaces for women intellectuals’ political networking cross party lines and political boundaries. These spaces were never fixed, but changing according to the social, political and economic conditions, within which women intellectuals’ political identification with the KMT, the CCP, and the minor political parties were shaped and reshaped. Breaking through the “barrier” years of 1937, 1945 and 1949, this thesis aims to demonstrate both the consistencies and variations in women intellectuals’ political networking, not only during the War of Resistance, but also before and after the War. And avoiding a teleological view of the wartime women’s movement based on CCP narratives after 1949, I will not only analyse archival documents collected from non-CCP organisations but also explore the personal accounts of women intellectuals who held different political affiliations during the War. By revealing the complexity, diversity and flexibility of women intellectuals’ political networks, this thesis will deepen the current knowledge of the social and political transformations in wartime China.

The inclusion of women in the public sphere delineates the last century from the previous ones. This thesis investigates three key aspects of the gender revolution. At the turn from the 18th to the 19th century, countries began to grant women equal voting rights to men. Equality in the act of voting, however, failed to ensue. To address this conundrum, the first essay argues that elites and organizations had greater incentives to mobilize women to vote under a proportional representation (pr) than a plurality electoral system. I test the argument empirically by studying a reform which required half of the about 600 Norwegian municipalities to replace plurality with pr before the 1919 election. The difference-in-difference design reveals the reform increased women’s share of the votes cast by about ten percentage points, thus notably reducing gender inequities in political participation. Women’s inclusion in voting did, however, not imply women’s inclusion in employment, education, and political offices. Indeed, after World War II, the social partners and political parties favored policies aimed at male-breadwinner families. The second essay studies the puzzle of why unions, employers, and parties nonetheless, from the 1970s and onwards, went from opposing to proposing work-family policy reforms, such as daycare services and paid parental leave. My argument is that, as women have become an increasingly important part of the membership base for unions and source of high-skilled labour for employers, the social partners have come to push for the expansion of work-family policies. Yet, centralised corporatist institutions, which give policy influence, are needed for unions and employers to succeed with their policy demands. Both a time-series crossnational quantitative analysis and an in-depth case study of Norway and shadow case studies of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Sweden support the argument. By the new millennium, women made up half of the labor force but only one-third of managers, indicating that significant gender inequities remain. The third essay therefore examines whether the introduction of full-time daycare services increase mothers’ possibility and willingness to invest a professional career. Empirically, the essay exploits a staggered, large-scale expansion of daycare centres across Norwegian municipalities in the 2000s. Analysing registry data on the whole Norwegian population, the instrumental variable estimates indicate that the availability of daycare services made women more likely to enter into occupations requiring longer hours and leadership positions. In sum, the thesis demonstrates that reforms of political and public policy institutions can impact both the pace and the direction of theongoing gender revolution.

Mary Burns includes two sections: a short thesis called Revolution, Romance, and Revelation, and a work of autobiografiction, Mary Burns. Mary Burns is the major contribution to this PhD submission. It tells a story of the common-law wife of Marxist co-founder, Friedrich Engels, and a contemporary character, Ula Tully, who is attempting to tell Mary's story. The major part of this submission began as an attempt to write the novelised chronological biography of Mary Burns, yet through the writing process, ended up as a work of split-narrative autobiografiction. The stories of Ula and Mary are linked, sometimes subtly, sometimes obviously; two women who belong to different centuries but who have much in common. Both stories also represent the dire scarcity of that figure in English literature - the working-class woman. In this way we can see the telling of a story for Mary as an effort at 'rescuing' a figure of whom more 'should' be known, given her place beside the major Marxist figure. Revolution, Romance, and Revelation is a critical paper in three sections, the aim of which was to highlight the stereotypical characterization of Mary Burns in the biographies of Engels. This first section also goes some way to explain the ways in which I departed from these stereotypical characterizations of Mary in my creative work. The second section moves onto the later figure of Ethel Carnie, a working-class female writer of whom, again, little is known, except that she was a staunch socialist, novelist, journalist, and founder of The Clear Light, an anti- fascist journal that ran from 1920-1925. I also assert that Ethel, whenever mentioned it is as a 'romance' novelist, adopted a dialectical approach to her work, drawing on both romance and the New Woman novel. In doing so, I contend that she more closely wrote within the autobiografictive framework that was formulated by 8tephen Reynolds in 1906, and which I discuss in the final section. The third section defines autobiografiction, and explains the process of my adoption of it for my creative work. It is in this section that I also call for this 'mash-up' form to be a more amenable way for working-class women to produce their literature, as practised by Ethel Carnie, moving away from the novel form, which has, from its inception, been synonymous with the middle-classes.

This study highlights the significance of equal participation of men and women as central to the future health of politics and the democratic process in Wales. Following affirmative action taken by two major Welsh political parties, the National Assembly for Wales has been notable for the high level of female representation among its membership since the legislature was created in 1999. The large number of women in the Assembly is a unique phenomenon both politically and geographically. However, the question that remains unanswered is this: in spite of equal political representation in the Assembly, are men and women now treated equally and fairly by the Welsh press? This research is the first comparative study of press representations of men and women in a political institution that has an almost equal number of male and female representatives. It specifically attempts to examine how 12 Welsh newspapers portrayed female Assembly Members [AMs] during a three-month Welsh national election period as well as during a later three-month routine press coverage period. It draws on content and discourse analyses of the press coverage of over 3000 articles from about 1000 newspaper editions during the two periods studied. It is also based on data generated by in-depth interviews with 28 AMs from the current Assembly. This study shows that when there has been a relative equal participation of women in a political institution over a period, the gender issue initially remains noticeable and “business as usual”. However, over time, more complex media representations of male and female politicians have been observed and gender bias has gradually become less salient and controversial than before, both in colleagues’ perceptions of women politicians and in media representations, because gender parity has become a norm.

