Twenty-three years after the ground-breaking UN Resolution 1325, the goal of worldwide gender equality is still not achieved. This paper investigates how a government's political ideology is related to its Women, Peace and Security (WPS) approach. The research question is addressed by arguing that the political ideology of a government influences the quality of its WPS approaches and implementation attempts differently due to varying inherent institutional norms. The hypothesis and theoretical argument suggest that left-wing governments promote gender-friendly norms and support gender equality approaches, leading to better WPS implementation. To test this hypothesis, an Ordinal Logistic Regression is run for countries worldwide that have developed at least one National Action Plan (NAP) between 2006 and 2021. The empirical findings partially reject the hypothesis' expected direction, showing that leftist governments not only positively impact WPS quality when compared to rightist counterparts. Additionally, the research indicates that institutional norms are not a causal mechanism but another independent effect. The findings further suggest that gender inequality plays a role in WPS implementation, with greater inequality associated with better NAP quality. These contradicting findings call for future research, especially by focusing on finding new ways to measure the WPS implementation efforts.

The purpose of this study is to understand which challenges women politicians on Gotland face and how they perceive themselves in their political work. We aim to highlight existing gender norms and how these translate into challenges within an island setting. This research further highlights the identity work women politicians at a local level engage in. The theoretical frameworks used include feminist political theory, feminist institutionalism, identity, and political identity. The empirical data was gathered through 13 semi-structured interviews with local women politicians on Gotland. Taking on a feminist approach, our study underscores and engages with the complexity of the stories, emotions, and experiences of our participants. Our findings underline several challenges women politicians face, including Part of a quota?, Motherhood and Double standards. Our findings also stress that the notion of femininity, such as motherhood and emotionality, need to be the base for restructuring and reframing current political systems to allow for true gender equality. Additionally, our findings reveal three identity facets, (1) The Holistic Caretaker, (2) The Freedom Fighter, and (3) The Game Player, which women politicians take on depending on the political context and while aiming to navigate through the political landscape. Lastly, we have identified the paradox Women vs Women. Our study sheds light on the intertwined and complex nature of gender related challenges in local politics and reveals the paradoxical nature of women’s attempt to move up the political staircase, while simultaneously trying to challenge pre-existing systemic structures.

This thesis examines a gender quota in Algeria to determine if signs can be found that it was adopted to improve the regime’s image, rather than to empower women. Such symbolic gender reforms are also known as autocratic gender-washing and are problematic as they are generally viewed as democratisation efforts but have no such effect. In the case of autocratic gender-washing neither democracy nor women benefit as it only serves to legitimate an authoritarian regime. This thesis has a feminist institutionalist analytical perspective which serves to understand the gendered nature of institutions, the relationship between formal and informal institutions, and how they undergo change. There is also an assumption that descriptive representation should lead to substantive representation for gender quotas to be successful. The case of Algeria is chosen as it is considered an authoritarian regime but implemented a relatively drastic gender quota at 30% reserved seats, which they abolished after only ten years, in 2021. Women’s issues in Algeria are examined to better understand what benefits women as a group prioritised. This contextualisation reveals what topics to analyse to reveal genuine gender reform or autocratic gender-washing. A critical discourse analysis is conducted to find signs of whether the quota benefitted women as well as if the regime was given credit for it. The thesis finds that there are signs of autocratic gender-washing but also cautious suggestions of women benefitting from reform through adjusted policy design.

The main purpose of this thesis is to analyze why or why not Swedish municipalities implement the gender equality policy – ”right to work fulltime”. In order to understand this institutional change, the analysis is based on a theoretical framework consisting of two fields: political representation and feminist institutionalism. The study is divided into two empirical inquiries. The first part is based on a quantitative survey that describes the casual relationship between two independent variables; women´s political representation and party ideology, and the dependent variable; political decision about “right to work fulltime”. The findings are that women´s representation does not explain the existence of political decision. Rather, political ideology has a higher explanatory factor. The second inquiry is divided into two single-case studies; Nynäshamn, a municipality that has implemented the policy, and Eskilstuna, that failed the implementation process. Four theoretical concepts are developed and one analytical model is used to understand institutional change in these cases. The study concludes that in order to understand the implementation process in these municipalities, local and contextual institutions must be emphasized; both formal and informal institutions need to be in favor for the agents promoting change. However, to fully understand these processes, focus should be directed towards the ways in which gendered power relations shape the construction of new institutions.