This study offers a case study of women’s political participation and representation in pro-Kurdish politics in Turkey since 1990s. Kurdish women have been double oppressed in Turkey due to both their ethnic identity and gender identity. They have been mobilized by the Kurdish national movement for the Kurdish national cause and joined both Kurdish armed and political struggles from the early 1990s. From the foundation of the first pro-Kurdish political party, the People’s Labour Party [Halkın Emek Partisi- HEP] in 1990, Kurdish women have actively been involved in pro- Kurdish party politics. However, the pro-Kurdish party failed in promoting egalitarian gender values, policies and supporting women’s inclusion in decision-making until the end of 1990s except the election of the first Kurdish woman deputy, Leyla Zana in 1991. Women’s participation and representation in pro-Kurdish party politics have significantly advanced numerically since 1990s. In contrast to the general picture of women’s underrepresentation in Turkey’s politics, the proportion of Kurdish women representatives has been increasing in representation bodies. Therefore, this research aims to examine the Kurdish case through conducting an intensive field research in order to explain the reasons and factors behind these developments. This research is an empirical case study, primarily based on qualitative analysis of face-to-face in-depth semi-structured interviews of female political activists and participant observations held during field research. On the basis of empirical data gathered from field research and an analysis of pro-Kurdish party characteristics, its gender policies and female political activists’ roles in representation bodies, this study argues that the pro-Kurdish politics has gradually been feminizing which refers to an increase in women’s both descriptive and substantive representation since the beginning of 2000s. The changes and developments in terms of women’s representation in pro-Kurdish politics are framed as a process of feminization; which can simply be defined as a process for women to be included in political decision-making both in numbers and ideas for representing women’s interests. In this regard, this thesis searches for answers for two essential questions: how has the pro-Kurdish party politics been feminized and what difference has been made in pro-Kurdish politics since women are increasingly taking part in decision-making processes. Thus, this study assesses whether descriptive representation links to women's substantive representation in pro-Kurdish politics. The examination of Kurdish women’s representation based on the feminizing politics approach does not only theoretically contribute to broaden the scope of feminizing politics but it also broadens the scope of the concepts of descriptive and substantive representation included in this approach. In this respect, this thesis will demonstrate that the analysis of the Kurdish women case in the context of feminizing politics presents several insights about the women‘s political representation and put forth how political parties and actors strategically interact in changing women‘s political representation.

Given their potential to negatively impact men's goal of staying in office, can gender quotas be aligned with the preferences of male legislators who adopt the policy? In other words, does the rapid spread of gender quotas worldwide challenge notions of the rationality of legislators as career-driven individuals? These are the main questions that drive this thesis. To answer these questions, I develop a prospect theory-based framework that accounts for how electoral security and political ambition impact legislators' behaviour in influencing the strength of gender quota designs. I argue that, faced with growing pressures to adopt gender quotas, male parliamentarians engage in the risk-taking process of assenting with gender quotas, meanwhile seeking to minimize the potential costs of the policy to their future careers by actively weakening quota designs. To evaluate the plausibility of my theory, I employ a series of multi-method and multi-level analyses presented across five substantive chapters, each of which is respectively based on: 1) a cross-sectional analysis of Latin America countries; 2) an elite survey experiment with Brazilian state legislators; and, in-depth process tracing of the cases of gender quota adoption in 3) Costa Rica; 4) Brazil; and, 5) Chile. The work makes three main contributions. Firstly, although previously identified, the resistance of male legislators towards gender quotas had never been systematically analysed in a comparative manner; focusing on the behaviour of male incumbents is thus a relevant contribution. Secondly, although various authors have provided explanations for the origins of gender quota adoptions, no work had ever comparatively assessed sources of the variation in gender quota designs. Thus, I move the study of gender quotas beyond the binary choice of adoption. Thirdly, I show that the static assumptions of endogenous institutionalism need to be modified by the introduction of risk, which can only be achieved by integrating the insights of prospect theory.

This thesis explores the relationship between gender policy, gender culture, and political participation in unified Germany. It investigates the extent to which political regimes shape citizens' attitudes towards gender roles and examines the effect of such attitudes on women's participation in politics. The thesis is divided into three parts: The first part explores the differences in gender regime types between the former German Democratic Republic and Federal Republic of Germany during the Cold War period. Building on existing studies, the analysis considers how generations that were socialised in the divided Germany differ in their attitudes toward gender roles. It finds that citizens from West Germany are more socially conservative than citizens from the East. The second part of the thesis tests the effects of these traditional gender attitudes on citizens' participation, focusing on party membership. The analysis highlights that gender gaps in formal political participation in unified Germany still exist, but that these gaps are smaller in the new federal states. The investigation further shows that traditional gender attitudes exert a negative effect on women’s political engagement beyond the predictive power of socio-economic and demographic factors. The final part of this thesis casts a critical look at the political controversy in Germany over the introduction of a cash-for-care subsidy (the so-called Betreuungsgeld). It explores the normative assumptions and ideas about gender roles that have been promoted by Germany's main political parties throughout the policy negotiation process. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, the research presented in this thesis draws on, and contributes to, studies on gender, welfare states, political socialisation, and political participation.